Peter Gowan, a member of the editorial board of Debatte since the merger
with Labour Focus on Eastern Europe at the beginning of 2006, died on 12
June 2009 of mesothelioma. Peter was absolutely central to Labour Focus
over three decades, as a founder member of the Editorial Collective, as
managing editor for the first decade of the journal’s existence, from
1977 to 1986 and as a regular contributor and Editorial Board member
through the following two decades. He continued that commitment to
Debatte after the merger; advising, encouraging and speaking at Debatte
conferences, most recently at the April 2008 conference which we held on
Russia, which was enlivened by a typically engaging and stimulating talk
from Peter.

Peter attracted an enormous amount of respect and affection from a very
wide variety of different quarters; from all sections of the left and
from his colleagues and students at London Metropolitan University. The
respect arose from his tremendous energy and the quality and scope of
his writing, some of which is detailed below. More importantly however,
the affection stemmed from the kind of person he was. Peter was
absolutely without pretensions of any kind. From small political
gatherings in the back rooms of public houses or community centres to
large public lectures at high profile conferences he maintained the same
qualities that we saw in Editorial Board meetings; a combination of firm
statements of his own ideas with the utmost courtesy towards those
disagreeing with him, a genuine commitment to open debate and a strong
desire to use discussion and argument not to score points but to work in
a collaborative way towards a better understanding of the world. The
success of Labour Focus in attracting left activists from a variety of
different viewpoints and traditions to work together around a common
project was in large measure due to Peter?s personality and approach.

The first issue of Labour Focus on Eastern Europe appeared in March 1977
and at the same time Peter published a lengthy account of the Polish
strikes of 1976 and their aftermath in New Left Review using the
pseudonym of Peter Green [1]. During the first half of the 1980s Peter continued to provide detailed
analyses of changes in Poland for the journal, looking both at the
underground organisations and at the regime and the church [2].

From the middle of the 1980s onwards interest on the left with regard
to Central and Eastern Europe began to shift towards the nature of
perestroika and glasnost in the USSR and Peter provided a number of
important accounts of these developments, both examining them in general
terms and also highlighting the crucial (and initially rather neglected,
at least in Britain) issue of the national question within the old
Soviet Union [3], later reprinted in his
book The Global Gamble.

These writings dealt primarily with the“objective” characteristics of
the transition process in Central and Eastern Europe and of Western
involvement in that process. However, throughout the last three decades
Peter concerned himself equally with more subjective" questions. Two of these preoccupied him in particular. Firstly, there was the issue of the strategies being pursued by the various elites involved in the reshaping of the international order. Here Peter gave equal attention both to nationally based groups (both governments and representatives of capital) and those based in international and trans-national organisations and structures (again bothpublic" and private"). Secondly, Peter was fascinated by the ideological processes and mechanisms which allowed those strategies to be legitimated even given their damaging effects. The concern with elite strategies and the operation of ideology provided much of the basis for Peter's contribution to the academic discipline of international relations, where over the last two decades of his life he developed a reputation as one of the most acute and far-sighted critics of neo-liberal globalisation. An early example of Peter's analysis of the struggle over ideas is his historical description of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms in the nineteenth century British civil service(8). While in some ways atypical of his writing, this account of the way in which the purported impact of a set of policies can mask the operation of a very different set of processes at a deeper, structural level was in many ways an indication of the questions which he would pursue in later investigations. Some of the same concerns were also highlighted in his critique of the language of rights and its application by Western liberalism to the Gulf War of 1991 [[P GowanOrigins of the Administrative Elite? (New Left Review No.162
March-April 1987).]].

With regard to Europe in general and Central and Eastern Europe in
particular, Peter’s accounts of strategies and ideologies encompassed a
number of strands. Firstly he provided an account of the role of Germany
within the new European order, in part through a critique of the
approach of Timothy Garton-Ash to German Ostpolitik [4]. Fourthly, and most recently, he examined the
relationship of the EU and European states to the imperialist project of
the Bush presidency following the September 2001 attacks [5].

Each of the first three of these strands and also the relationship
between Europe and the USA, was incorporated in the most ambitious and
influential work done by Peter during the 1990s; his analysis of the
economic, political and military strategies of the US during the decade
following the break-up of the USSR. Two events dominated here; the Asian
economic crisis of 1997-98 and the war in Kosovo. Yet in neither case
did Peter analyse these in isolation; rather he traced back the origins
of the events of the late 1990s to the challenges to American hegemony
some three decades before and the US response to this challenge.

In the case of Kosovo Peter’s account filled an entire special issue of
Labour Focus and was then carried forward in a number of successor
articles [6].
Here Peter provided a detailed overview of the re-establishment of
American power following the challenges associated with the collapse of
the Bretton-Woods system in the early 1970s; discussing both the
interpretation of contemporary events and prospects for the future. The
Global Gamble established Peter as a key analyst of contemporary
capitalism and through the following decade he engaged in wide-ranging
debates with figures such as Robert Brenner, David Harvey and Giovanni
Arrighi.

The analysis of the foundations of and challenges to American political
and economic power continued to engage Peter through the following
decade and he produced important assessments of questions such as the
role of states in the international system [7], the role of the US in
the creation and development of the United Nations [8]. In the last year of his life he produced a
detailed account of the current financial and economic crisis [9].

For more than three decades Peter was a vital voice on the left both in
Britain and internationally. The range of his writing was exceptional
and the publications listed here are full of important insights ?
insights which he also transmitted with characteristic generosity to his
political comrades, academic colleagues and to his students. The work he
leaves behind is a lasting legacy. Yet, sadly it is no substitute for
being able once more to see that sceptical, quizzical, almost impish
smile and to know that one more stimulating, provocative, maybe
outrageous argument would be on the way ? and would change the way you
saw things in the future.

Debatte will be discussing over the next months the best way in which we
can remember Peter, both at our conference this October and in the
following period. In addition to this Peter’s particular wish was to set
up a fund to be able to award a prize to a graduate student in
International Relations at London Metropolitan University where he
taught. This fund is being set up through the Lipman-Miliband Trust
which for the last 30 years has been dedicated to socialist education
and research. If you would like to contribute to the prize fund there
are several ways in which you can do this:

By Cheque

Make cheques payable to Lipman-Miliband Trust with reference on the back
of the cheque to Peter Gowan Prize Fund and post to: The Lipman-Miliband
Trust, PO Box 64726 London, United Kingdom, NW1 8EN

By Direct Transfer

Please credit the Lipman-Miliband Trust, CAF Bank Ltd, West Malling,
Kent, sort code 40-52-40, account number 00090866, reference P Gowan Prize.

By Foreign Direct Payment

If you would like to make a payment from abroad please send in the
following way:

Lipman-Miliband Trust registered charity No267288, Bank account no.
00090866, sort code 40-02-40, reference P Gowan Prize.

HSBC, Poultry and Princes St Branch, London

Swift Branch ID Code BIC MIDLGB 2141W

Favour CafBank Ltd

Sort Code/Acct No. 400530 72138549 IBAN No GB48MIDL4005307213 8549