John Ross is a British academic, journalist, blogger, advisor to multinationals and economic commentator who previously was a socialist political activist and worked as an economic advisor to Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor of London. He writes regularly for China Daily, Shanghai Daily, and China.org.cn. He is author of the book Thatcher and Friends - the Anatomy of the Tory Party (1983).
Contents |
He is at present a visiting professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He leads research there on China and the international financial crisis, and on globalisation.[1]
From 2000 to 2008, John Ross was Ken Livingstone's Policy Director of Economic and Business Policy.[2]
In Livingstone’s first administration Ross was given a variety of roles. He was responsible for:[3]
He wrote the journal article "Management Philosophy of the Greater London Authority".
During the 1990s Ross worked in Russia as an adviser to various multinationals.
Ross was convinced by Bob Pennington to join the Trotskyist International Marxist Group (IMG) in the late 1960s. He rapidly rose to a prominent position in the IMG, working with Pennington to form the IMG Opposition Group. Ross developed the idea that the organisation should aim to explain the political situation to workers without making calls to action. In the mid-1970s, the Opposition Group gained a majority of the IMG, and used it to promote a new strategy calling for a general strike. The leadership became increasingly associated with Ross as it became known as Socialist Action.[4][5][6][7]
Ross was leader of one of three groups which emerged out of the crisis of Socialist Action in the mid-1980s. They increasingly ceased to function as a normal left-wing group and became a group of advisors to Livingstone.