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Editorial

WELCOME TO What Next? No.29. The journal’s appearance has been delayed once again, and this time for even longer than usual. Your editor’s excuse is that his intention was to bring it out back in September, featuring a discussion of the political questions arising from the US presidential election, but a couple of articles failed to turn up, so this format had to be junked and a new plan drawn up.

As a result, some of the articles, particularly those relating to the lessons of the "Super Thursday" elections in June, were written some months ago. We owe the authors an apology for not getting their efforts into print earlier. It should be pointed out, though, that this material has already been e-published on our website, which is where most people access the journal these days anyway, so disgruntled contributors can be reassured that their work has already been well read. In any case, the points made in these pieces have not lost their relevance with the passage of time.

Technophobes who prefer a physical copy of the journal will no doubt be pleased that we are continuing to publish a printed version. However, to repeat a point that has been made here before, you really don’t have to buy What Next? any more, as it is available for free on the website. We have now acquired a less naff URL (www.whatnextjournal.co.uk) and hope in the fullness of time to produce a rather more sophisticated design for the site. Not much of a challenge, I hear you say.

We have expanded the print version of the journal to 56 pages for this issue and it contains, I think, a fairly wide variety of material. There are a number of articles relating to the attitude socialists should take towards Islam, secularism and anti-Muslim prejudice. I am conscious that, with the exception of the first piece by Andrew Coates, the coverage is somewhat slanted towards the editor’s personal views, so readers should feel free to write in, putting an alternative position. Hopefully, we’ll get the next issue out a bit quicker than this one.

Finally, I understand that one of our contributors, Terry Liddle, has recently suffered a major heart attack. I am sure readers will join me in wishing him a speedy recovery.

The editor