Ken COATES (born 1930) is a British politician and writer. He chairs the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and edits The Spokesman, the Foundation’s journal which was launched in March 1970. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1999, working for five years as President of its Human Rights Subcommittee, and then as rapporteur of the Parliament’s temporary Employment Committee. He worked as a coalminer, before becoming a university teacher and special professor in the Department of Adult Education at the Nottingham. Coates has played leading roles in European Nuclear Disarmament and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. He has written and edited numerous books on poverty, socialism, peace and disarmament, democracy and human rights. His book The Case of Nikolai Bukharin (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1978) is regarded by some as having served as the international basis for the rehabilitation of that Bolshevik leader.