Jack, you are probably right about Karl Marx, but I would like to see more emphasis on the good he did (if he did) in starting to rescue the world from the horrifying Victorian capitalism. Remember the history of Bryant and May, and the first ever strike led by women out of a women only workforce.

Fadac, you surely do Roosevelt a disservice by failing to point out that without him the great recession (the one before the one that Margaret Thatcher deliberately engineered to put the workers back in their places) would have lasted a great deal longer.

I'm from the UK and I'll nominate Nye Bevan, father of the welfare state (despite a sneaking admiration for Churchill, who proved what a chainsmoking alcoholic could do when his back was really against the wall)