The ILP is planning to rewrite and update its booklet, The ILP Past and Present, and invites you to comment online about the contents.
We are doing this, first, because the last edition was published in 1993, which makes it rather dated, and secondly, because there is a growing interest in our history among poltical activists, Labour politicians and academics. So this seems like a good time to proceed.
The pamphlet is divided into three broad periods: the early years; the emergence and development of the Labour Party; and the ILP’s subsequent role on its return to the party as Independent Labour Publications.
In addition there are series of boxes highlighting some important parts of that story: Great Expectations, Beginnings in Bradford, Living for that Better Day, the Clarionets, Strongholds of the ILP, Votes for Women, Internationalism: the ILP in War and Peace, and Issues of the Day.
We will put the material online in stages, starting with the early period and including the relevant supplements. It is then over to anyone who wishes to respond to do so. This will help us to enrich what we hope will be a moving account of how different generations of people have sought to build a better society.
Barry Winter
28 October 2011
See from the Manchester Guardian of 1893 –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/14/archive-independent-labour-party-conference
16 October 2011
Ill never forget ‘Red’ Stan Iveson from Nelson. At a Labour party conference in Brighton dutring the 1980s, he asked me how long I had been a member of the ILP for. I said I’d been a member for a couple of years and he told me that he’s been a member for 53 years. That put me in my place!