ILP Historian Launches New Website on Socialism & Democracy
A new website has been launched by ILP and Labour movement historian Ian Bullock to highlight his decades of work examining the relationship between socialism and democracy in Britain....
Waiting for the Workers
IAN BULLOCK reviews an unusual and valuable account of the ILP before, during and immediately after the Second World War, a period when it hovered on the brink of virtual extinction....
Pedal Power: Has the Clarion Lost its Calling?
News that the Clarion Cycling Club has dropped its historical association with socialism made national headlines last week as critical voices lamented the demise of one of the left’s oldest institutions. So has the Clarion changed gear? Not quite, explains the club’s former chair, IAN BULLOCK....
The Drums of Armageddon
In the words of the author himself, Ian Bullock’s latest work of left-wing history, The Drums of Armageddon, is an unusual book in several ways. First, The Drums of Armageddon covers a very short period …...
The Interwar ILP – Lessons for Today?
IAN BULLOCK assesses the record of the ILP between the wars and seeks to draw a few lessons for Labour and the left today. All in all, he says, the influence of the radical and democratic ILP on the Labour Party of the later 20th century was an extremely positive one....
Between the Wars
The period between the two world wars was one of the most turbulent in political history. The events of that time had a profound impact on the ILP and the development of British left-wing politics, as Ian Bullock describes in his important new book, Under Siege, reviewed here by HARRY BARNES. After setting the scene...
Under Siege: The ILP in the Interwar Years
Despite its decline, the Independent Labour Party preserved the values of democratic socialism during the interwar years, according to ILP historian Ian Bullock in his new book, due to be published by Athabasca University Press....
The Lessons of 1917 … And All That!
IAN BULLOCK marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution by arguing that the profoundly anti-political stance that took root among Leninists had dire and lasting consequences for socialism in the west....
Corbyn: Labour’s Accidental Leader
IAN BULLOCK’s recurring nightmare is that the Labour Party will end up like the ILP at the end of the 1930s – with a leader who could do no wrong in the eyes of an adoring membership, but with little or no political influence, let alone power. ‘At least Jimmy Maxton was a brilliant...
WWI: The ILP and the ‘Great’ War
The ILP played a major role in the anti-war and no conscription movements during the First World War. Many were gaoled, and many abused for their principled, political opposition to the conflict. Yet, not all ILPers became conscientious objectors, as IAN BULLOCK explains....
ILP@120: What Can We Learn from the Interwar ILP?
IAN BULLOCK examines three debates which occupied the ILP in the interwar years and asks what they can tell us about the relationship between socialism and democracy today....
ILP@120: Fred Jowett – ‘A great man of a new kind’
“He was a great man of a new kind, which the history books have not caught up with yet,” wrote JB Priestley of Fred Jowett. IAN BULLOCK profiles the ILPer who campaigned tirelessly for democratic reform. FW – or Fred – Jowett (1864-1944), known widely during his lifetime as ‘Jowett of Bradford’, was a prominent...