Labour’s disunity has been much in evidence recently. ALEX SOBEL argues that Open Labour can act as a bridge for those in the party who want to build an anti-Tory alliance based on an inclusive and empowering politics. At present, our party doesn’t look like a united party to those looking in from the outside....
Articles
Unbalanced Britain: Housing in Crisis
The Tory Housing Bill and Britain's housing crisis will be the subject of the ILP’s next Unbalanced Britain meeting in Leeds on Saturday 5 March with Dr Quintin Bradley, Fabian Hamilton MP and Ellen Robottom from Hands off our Homes....
The Trade Union Bill and Beyond
With the government’s ideological and damaging Trade Union Bill currently being debated in the Lords, Class are holding a public meeting to discuss the undemocratic nature of the Bill and the next steps for the trade union movement....
Ada Salter’s Story Out Now
Graham Taylor’s new biography of pioneering ILPer and ethical socialist Ada Salter has been published by Lawrence & Wishart. Salter played a key part in the ‘Bermondsey Revolution’ in south east London and had a major influence on the development of socialist politics nationally....
Wonder Women at WCML
Glasgow rent strike leader and pioneering ILPer Mary Barbour will be celebrated at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on International Women’s Day as part of Manchester’s ‘Wonder Women’ feminist festival this March....
Homage to Tom Maguire
Homage to Tom Maguire by EP Thompson is a 40-page, A5 pamphlet about the Leeds ILPer, poet, propagandist and photographer Tom Maguire, a radical organiser who played a vital role in the Leeds gas strike of 1890 but died in poverty five years later at the tragically young age of 29. Originally published in...
New Pamphlet: Homage to Tom Maguire
The ILP have re-published EP Thompson’s celebrated 1960 pamphlet on Leeds ILPer, poet, propagandist and photographer Tom Maguire with a new introduction by Labour historian David Howell and an additional profile by former Labour MP, John Battle. Maguire was, according to Howell’s introduction, “the personification of the marginalised”, a radical organiser who played a vital...
The Alf Mattison Collection
The life of 19th century ILPer and Leeds local historian Alf Mattison will be put under the spotlight by Professor Malcolm Chase during a lunchtime talk at Leeds Central Library on 14 January....
Living for That Better Day
Keir Hardie dedicated himself to ‘constant agitation’ and left a singular political legacy in the form of the Labour Party. David Connolly reviews What Would Keir Hardie Say?, a book of essays published last September to coincide with the centenary of Hardie’s death. Keir Hardie is an iconic figure in the history of the Labour...
John McNair’s Spanish Diary
John McNair’s Spanish Diary is a first-hand account of the Spanish Civil War written by a lifelong ILPer who later became the organisation’s general secretary. This pamphlet contains a brief account of McNair’s life followed by his own contemporary, first-hand reporting of events in Spain in 1936. Almost eight decades later, it remains a compelling...
What Attlee Can Teach Us About Charity and Socialism
Charitable giving keeps corporate capitalism and wealthy individuals in control, but adds nothing to the health of society, says STEVE THOMPSON. And so did Clement Attlee....
COP21: ‘1.5 We Might Survive’
Global Justice Now have greeted the climate change agreement fostered by world leaders in Paris last weekend as one gutted of “any sort of equity” and weakened by a lack of legally binding instruments....