The Ford-Maguire Society in Leeds is to host a talk on Edward Carpenter next month. Researcher and author Paul Marshall will explore Carpenter’s connections with Leeds through the friends he knew here....
Articles
Present prospects, future hope
“We meet on a weekend of elections,” said ILP chair David Connolly as ILPers and friends gathered in Scarborough on 5/6 May for the organisation’s annual weekend school of political debate and discussion....
Benefit for the Brigade
The International Brigade Memorial Trust are holding a benefit night at Chorlton Irish Club in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on Friday 18 May. The acts include Les Jones and Friends of the Beech, The Madonnnas, and the Bourbon Street Preachers....
Hackney’s Hetty remembers the General Strike
As a 20-year-old member of the Independent Labour party, Hetty Bower from Hackney in East London supported the General Strike, which lasted from 4-13 May 1926. She is now 106 years old, but remembers it vividly....
The crisis, Europe and the left
Successes for left parties in France and Greece are welcome signs of resistance to the right’s austerity measures. But the legacies of the economic crisis mean there are no easy choices for Europe’s social democrats, argues WILL BROWN. Electoral advances for the left in Europe are long overdue coming after a succession of defeats and...
How to overcome the north-south divide
The secretary and chair of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation will speak at a public meeting in Chesterfield on May Day to discuss how to tackle the growing north-south divide. ...
Crisis, Markets and Protest
Today capitalism is news. Talk about capitalist crisis is widespread in ways that have not been heard for decades. Yet, it is the forces of the right that continue to dominate politically, even though the system they most strongly espouse is facing severe upheavals. Often discredited, social democratic parties are struggling to get a...
The ILP: Past & Present (1993)
6: Thatcher & Beyond The Thatcher years Under James Callaghan, the Labour government came to a humiliating end in 1979. Its defeat followed a fierce battle with public service workers in the 1978/79 ‘winter of discontent’. The Labour government, which had won office five years earlier promising a partnership with the unions, came to...
Socialism with a Northern Accent
“There is much in the British socialist tradition that has been forgotten or ignored, and which runs counter to state centralism, in particular a stress on grass-roots solutions, co-operation and an emphasis on local culture. Applied imaginatively, these traditions open up the possibility of creating a popular democratic culture which reflects different but complementary...
Beyond Blue Labour
Marc Stears, Professor of Political Theory at Oxford University, spoke at Leeds University earlier this month on democracy and the politics of protest. BARRY WINTER reports....
Stop Kony, stop thinking?
In the past week, the ‘Stop Kony’ campaign, aimed at the arrest of African ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony, leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, has become an unlikely internet phenomenon. There is an undoubted justice to the campaign to the extent that, as the LRA leader, Kony is responsible for crimes against humanity stretching...
Recognising the Anfal genocide
A campaign is launched this week to urge the UK government to recognise the genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. The aim is to collect 100,000 signatures on an e-petition to trigger a parliamentary debate. GARY KENT reports....