Roma Marquez Santo, the POUM veteran who unveiled a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers in Salford in May 2009, died in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 December 2010. CHRIS HALL recalls his life and the events that shaped it. Roma Marquez Santo born in Barcelona on 6 November 1916 into a political family...
Articles
A tribute to Roma
Roma Marquez Santo, the POUM veteran who unveiled a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers in Salford in May 2009, died in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 December. HARRY OWEN pays tribute to the man who fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s yet could still hold audiences charmed and spellbound with tales of...
Labour ‘Supporters’ To Get The Vote?
A report in ‘The Independent’ (28 December 2010) says that the Labour Party has written to the Committee on Standards in Public Life arguing for a cap of £500 on donations to political parties. According to the paper, ‘Mr Miliband is ready to gamble on Labour attracting thousands of small donations from individual supporters...
Education is a social good, not a commodity
On 7 December, former New Statesman editor Peter Wilby wrote in The Guardian that Ed Miliband was wrong to oppose the government’s proposals to treble tuition fees. Here, BERNARD HUGHES says his argument is based on a view of education as a commodity not a social good. Peter Wilby’s argument has two main problems....
Education for people not profit
Compass has published a statement protesting at the government’s education reforms. We reproduce the statement here and provide a link to the Compass page where you can sign the petition. If you agree that education should remain a protected public good sign our petition! There is widespread anger over the government’s higher education reforms...
The Day of the Vote
AARON KIELY provides a student’s eyewitness account of police brutality at the tuition fees demonstration in Parliament Square last week. First, I have to state that I am a member of Labour Party, a candidate in the upcoming local elections, a Committee member of the NUS Black Students’ Campaign and an elected representative of...
False Economy
As campaigns against the spending cuts grow, readers may be interested in False Economy, a website for “everyone concerned about the impact of the government’s spending cuts on their community, their family or their job”. Devised by “local campaigners, those who rely on or support good public services and those who work to supply...
Labour, the coalition and the ILP perspective
The 2011 ILP Weekend School Save the date: 7/8 May 2011 Note the venue: Esplanade Hotel Scarborough Discussion, debate, deliberation. Put the date in your diaries and plan a weekend by the sea. More details to follow, including information on how to book your place. To register your interest email: info@independentlabour.org.uk...
Reviewing Labour’s future
MATTHEW BROWN reports on the left’s response to the government’s spending review and Jon Cruddas’s call for Labour to embrace the ‘good society’. There have been many responses to the coalition government’s emergency budget and comprehensive spending review, those from the left ranging from the timid “too much, too soon” sound-bite of the uninspiring...
Allen Clarke – a forgotten socialist pioneer
PAUL SALVESON recalls a doyen of the Lancashire labour movement whose dialect writing still has relevance today. ‘I daresay Teddy Ashton’s droll sketches have done more to help reforms than far more pretentious and direct articles. For Teddy, even in his comic (dialect) sketches, pokes sly fun and undermining sarcasm at the iniquities and...
The mess we’re in
Soundings’ ebook, Britain’s Broken Economy – and how to fix it, is an essential read for anyone interested in a left alternative to UK capitalism, says BEN TURLEY. For political reasons, Britain’s Broken Economy does not touch on the structuraldeficit or engage with arguments about the sustainability of public expenditure. This is because the...
Why Inequality Matters
Why Inequality Matters A lecture by Professor Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level, in memory of Richard Brown (Dept of Sociology, Durham University 1966-1993). Monday 8th November 2010, St John’s College (http://goo.gl/maps/wnDg) , South Bailey, Durham, 6:30pm – FREE Drinks and nibbles will be provided. The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone, by Richard Wilkinson...