MATTHEW BROWN reports from Lowick, where teachers, pupils and parents have battled local and national government to set up the country’s first community co-operative school. In her book Reclaim the State (see Barry Winter’s review), Hilary Wainwright describes a number of ‘experiments in popular democracy’ from different parts of the world, attempts by local people...
Articles
Mutuality and radical politics
SEAN CREIGHTON traces the historical association of mutual organisations and the labour movement, and questions what the ‘new mutualism’ can offer to radical politics in the future. Scarborough’s Central Public Library is housed in the Oddfellows Hall opened in 1840. From 1857 it became the base for the Mechanics’ Institute and its library. The...
Reimagining socialism, reinventing democracy
BARRY WINTER finds much to admire in Hilary Wainwright’s book Reclaim the State, but says she is still romantically optimistic about the prospects of new left parties. My interest in Hilary Wainwright’s recent and, I think, important book initially came from a desire to discover more about the practical ‘experiments in popular democracy’ indicated...
Coalition of the careless
WILL BROWN reports on the sorry tale of a ‘left wing’ attack on Iraqi trade unionists. As Gary Kent’s article makes clear, support for Iraq’s trade unions has been a contentious issue on the British left. Indeed, it has grabbed media attention and exposed some woeful political judgements by the Stop the War Coalition...
The Challenge of Mutuality
This issue of Democratic Socialist is dedicated to continuing the discussions and debates raised by the ILP’s weekend school, held in Scarborough at the beginning of May. Entitled ‘The Challenge of Mutuality’, the school brought ILPers and non-ILPers together to discuss the politics of cooperation, mutuality and social enterprise, and examine their relevance to...
Save the Party … for Gordon Brown
JONATHAN TIMBERS finds the STLP heading up some depressingly familiar left wing cul-de-sacs. Earlier this year, Barry Winter and I attended a Save the Labour Party (STLP) members’ meeting in Manchester at which Michael Meacher spoke. There were calls in the meeting for a leadership election. Meacher politely and gently explained that any attempt...
Neighbourhood renewal and co-operative communities
ANDY HANSFORD looks at the causes of social exclusion, and unpicks the government’s plans for regeneration. A year ago, parts of the left press were highly critical of some measures coming out of the Social Exclusion Unit, which had recently published its ‘national strategy action plan’, called A new commitment to neighbourhood renewal. Neighbourhood...
All together now
As the regeneration baton is passed from Whitehall to local authorities, ANDY HANSFORD calls for the people of our blighted neighbourhoods to be given real control. Four years’ work by the government’s Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) have resulted in a practical strategy for neighbourhood renewal. It is challenging stuff, which might transform the life...
Foucault, power and the left
MARTIN JENKINS believes Michel Foucault’s analysis of power can inform an ethical understanding of socialism. The French thinker Michel Foucault died 20 years ago in 1984. Lecturing at the foremost European universities, Foucault was briefly a member of the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF). Along with other thinkers, he has been labelled as a post-modernist.(1)...
Cook’s report
The ILP’s ‘Conversation of the left’ was held in Leeds on 8 May 2004. Martin Cook reports. This meeting was a deliberately low key ‘conversation’ with no big name speakers and a set of themes on the future of the left and our attitude to the Labour Party. The organisers seemed a bit disappointed...
Making the mutual state
The New Economics Foundation is influencing the government’s agenda with its ideas for democratising the public sector. MATTHEW BROWN spoke to NEF’s executive director, Ed Mayo. Last year an “independent think tank”, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), published a small pocket book called The Mutual State: How local communities can run public services, which...
Africa: Imperialism goes naked
SARAH BRACKING and GRAHAM HARRISON argue that imperialism is a far more useful concept than globalisation for understanding Africa’s relations with the global economy. ‘The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, moving from its home, where it assumes respectable form, to the colonies, where it goes naked.’...