It is 30 years since Tory prime minister John Major was moved to protect Iraqi Kurds from Saddam Hussein’s brutal slaughter. The safe haven initiative provides a telling example for Keir Starmer’s Labour as it rethinks its foreign policy, says GARY KENT....
ILP Profiles: Ethel Carnie Holdsworth – Poet, Campaigner & Pioneering Writer
ROGER SMALLEY recounts the life of a Blackburn ILPer who wanted her work ‘to sting people into rebellion against poverty and fire their hearts with a cause’. Ethel Carnie left an impressive legacy of dissent that continues to have relevance today....
Nelson ILP to Publish First Irving Biography
The first ever biography of socialist pioneer and Burnley Labour MP Dan Irving is due to be published by Nelson ILP Land Society....
The Orwell Society Talks to Eileen’s Biographer
The Orwell Society has released the latest recording in its online ‘George Talks’ series featuring an interview with Sylvia Topp, author of the highly-regarded biography of Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy....
How the ILP’s Vision Created the Labour Party
It is a common misconception that trade unions founded the Labour Party in 1900. Not so, says JOHN H GRIGG. It was the ILP that drove the initiative....
Skewering the Social Mobility Myth
Politicians of all shades trumpet the ideal of social mobility as a mark of a fair society. It’s a claim picked apart by Selina Todd in her rich and compelling new book, Snakes and Ladders. MARIA GOULDING is impressed by a powerful manifesto for change....
ILP Profiles: Johnnie Duxbury – The Quiet Dedication of an Ethical Socialist
Like many working-class socialists, Blackburn ILPer Johnnie Duxbury left only a faint footprint on the historical record. Yet his life of brave activism and everyday kindness ‘enriches our understanding of socialist commitment’, argues ROGER SMALLEY....
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....
Throwing a Spotlight on ILP Women
To mark International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the lives of nine ILP women who played important roles in the early years of the Labour movement. All of them were tireless campaigners for women’s votes and gender equality, and against war and poverty....
Labour Together Launch New Project to Examine ‘New Power’
The Labour Together network is launching a new project in partnership with Compass looking at how power in our society is changing and how the left can respond....
ILP Profiles: Johnnie Duxbury – ‘A Noble and Good Man’
BARBARA HARGREAVES pays tribute to her father, an ILPer from Blackburn who dedicated his life to ‘every progressive cause that arose’. ‘His intelligence and integrity allowed him to transcend his circumstances and help those who could not,’ she says....
Building a New Consensus
GARY KENT recalls how some on the British left challenged orthodox thinking and pioneered an alternative approach to Northern Ireland that helped lay the political groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement....