Ada Salter: Pioneer of Ethical Socialism

Graham Taylor’s fine biography of Ada Salter provides a vivid account of the ILP’s ethical socialism as she lived it, says BARRY WINTER. Ada Salter’s hands-on approach to making the world a better place is told with clarity and passion in Graham Taylor’s new biography of the pioneering ILPer. Moreover, Ada’s busy life is explored...

A Bridge Over Troubled Water?

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....

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....

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...

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...

Unbalanced Britain

Unbalanced Britain: Corporate Power and our Me-based Culture, by Barry Winter, is an eight-page A4 pamphlet based on Barry’s introductory talk at the ILP’s first ‘Unbalanced Britain’ workshop at the Circle centre in Sheffield on 28 June 2014. Updated in 2015, it provides useful background reading for the ILP’s series of Unbalanced Britain meetings...

Spain’s Election: Whither the 15-M Movement?

Spaniards are facing a political moment of truth when they go to the polls on 20 December this year when even the future of the state is in question. GEORGINA BLAKELEY traces the impact of the 15-M Movement which erupted so dramatically onto the Spanish political scene four years ago. On 15 May 2011, demonstrations...