JONATHAN TIMBERS wants to kickstart the left (and the ILP) into discussing the major challenges facing Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. We all have responsibility to come up with some answers....
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...
Why Labour Lost the General Election
Labour’s defeat at last year’s general election wasn’t due to a lack of good policies, says HARRY BARNES. There were plenty, but most of them hardly saw the light of day....
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...
What Attlee Can Teach Us About Charity and Socialism
Charitable giving keeps corporate capitalism and wealthy individuals in control, but adds nothing to the health of society, says STEVE THOMPSON. And so did Clement Attlee....
The Syria Debate: When Will We Learn?
Personal experience of RAF bombing in the Middle East meant ERNIE JACQUES paid close attention to the Commons debate on Syrian airstrikes. He didn’t much like what he heard....
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...