A new website has been launched to link groups in Leeds who are working to make the world a better place....
No Short Cuts to a Progressive Scotland
The Yes campaign is winning increasing support among the left. But, says VINCE MILLS, this is based on wishful thinking about Scottish social attitudes and a failure to grasp the real difficulties of radical social and economic change. ...
Hardie’s ‘Sunshine of Socialism’ Speech
One hundred years ago this month, members of the ILP gathered in Bradford for its ‘Coming of Age’ 21st anniversary conference. In his address to delegates, KEIR HARDIE, the ILP’s guiding spirit and the Labour Party’s first leader, outlined how far the organisation had come since it was founded in the same city in...
Unmasking Austerity, Finding Alternatives
A new book from Dexter Whitfield exposes how austerity policies in Europe and North America have fuelled the fire of recession rather than stimulated growth....
From Manchester to Madrid
A collective of Manchester-based artists have organised a special evening of prose, song, poetry and exhibition to tell the story of the city’s unsung heroes and heroines who went to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War....
Want to Escape Austerity? Move to Scotland
The political mood is changing north of the border, says ERNIE JACQUES. A win for the Yes campaign could have profound consequence for the Labour Party in Scotland, and the rest of the UK. Although polls on the Scottish referendum campaign show contradictory trends, and still indicate a victory for the Better Together campaign, Tuesday’s...
Tony Benn: The Left’s Flawed Figurehead
The sad death of Tony Benn has prompted comments and reflections from across the political spectrum. JONATHAN TIMBERS argues that while he was a hero to many, he was also a disastrous leader of the British left whose naive optimism and socialist nostalgia contributed to its decline. I am saddened by news of the death...
A Tale of Two Speeches
Labour leader Ed Miliband and the party’s policy review chief Jon Cruddas made separate but complementary speeches recently that merit thoughtful consideration, says BARRY WINTER....
Lest we Forget
Priyamvada Gopal’s article on the resistance to the First World War (Honour those who fought – and those who would not, 28 February) provides an excellent and much needed rebalancing of the debate about the war. She rightly argues that those who opposed the conflict also deserve remembering. Not least the sacrifices that many...
An Unfit System
Whatever internal democratic reforms the Labour Party is going to make, nothing fundamental will change unless the present electoral system and parliamentary institutions are swept away, argues ERNIE JACQUES. ‘The Great Stumble Forward’, by Will Brown, sums up nicely Ed Miliband’s response to the Falkirk debacle where cooking the books and buying votes was the...
My Long Road to Labour
We often hear that radical young people are turned off by mainstream parties and parliamentary politics. Not 17-year-old LIAM COOK who moved from anarchy and apathy to Labour (and the ILP). Being born in 1996 offers me a very strange outlook on British politics. I can remember my father’s post-Thatcher enthusiasm drain as our Tony...
Unbalanced Britain: What Can We Do?
Our society has been deranged by neoliberal capitalism, says BARRY WINTER. How can the creative, reflective forces of the progressive left begin to counter the huge imbalances in power and wealth?...