Will Brown reports on Compass roadshows in Leeds and Gateshead Following its successful conference in London last June, the centre-left Labour Party organisation, Compass, embarked on a series of regional ‘roadshows’ taking in Yorkshire and Humberside, the north east, Scotland and Wales, among other areas. Besides launching regional Compass groupings, the purpose of these...
Reclaiming the territory
BARRY WINTER interviews Jon Cruddas, MP for Dagenham, deputy leadership hopeful, and co-author of a new pamphlet on the democratic renewal of the Labour Party You wish to stand for deputy leader of the Labour party, but not deputy PM. Also, you’ve recently co-authored a very interesting pamphlet on renewal of the party. Are...
A suitable case for treatment
Barry Winter welcomes the call for Labour’s renewal in a new Compass pamphlet. But where are the forces to make it happen? A robust dialogue about democratically renewing the Labour Party has never been more vital. That’s no guarantee, however, that one will take place. Interest in party democracy is still overshadowed by the...
What’s the alternative?
DEXTER WHITFIELD looks at the alternatives to neoliberal policies, and calls for city-wide alliances and coalitions of opposition An alternative modernisation strategy needs to have key themes. It should restate public service principles and values, which should be embedded in all policies, programmes and projects. It should emphasise democratic accountability and transparency, and seek...
The Swedish model
Sweden proves that ‘a better world is possible’, argues a Compass pamphlet. GERRY LAVERY thinks we should take notice. Robert Taylor’s pamphlet for Compass, Sweden’s New Social Democratic Model: Proof that a better world is possible, is not just a record of achievements in social democratic Sweden but also an argument that, compared to...
Land and freedom
On its 70th anniversary, BARRY WINTER lifts the veil of nostalgia that still obscures the Spanish civil war. For Enriqueta Cervera the incident at the telephone exchange in Barcelona on the afternoon of 3 May 1937 remains as vivid as if it happened yesterday. ‘I remember it so well because it was all so...
A football revolution
The success of England’s newest football club is based on a rejection of the free market model that dominates the game, and our culture, says ADAM BROWN. A little over a year ago the newest football club in the league pyramid was officially inaugurated by its members. FC United of Manchester is a fan-owned,...
No direction honed
Judging by its national conference in June, Compass is still searching for a political strategy. MATTHEW BROWN reports ‘The future’s almost here,’ proclaimed the advertising blurb for the 2006 national Compass conference. ‘Come and help shape it.’ It was clearly an enticing prospect, for 1200 people swapped a sweltering Saturday in June for the...
Selling the rebellion
ANDY HANSFORD enjoys an attack on the counterculture and its absorption into consumer capitalism In The Rebel Sell, two Canadian academics pick apart the way the counterculture has morphed into the height – and the pathfinder – of consumer capitalism at its most distasteful. And that’s it really. The canvas is broad, and the...
Peter Hain: time to go?
The new secretary of state for Northern Ireland is a bad thing for the peace process, says Paul Dixon. Is it conspiracy or blunder? Peter Hain is the most partisan secretary of state for Northern Ireland ever appointed. He has a documented record of activism in the movement for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland...
Into the cracks of the system
Matthew Brown reports on a weekend of political discussions at the ILP’s annual get together in Scarborough Back at the beginning of May, just two days after Labour limped back into power for a third term, the ILP held its annual get together for members and Friends to discuss the state of the world...
The last Porto Alegre
Mark Engler reports from the World Social Forum, now five years old It’s not Paris or Tokyo, Beijing or New York. Nor is it Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Enthusiastic residents of Porto Alegre, Brazil, will tell you that their modest city of 1.5 million people in the country’s deep south is ‘the...