The annual conference in June of the journal Soundings, Politics after the Crash, provided a valuable and unostentatious forum for the left to discuss some of the key issues of our time. This short report by Barry Winter focuses on the contribution made by the opening speaker, Paul Mason, the economics editor of BBC...
Lies, hubris and neo-liberalism
Barry Winter examines how capitalism went from boom to bust and where it leaves us Introduction I begin this introduction with what may seem like a diversion. I want to take us briefly back to the horrors of the First World War in which often enthusiastic, armies of young men across Europe were sent...
Crunch Times
“There is a sense of uncertainty and flux, a feeling that we’re coming to the end of an era in politics. It’s one that we’ve never much liked, yet we know what’s coming could be so much worse.” With those unsettling words David Connolly, chair of Independent Labour Publications, opened the ILP’s weekend seminar...
The Seeds of Radicalism
Steve Thompson traces the history of the co-operative movement and argues that this is a decisive moment in its renaissance. There is an alternative to capitalism, it’s called the co-operative commonwealth. It’s a way of living and trading with business which is run democratically for the benefit of the members and communities who use...
The Cost of Expenses
It is right that there is anger over MPs’ expenses, says Will Brown, but let’s not damn all politics. The row over MPs’ expenses and the misuse of public funds have rightly been met with pubic anger and criticism. It is indeed indefensible that MPs should be making a fast buck from the public...
The Forgotten Story
More than 60 people filled the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on 30th May to see former POUM militia man Roma Marquez Santo unveil a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers. In a moving speech Roma declared it an honour for people, like himself, who fought fascism in the 1930s to...
ILP Weekend 2009
—- Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis “You can only be flabbergasted … at how Labour kowtowed to wealth, glorified the City and put all the nation’s economic eggs into one dangerous basket.” Polly Toynbee, The Guardian ILP Round Table Seminar Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 13th-14th June 2009 Saturday 13th June 2.00 pm start...
Links
Radical Politics Today New, free, online magazine ‘Radical Politics Today’: http://www.spaceofdemocracy.org/resources/publications/magazine/magazine.html Relates to a book coming out in October (with Palgrave), called ‘What IS radical politics today?’, including original contributions from Zygmunt Bauman, Will Hutton, Paul Kingsnorth, James Heartfield, Clare Short, David Chandler, Hilary Wainwright, Jason Toynbee, Doreen Massey, Gregor McLennan, Tariq Modood, Nick...
ILP Weekend
Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis ILP Round Table Seminar Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 13th-14th June 2009 Saturday 13th June 2.00 – 5.00pm Sunday 14th June 9.30am – 12.30pm Session 1: The economic crisis • What just happened? • What does it tell us about capitalism? Session 2: The mess we’re in...
Spanish Civil War Commemoration
Seventy years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the first ever memorial plaque to the anti-fascist British and Irish volunteers who fought alongside George Orwell in the ILP Contingent will be unveiled. Two political veterans will do the honours: Sidney Robinson, an Independent Labour Party activist in the 1930s who chaired the...
Listening to the ‘lickspittle lackeys’
BERNARD HUGHES spends an entertaining evening with a group of ex-Commies-cum-carping columnists The title of the meeting asked, ‘Where do ex-Communists go?’ Well, about 70 of them went to London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts to listen to the opinions of five figures on this question. The composition of the panel, indeed, might also have...
No solutions, much confusion
JONATHAN TIMBERS searches for the soul of social enterprise but finds a rather worrying state of mind This event was billed as ‘social enterprise solutions to 21st century challenges’. It was held in the upmarket Manchester International Convention Centre in late January 2005. I attended the conference in the hope that by the end...