SEAN CREIGHTON calls for a better understanding of the history of mutual organisations, and argues that their renewal should be a vital part of the government’s agenda for regeneration and social inclusion. Labour’s aim of regenerating Britain’s rundown neighbourhoods, cities and rural areas faces some fundamental stumbling blocks. Alongside the increasing apathy and disillusion...
The ILP and social change
The ILP’s Weekend School took place in Scarborough at the beginning of May. BARRY WINTER outlined the ILP’s perspective and explained why it had to change. There are four major points that need to be made about the ILP’s perspective. First, in the early 1990s we came to recognise that we had to remake...
Genuine popular ownership?
JONATHAN TIMBERS searches for the truth about foundation hospitals but is left with as many questions as answers. The problem with the debate over foundation hospitals is that it seems to be full of opinion rather than fact. Many of us feel left in the dark by the media and politicians. Now the proposals...
The malaise of powerlessness
MICHAEL MEACHER MP argues that political power is more concentrated than at any time for a century. We need a new political governance. Do we have any influence over those who govern us? After two million marched against the war, the issue that has brought this to a head is, of course, Iraq. But...
Save the Labour Party
Save the Labour Party is one of a number of initiatives that have emerged to challenge the Labour Party leadership’s politics and practices. BARRY WINTER joined 30 other members at its public meeting and AGM in Manchester on 29 November last year. Tony Lloyd MP Tony Lloyd expressed concern about the lack of young...
Developing democracy
STEPHEN YEO argues that cooperative politics can help to address the democratic deficit. As mainstream politics, including Labour’s, becomes more consumerist and less based on values and principles, the task of bringing cooperation into politics, rather than politics into cooperation, becomes more urgent. There is a growing democratic deficit in Britain, which cooperative and...
The threat of a good example
MATTHEW BROWN reports from Lowick, where teachers, pupils and parents have battled local and national government to set up the country’s first community co-operative school. In her book Reclaim the State (see Barry Winter’s review), Hilary Wainwright describes a number of ‘experiments in popular democracy’ from different parts of the world, attempts by local people...
Mutuality and radical politics
SEAN CREIGHTON traces the historical association of mutual organisations and the labour movement, and questions what the ‘new mutualism’ can offer to radical politics in the future. Scarborough’s Central Public Library is housed in the Oddfellows Hall opened in 1840. From 1857 it became the base for the Mechanics’ Institute and its library. The...
Reimagining socialism, reinventing democracy
BARRY WINTER finds much to admire in Hilary Wainwright’s book Reclaim the State, but says she is still romantically optimistic about the prospects of new left parties. My interest in Hilary Wainwright’s recent and, I think, important book initially came from a desire to discover more about the practical ‘experiments in popular democracy’ indicated...
Coalition of the careless
WILL BROWN reports on the sorry tale of a ‘left wing’ attack on Iraqi trade unionists. As Gary Kent’s article makes clear, support for Iraq’s trade unions has been a contentious issue on the British left. Indeed, it has grabbed media attention and exposed some woeful political judgements by the Stop the War Coalition...
The Challenge of Mutuality
This issue of Democratic Socialist is dedicated to continuing the discussions and debates raised by the ILP’s weekend school, held in Scarborough at the beginning of May. Entitled ‘The Challenge of Mutuality’, the school brought ILPers and non-ILPers together to discuss the politics of cooperation, mutuality and social enterprise, and examine their relevance to...
Save the Party … for Gordon Brown
JONATHAN TIMBERS finds the STLP heading up some depressingly familiar left wing cul-de-sacs. Earlier this year, Barry Winter and I attended a Save the Labour Party (STLP) members’ meeting in Manchester at which Michael Meacher spoke. There were calls in the meeting for a leadership election. Meacher politely and gently explained that any attempt...