BARRY WINTER argues for more plural ways of thinking, if we are to meet the challenges posed by racism and the far right. The title of this article, ‘Racisms, Multiculturalisms and Fascisms’, may at first, appear perverse. But it is not meant to be. The reason for adding an ‘s’ to the three terms,...
New Labour, new Democrats?
GARY KENT wonders about a little discussed aspect of Blair’s international intentions. We should know by now that Tony Blair often claims to be bold but is as sly as a fox. He has the habit of smuggling important policy shifts past unsuspecting Labour Party members. It’s not so much “say what you mean...
Hobbes, socialism and human nature
MARTIN JENKINS re-examines the work of Thomas Hobbes to counter the popular prejudice that humans are naturally competitive and aggressive isolationists. Will human nature act as an impediment to socialistic political change? Are we naturally greedy or selfish in seeking to gratify our desires and needs? Thinking people on the ‘left’ maintain that human...
A fig leaf for privatisation
PATRICK GRAY argues that the Co-operative Party has been fooled into supporting foundation hospitals. I fear that cooperators will come to regret that the Co-operative Party has been fooled into lending respectability to the government’s wrong-headed plans for foundation hospitals. The will o’ the wisp promise of community control is completely meaningless. Mutuality may...
Traitor or whistle blower?
GARY KENT reviews Liz Davies’ recent book on the politics inside new Labour. Liz Davies is an embittered traitor spilling the beans on party business. Or she has done us all a service by blowing the whistle on new Labour’s “twists, turns, machinations and doublespeak” and the “paranoia and pointlessness” of the party’s ruling...
Collective action and the sustainable renewal of Britain
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...