Growing poverty and inequality in Europe prove that the market alone cannot deliver. It’s time to change the narrative, says JUDITH KIRTON-DARLING, Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Here, she sets out the terms of a new European social contract. Austerity and poverty in Europe are blighting our continent. Both are having...
Meet the New Boss
The UK government has created a new profit source for security giant G4S and its partners: managing housing for asylum seekers. JOHN GRAYSON reports on a reckless experiment whose result is human misery. On the evening of Tuesday 30 October a new asylum seeker sent from London, 250 miles north to a property in Thornaby,...
A Labour Movement Alternative
As the Scottish independence debate heats up, PAULINE BRYAN argues that the status quo, devo max, devo plus and the SNP version of independence are each built on a neo-liberal model of economics. In their own ways, she says, they prevent even a classical social democratic approach to fiscal policy and the stimulation of economic...
Radical Regionalism or a Retreat to the Heartlands?
DAVID CONNOLLY is unconvinced by the central argument of Paul Salveson’s Socialism with a Northern Accent....
Labour of Love: The Robert Smillie Story
DAVID HOPPER, General Secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, looks back at the remarkable life of Robert ‘Bob’ Smillie as he reviews a new book on the Labour movement pioneer....
A Tale of Two Cities
MAURICE GLASMAN traces the history of the City and asks, 'Whatever happened to London?' For the first 1500 years of its civic life, London conformed to the European pattern of urban development as a self-governing city, free from feudal Lordship and hospitable to the civic virtues of legality, trade, democratic self-government and professional association....
Lessons of the May Day Manifesto
The British New Left had a critical approach towards neoliberal and authoritarian models of modernisation, ideas shared by more recent political trends, says MICHAEL RUSTIN in this his talk to the British New Left and Labour seminar held in London in June 2012....
Reflections on Bradford West
As the shock of the Bradford West by-election defeat fades, BARRY WINTER argues that we must learn the lessons if Labour is to rebuild a vibrant local politics....
Present prospects, future hope
“We meet on a weekend of elections,” said ILP chair David Connolly as ILPers and friends gathered in Scarborough on 5/6 May for the organisation’s annual weekend school of political debate and discussion....
Beyond Blue Labour
Marc Stears, Professor of Political Theory at Oxford University, spoke at Leeds University earlier this month on democracy and the politics of protest. BARRY WINTER reports....
Writing the Con: Housing and the Big Society
A big society can't be a good society unless it's underpinned by decent housing, according to Labour MP Karen Buck. MATTHEW BROWN reports on the launch of two new Chartist pamphlets....
Why I support an assembly for the north
BARRY WINTER, chair of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation, explains why he's changed his mind about a northern assembly and argues that regional devolution can play its part in an ethical socialism for our times. Let’s begin with a confession. When the idea of regional devolution was being discussed in the party nearly a decade ago,...