Until recently Walter Ayles was almost a forgotten figure in Bristol. But a new group is reminding the city of a man who opposed the First World War from its jingoistic beginning to its bitter end. COLIN THOMAS explains why the group is campaigning for a blue plaque to honour his memory. Bristol’s Remembering...
Hope Not Hate in Final Push Against Farage
Hope not Hate are calling for voluntary and financial support for a ‘final push’ in their campaign to prevent UKIP winning key parliamentary constituencies in the general election....
Labour’s Housing Problem
ERNIE JACQUES argues that Labour’s ‘curate’s egg’ of a manifesto is a long way from being social democratic or balanced. It’s a confused approach exposed most clearly by its housing policy. While there are undoubtably progressive nuggets in the Labour Party’s manifesto, which sets it apart from the nasty party, it is nevertheless remarkably timid...
GMB Slams Tory ‘Right to Buy’ Plans
The GMB union has slammed the Conservative Party’s plans to extend the ‘right to buy’ to housing association tenants as creating a “rich harvest” for private landlords at the expense of the nation’s social housing stock....
Judging Labour’s Manifesto
HARRY BARNES casts his scrutinising eye over the details of Labour’s election manifesto, and concludes that it contains the seeds for a progressive government. At the 2014 Labour Party conference a document entitled National Policy Forum Report 2014 was adopted. My own summary of its contents appeared on my blog and covered 16 separate items....
Chartist Unveils its Anti-Austerity Manifesto
In a period awash with party election manifestoes, the left magazine and campaign group, Chartist, has unveiled its own manifesto for “a properly democratic socialist alternative to austerity”. Chartist’s 2015 manifesto is a revised version of one published by its editorial board in 2007 – “the year before financial capitalism fell in on itself”. “Capitalism...
Condition Critical
The Socialist Health Association has highlighted five ways the government’s health reforms have failed to improve patient care, the criteria used by former health secretary Andrew Lansley to defend his policies against a damning King’s Fund report last month. The King’s Fund health think tank described Lansley’s reforms as “damaging and distracting” for introducing even...
Resisting Austerity, Edinburgh Style
MIKE CORMACK, of Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty, describes some of the direct action being taken in the Scottish capital to resist the coalition’s attacks on welfare. In Edinburgh claimants and low-paid workers are organising through Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty to support each other and take action to resist workfare, benefit cuts and austerity attacks....
Labour Calls on Members to ‘Keep It Co-op’
The Labour Party has called on its members to support the Co-operative Party’s ‘Keep it Co-op’ campaign, warning that its historic relationship with the co-op movement is under threat due to Co-operative Group proposals to break the political links....
Democracy, Media and the Miners’ Strike
Past and present struggles for pluralism in the media will be under the spotlight at the Red Shed in Wakefield next month when the Wakefield Socialist History Group hold their next pre-election public meeting in conjunction with the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom....
Unbalanced Britain: The Living Wage and Labour’s Future
The Rose Bowl at Leeds Beckett University was the venue for the ILP’s second Unbalanced Britain seminar on 14 March, examining the campaign for a living wage and Labour’s response. The recession and its lop-sided recovery have left millions of working people in poverty, claimed Tom Chigbo of Leeds Citizens. Addressing the latest ILP seminar...
Reasons for Hope?
HARRY BARNES picks apart the Labour Party’s policy process and finds a raft of positive proposals. He just wishes they were being delivered in a less piecemeal way....