The Co-operative Party is campaigning for a change in education legislation so that more academy and trust schools can be set up on a co-operative model rather than relying on backing from private companies....
ILP@120: Alfred Salter & the Bermondsey Revolution
GRAHAM TAYLOR celebrates the life and achievements of Alfred Salter, the brilliant doctor, Bermondsey MP and lifelong ILPer who helped transform an impoverished corner of south east London. His life is chiefly known from Fenner Brockway’s 1949 classic of political biography, Bermondsey Story, which describes in moving terms how the young doctor dedicated his life...
The Tories’ Poisoned Apple, mark 2
Just like the YTS and the New Deal, the government’s mandatory work programme will cost billions and fail to work, argues ERNIE JACQUES. ...
ILP@120: Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
DAVID HOWELL remembers DH Lawrence and ‘the Eastwood circle’, a dissenting academy in Nottinghamshire ‘with the ILP at its heart’. Its lost world of Edwardian socialism shows that while ‘vision is essential, it is never enough’. The Eastwood circle epitomised the ILP's moral politics at a moment of optimism and diversity – a politics of...
ILP@120: Ethical Socialism, Capitalism and the State
Ethical socialism past and present, and its place in a ‘one nation’ Labour Party, will be the focus of debate at the ILP’s annual weekend gathering of members and friends at Scarborough’s Esplanade Hotel on 4/5 May....
Two Hundred Brigaders Pay Homage to Orwell
Over 200 people assembled at the Manchester Conference Centre on Saturday 2 March to take part in the annual IBMT (International Brigade Memorial Trust) Len Crome Lecture. The title of the day’s conference was ‘Homage to Catalonia 75 years on’....
Poverty Knocks
ERNIE JACQUES looks at the implications of a recent appeal court ruling on the case of two jobseekers denied benefits for refusing unpaid work....
One Nation Labour Debates
Meetings about the Labour Party’s ‘one nation’ modernisation process have been coming thick and fast in the last few weeks, the latest batch a series of three at the Houses of Parliament organised by Compass, Progress and the Labour Policy Review....
Handle with Care
The Co-operative Party is increasingly enthusiastic about co-operative councils. But it lacks a coherent philosophy and rationale for its position. We need to be cautious, argues JOHN HALSTEAD. ...
Orwell to be honoured by International Brigades
The International Brigades Memorial Trust is holding a special event in Manchester on 2 March to mark the 75th anniversary of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia....
On ‘The Common Table’
BARRY WINTER argues that a recent article by Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford, two men at the heart of Labour’s policy review, is the most imaginative line of thinking for the left and the party we have seen for more than a generation. ...
Academies and Lies
The tale of a north London primary school which resisted Michael Gove’s forced academy programme has been captured in a powerful new documentary. MATTHEW BROWN reports. In September 2011, pupils and teachers returned to Downhills Primary in Haringey, north London, for the start of a new school year full of hope and optimism about...