The Trade Union Bill published by the Conservative government today (Wednesday 14 July) is designed to damage the Labour Party financially and will poison relations between workers and managers, according to the GMB union. The Bill introduces turnout threshold of 50% for strike ballots, and requires unions in the health, education, fire, transport, water, security...
Labour Campaigners call for ‘Manifestos of Intent’
Labour campaigners are calling on leadership candidates to issue ‘manifestos of intent’ outlining their likely policies and putting their politics on public show for voters’ to consider. HARRY BARNES explains why they are needed and calls for urgent support. ...
One Man Against the War
HOLLIE BUSH tells the tale of Alf Myers, an ILPer and ironstone miner from a small Teesside village, whose refusal to fight in World War One almost cost him his life. Many lived through the conflict of World War One. Some fought in it, some lived it out on the home front – in Teesside,...
Why Labour Needs to Change
Like many on the left, the election result came as a nasty shock to JONATHAN TIMBERS. Yet despite the desperate outlook, he believes a future Labour government is possible if the party becomes a very different kind of organisation. Some on the left say they do not expect to see another Labour government in their...
Remembering Bristol’s Anti-War Hero
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...
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...
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...
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...
Red Flag Over Bermondsey
A new play about the remarkable London ILPer, Ada Salter, will be performed live in Birmingham for the first time next Saturday, 21 March, before it sets out on a tour of venues across the country over the next few months....
Growing Up in an ILP Household
It is with great sadness that we learned recently of the death of the ILP’s oldest member, Jennie Cuthbert. Jennie died peacefully in her sleep on Monday 9 March. Her lifelong membership of the ILP provided a living link between the modern organisation and the party’s earliest decades. ...