ERNIE JACQUES looks at the implications of a recent appeal court ruling on the case of two jobseekers denied benefits for refusing unpaid work....
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...
ILP@120: Bread, and Roses Too
In the second of our anniversary profiles, MICHAEL HERBERT remembers Hannah Mitchell, lifelong socialist and suffragette, an ILPer whose posthumous autobiography is a classic account of a working class woman’s quest for personal and political liberation. Mitchell was born in 1871 on a remote farm in Alport Dale, Derbyshire. She had just two weeks schooling,...
The ILP Reaches 120
This year marks the 120th anniversary of the ILP, a milestone in British political history that we aim to celebrate over the next 12 months. The Independent Labour Party was founded on 13 January 1893 when some 120 delegates gathered at the Labour Institute in Bradford to create a national political party to represent working...
Get Your ILP Calendars for 2013
Iconic political cartoons from the 1890s and 1920s are featured in a new wall calendar published by the ILP to mark our 120th anniversary next year. Launched to celebrate the founding of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford in 1893, the A4 calendars are illustrated by biting socialist cartoons first published in Keir Hardie’s newspaper,...
Are Co-operative Schools the Answer?
MERVYN WILSON argues that increasingly popular co-operative schools provide a democratic, community-based alternative to Michael Gove’s attack on state education....
Good old George
JON CRUDDAS MP recalls the life of former Labour leader and east London ILPer George Lansbury, arguing that his life, work and principles crystallise the journey of political rediscovery underway in Ed Miliband’s ‘one nation’ Labour Party. George Lansbury is one of the great heroes of the Labour Party. He was to quote the great...
The Challenge of a Generation
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,...
An appeal from the Marikana Support Campaign
On the 16 August, South African Police fired live ammunition at striking miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, killing 34 and injuring 78. Many were shot at close range while trying to surrender. The Marikana miners were demanding a tripling of their salary to R12,500 (£950 or €1100) per month. In the following days, 270 of...
‘Plebs’ on the march
The self-declared ‘plebs’ were out in force on Saturday at the TUC’s march against austerity in London, while thousands more were on the streets of Glasgow and Belfast to voice their anger at the coalition government. ‘Plebs Unite’ read one placard. ‘Proud Loud Educated Broke’ said another. ‘I’d rather be a pleb than a toff’...
A Future that Works
The TUC is calling for people from across the country to join its national demonstration against the coalition government’s cuts and austerity programme in London on Saturday 20 October. The march, called ‘A Future that Works’, will follow the same route as last year’s March for the Alternative which attracted a quarter of a million...