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,...
Vote for the hidden treasure of the working class
The Working Class Movement Library, which houses some of the ILP archives, has been shortlisted in the Arts Council-funded Museums at Night competition to win an artist to appear in an event at the library in May. Museums at Night is an annual after-hours celebration when hundreds of museums, galleries, libraries, archives and heritage...
Summat’s going on in Leeds
Ed Carlisle is a project manager with Leeds-based charity Together for Peace and one of the organisers of the Leeds Summat Gathering which took place in November last year – strapline ‘Get Connected, Be Inspired, Join in Action for Change’. He talked to BARRY WINTER about the aims and objectives of the initiative, the American...
Diary of a striking giant
John Lowe recorded everything that happened to him and his Nottinghamshire NUM comrades during the 1984-5 miners’ strike. His grandson, JONATHAN SYMCOX, who edited the newly published diary, recalls a man transformed by the dispute. John Lowe of Clipstone in Nottinghamshire was off sick in spring 1984 when the National Coal Board and Margaret Thatcher’s...
Hannah Mitchell Inspires the North
PAUL SALVESON traces the life of early ILPer Hannah Mitchell and explains why her kind of politics is still an inspiration today. When I was getting interested in working class history, back in the early 1970s, I was fascinated by a book called The Hard Way Up. It was written by a Northern working class...
The public sector strikes back
On a day that saw around two million workers from 29 trade unions take strike action in defence of their pensions, thousands gathered at rallies around the UK on Wednesday 30 November....
A conversation with Maurice Glasman, part 2
Part two of the ILP's interview with Maurice Glasman, the social thinker most closely associated with the ideas around ‘Blue Labour’, and one of Labour leader Ed Miliband's most influential advisers. Glasman is a senior lecturer in political theory at London Metropolitan University and a former community organiser with London Citizens. He was made a...
A conversation with Maurice Glasman
The first of a two-part interview with Maurice Glasman, the social thinker most closely associated with ideas around ‘Blue Labour’ and one of Labour leader Ed Miliband's most influential advisers. ...
Attlee, the ILP and the Romantic Tradition
Last month JON CRUDDAS delivered the Clement Attlee Memorial Lecture at University College, Oxford. Here, in an edited version of that talk, the Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, argues that, far from his cold, taciturn image, Attlee was always at heart an ILP socialist. A host of very readable biographies exist, yet there remains...
An integrated future?
Integrated education is vital to the future of a non-sectarian Northern Ireland, says Gary Kent There was a time when Northern Ireland barely made any impact on mainland and mainstream British politics. It was, to use a phrase popularised by the Sunday Times, John Bull’s slum. After partition in 1921, which Britain accepted rather...