Cyclists, ramblers, singers and activists gathered in the foothills around Pendle, Lancashire, to celebrate the centenary of Clarion House on 11th and 12th August. The rural tea room is the last surviving monument to a once thriving part of the Labour movement, the hundreds of Clarion societies that provided community to working people and promoted...
The crisis, Europe and the left
Successes for left parties in France and Greece are welcome signs of resistance to the right’s austerity measures. But the legacies of the economic crisis mean there are no easy choices for Europe’s social democrats, argues WILL BROWN. Electoral advances for the left in Europe are long overdue coming after a succession of defeats and...
Crisis, Markets and Protest
Today capitalism is news. Talk about capitalist crisis is widespread in ways that have not been heard for decades. Yet, it is the forces of the right that continue to dominate politically, even though the system they most strongly espouse is facing severe upheavals. Often discredited, social democratic parties are struggling to get a...
Socialism with a Northern Accent
“There is much in the British socialist tradition that has been forgotten or ignored, and which runs counter to state centralism, in particular a stress on grass-roots solutions, co-operation and an emphasis on local culture. Applied imaginatively, these traditions open up the possibility of creating a popular democratic culture which reflects different but complementary...
Stop Kony, stop thinking?
In the past week, the ‘Stop Kony’ campaign, aimed at the arrest of African ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony, leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, has become an unlikely internet phenomenon. There is an undoubted justice to the campaign to the extent that, as the LRA leader, Kony is responsible for crimes against humanity stretching...
Hannah Mitchell Foundation launched
More than 120 people attended the launch of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation at Bradford City Hall on Friday 9 March. It was “a cracking start” according to the organisation's president Linda Riordan MP. “The meeting showed a sense of purpose and feeling on the issues facing the north,” she said. “It shows that there is...
‘A triumph for activism’
The Working Class Movement Library, which houses some of the ILP archives, has won the national Museums at Night contest to stage an international artist event in May. The Salford-based library beat Quay Arts on the Isle of Wight and the Guernsey Museum in a public vote described as 'a triumph of activism' by its...
Why I support an assembly for the north
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...