The following is a statement – ‘a modest perspective’ – prepared by the ILP’s National Administrative Council for discussion at the 2010 ILP Weekend Seminar, ‘After the Election, What Next for the Left?’, to be held in Scarborough on 5-6 June. We hope it will stimulate comment and debate here on the website, at...
After the election, what next for the left?
What will the election mean for the left? Where will it leave the Labour Party? How should the ILP respond? Whatever the results we will want to talk about it. If you do too, come to the ILP’s 2010 Round Table Seminar in Scarborough on 5/6 June. Admission is free and accommodation is available...
Disaffiliation and its aftermath
For all its fascinating detail and insights, IAN BULLOCK wants more from Gidon Cohen’s The Failure of a Dream This account of the ILP in the 1930s begins with an outline of the party’s history during the seven years between leaving the Labour Party and the outbreak of war. The second chapter looks at...
The Failure of a Dream
A recent book provides a “just about” convincing argument that the ILP’s decline in the 1930s was not an inevitable consequence of disaffiliation. CHRISTOPHER HALL reviews Gidon Cohen’s welcome attempt to fill a gap in ILP history The history of the Independent Labour Party from its foundation until it was disaffiliated from the Labour...
Lies, hubris and neo-liberalism
Barry Winter examines how capitalism went from boom to bust and where it leaves us Introduction I begin this introduction with what may seem like a diversion. I want to take us briefly back to the horrors of the First World War in which often enthusiastic, armies of young men across Europe were sent...
Crunch Times
“There is a sense of uncertainty and flux, a feeling that we’re coming to the end of an era in politics. It’s one that we’ve never much liked, yet we know what’s coming could be so much worse.” With those unsettling words David Connolly, chair of Independent Labour Publications, opened the ILP’s weekend seminar...
The Forgotten Story
More than 60 people filled the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on 30th May to see former POUM militia man Roma Marquez Santo unveil a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers. In a moving speech Roma declared it an honour for people, like himself, who fought fascism in the 1930s to...
ILP Weekend 2009
—- Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis “You can only be flabbergasted … at how Labour kowtowed to wealth, glorified the City and put all the nation’s economic eggs into one dangerous basket.” Polly Toynbee, The Guardian ILP Round Table Seminar Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 13th-14th June 2009 Saturday 13th June 2.00 pm start...
Not Just Orwell
Christopher Hall explains what drove him to discover the untold stories of ILP volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War In 2006 many new books were published and many events held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. As an historian and researcher on the Spanish Civil...
ILP Weekend
Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis ILP Round Table Seminar Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 13th-14th June 2009 Saturday 13th June 2.00 – 5.00pm Sunday 14th June 9.30am – 12.30pm Session 1: The economic crisis • What just happened? • What does it tell us about capitalism? Session 2: The mess we’re in...
Spanish Civil War Commemoration
Seventy years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the first ever memorial plaque to the anti-fascist British and Irish volunteers who fought alongside George Orwell in the ILP Contingent will be unveiled. Two political veterans will do the honours: Sidney Robinson, an Independent Labour Party activist in the 1930s who chaired the...
This world of ours
ERIC PRESTON introduces the themes of the ILP’s forthcoming weekend of discussion and political review ‘Many of us are, I believe, confused by the world we have created for ourselves in the west. We are confused by the consequences of capitalism, whose contribution to well-being cannot be questioned, but which divides rich from poor,...