An appreciation of John Bruce Glasier, written by Scottish ILP activist and social reformer MARTIN HADDOW in the 1940s. “What the socialist movement needs is a deepening of socialist life within – something that will exalt its faith and purpose, something that will suffuse it with the socialist spirit, rather than encourage lust for...
Former ILPer Hetty Bower, the veteran activist and peace campaigner, died earlier this month aged 108, just weeks after appearing on a panel alongside Labour leader Ed Miliband at Labour Party conference....
Labour MP JON CRUDDAS recently delivered the inaugural George Lansbury Memorial Lecture at Queen Mary University in Mile End, east London. He called it ‘The Choice before One Nation Labour – to Transact or Transform’. Here is the text. George Lansbury is one of the great figures in the history of the Labour Party, a...
Ada Salter’s ideas and activism transformed social and economic conditions in a poverty-stricken corner of south-east London, and revolutionised local politics. So why has she been written out of Labour history? GRAHAM TAYLOR reveals her remarkable story. Ada Brown was born in 1866 in Raunds, Northamptonshire. Her family were Gladstone Liberals in politics and Wesleyan...
The ILP has published a new expanded edition of its popular Spanish Civil War pamphlet Land and Freedom, including a brief profile of the ILP volunteer Stafford Cottman written by historian and author Christopher Hall....
Georges Kopp was George Orwell’s commander when he fought with the ILP contingent in the Spanish Civil War. A new biography reveals a brave man of many parts and much mystery, as CHRISTOPHER HALL explains. Anyone who has read Homage to Catalonia, or any major biography on Orwell, will have come across several mentions of...
IAN BULLOCK examines three debates which occupied the ILP in the interwar years and asks what they can tell us about the relationship between socialism and democracy today....
Hugh Roberton is best known for creating the Glasgow Orpheus Choir. He was also a pacifist and an ILPer, as HELEN CORR explains. Hugh Stevenson Roberton was born on 23 February 1874 in Glasgow, son of James Roberton, manager of a prosperous family funeral undertakers business and Mary (née Sim). Hugh attended Abbotsford elementary school...
A lecture by Hugh Roberton, conductor of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, from 1912. As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses, Bread...
RAE STREET unveils the life and work of Enid Stacy, a young woman from Bristol whose contribution to the spread of early socialist ideas has often been overlooked. To understand how Enid Stacy, a young woman in Victorian society, became an active socialist and anti-war activist against the Boer War, we need to look at...
From the pits to parliament via Glasgow rebellion, IAN S WOOD charts the often turbulent life and political career of John Wheatley. John Wheatley was born on 19 May 1869 in Bonmahon, a village in Waterford, Ireland, the son of John Wheatley, a miner, and Johanna (née Ryan). The Wheatley family emigrated to Scotland and...
Written by JAMES MAXTON in 1927 Why should people live lives of poverty and toil? Why should people rise in the morning fearing to face life because of the evils, the cares and the sorrows it brings. Should life not rather be a carefree joyous adventure that all should meet with confidence and hope?...