PAUL SALVESON reports on the Colne Valley Labour Party’s 120th anniversary. Our former MP Kali Mountford described it as a ‘triumph’ and we’ll not disagree, self-effacing Northerners though we are. Last Thursday’s evening of walks, talks and drama to celebrate Colne Valley Labour Party’s 120th anniversary went pretty well. We had a capacity audience...
Challenge, change and hope
PAUL SALVESON brings his celebration of the 120-year-old Colne Valley Labour Party up to date with a look at its present predicaments and future prospects In the aftermath of the May 2010 election defeat there has been a re-evaluation of where the Labour Party was going, at local and national level. Despite being defeated,...
Socialism in the Valley
To mark its 120th anniversary this July, local member PAUL SALVESON celebrates the roots, birth and history of the Colne Valley Labour Party and examines its impact on the distinctive culture of the area The Colne Valley CLP was formed on 21 July 1891 and put down deep roots in the Pennine communities of...
Colne Valley Labour Party 120th Anniversary Celebrations
—- Colne Valley Labour Party 120th Anniversary Celebrations Thursday 21 July, 7.30pm The Watershed (behind Monsoon) Bridge Street Slaithwaite HD7 5JN Guest speaker: Lord David Clark, author of Colne Valley: radicalism to socialism and MP for Colne Valley 1970-1974 Plus: launch of souvenir booklet Looking Back, Looking Forward: Colne Valley Socialism 1891-2011 socialist songs from...
Celebrating Clarion House
The ILP will make a special presentation to volunteers at Clarion House near Nelson on Saturday 24th July to mark nearly a century of association between the ramblers’ tea shop run by members of the Nelson ILP Land Society and the national ILP. Members of the ILP’s national administrative council will present Clarion volunteers...
The North West’s Spain Volunteers
The 75th anniversary of the Spanish Civil war will be commemorated at Manchester Town Hall on Saturday 16 July with a celebration of the contribution made by volunteers from the north west of England. Organised by the International Brigade Memorial Trust, the event will mark the role of the north west volunteers in the...
Roma’s last stand
Roma Marquez Santo, the POUM veteran who unveiled a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers in Salford in May 2009, died in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 December 2010. CHRIS HALL recalls his life and the events that shaped it. Roma Marquez Santo born in Barcelona on 6 November 1916 into a political family...
A tribute to Roma
Roma Marquez Santo, the POUM veteran who unveiled a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers in Salford in May 2009, died in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 December. HARRY OWEN pays tribute to the man who fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s yet could still hold audiences charmed and spellbound with tales of...
Allen Clarke – a forgotten socialist pioneer
PAUL SALVESON recalls a doyen of the Lancashire labour movement whose dialect writing still has relevance today. ‘I daresay Teddy Ashton’s droll sketches have done more to help reforms than far more pretentious and direct articles. For Teddy, even in his comic (dialect) sketches, pokes sly fun and undermining sarcasm at the iniquities and...
Equality of sacrifice?
So this is the new politics. On 22 June chancellor George Osborne’s budget unveiled the government’s intention to cut public spending harder and faster than any time since the second world war. Despite prime minister David Cameron’s claims that the budget would somehow “protect the poor”, and Osborne’s now infamous remark that “we’re all...
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...