We Own It, the anti-privatisation campaign, has launched a public petition calling for a new Public Service Users Bill “to give us a say over our public services, put our needs first and make outsourcing companies transparent and accountable”....
Tony Benn, the Labour Left ‘and all that’
BARRY WINTER reflects on Tony Benn’s personality and politics, interweaving his own memories of the period as he considers the left’s failures in the 1970s and ’80s and the lessons for those seeking progressive change today. Few people in contemporary politics have attracted such public affection as Tony Benn. In spite of years of vilification...
Can Labour Learn to Trust People?
Left of centre think tanks Compass and Progress are joining forces at the end of April to host a discussion on Labour’s approach to public sector reform with Jon Cruddas, coordinator of the party’s policy review process....
Tony Benn: The Left’s Flawed Figurehead
The sad death of Tony Benn has prompted comments and reflections from across the political spectrum. JONATHAN TIMBERS argues that while he was a hero to many, he was also a disastrous leader of the British left whose naive optimism and socialist nostalgia contributed to its decline. I am saddened by news of the death...
Labour MP Calls for Greater Role for Co-ops
Labour and Co-op Party MP Jim Dobbin this week called for community co-ops to be given a greater role on local enterprise partnerships and better understanding and support the business community....
An Unfit System
Whatever internal democratic reforms the Labour Party is going to make, nothing fundamental will change unless the present electoral system and parliamentary institutions are swept away, argues ERNIE JACQUES. ‘The Great Stumble Forward’, by Will Brown, sums up nicely Ed Miliband’s response to the Falkirk debacle where cooking the books and buying votes was the...
Condemn One Dictator; Invite Another?
The UK government is condemning violence in Syria just days before inviting other brutal regimes to shop for weapons at a massive arms fair in London, according to Campaign Against the Arms Trade....
ILP@120: Fred Jowett – ‘A great man of a new kind’
“He was a great man of a new kind, which the history books have not caught up with yet,” wrote JB Priestley of Fred Jowett. IAN BULLOCK profiles the ILPer who campaigned tirelessly for democratic reform. FW – or Fred – Jowett (1864-1944), known widely during his lifetime as ‘Jowett of Bradford’, was a prominent...
Reflections on Bradford West
As the shock of the Bradford West by-election defeat fades, BARRY WINTER argues that we must learn the lessons if Labour is to rebuild a vibrant local politics....
Recognising the Anfal genocide
A campaign is launched this week to urge the UK government to recognise the genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. The aim is to collect 100,000 signatures on an e-petition to trigger a parliamentary debate. GARY KENT reports....
31 51 81: Why Labour stayed in opposition, part 3
The third part of BARRY WINTER’s report on a conference to explore Labour’s lost decades, held on Rotherham on 19 March. Part 3: the 1950s and the 1980s The 1950s Mark Wickham-Jones argued that some important reasons why Labour did not do so well in the 1950s have been neglected. Apart from a team...
31 51 81: Why Labour stayed in opposition, part 2
The second part of BARRY WINTER’s report on a conference to explore Labour’s lost decades, held on Rotherham on 19 March. Part 2: the 1930s David Howell disagreed with Hobsbawm’s notion of Labour’s continued forward march during the 1930s; the pattern of support was more complex. Electorally the ‘terms of trade’ were...