Assessing the Blair Supremacy

BARRY WINTER considers the culture, impact and legacy of Tony Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party, greatly aided by Lewis Minkin’s The Blair Supremacy, published to great acclaim two years ago. In his dual role as academic and political insider, Lewis Minkin has produced three monumental books on the Labour Party. Each is a substantial...

Salters Play to Tour London

Politic Man, Alison Mead’s play about pioneering ILPers Ada and Alf Salter, is all set to go ahead with performances lined up at venues across London in May and June....

Ada Salter: Pioneer of Ethical Socialism

Graham Taylor’s fine biography of Ada Salter provides a vivid account of the ILP’s ethical socialism as she lived it, says BARRY WINTER. Ada Salter’s hands-on approach to making the world a better place is told with clarity and passion in Graham Taylor’s new biography of the pioneering ILPer. Moreover, Ada’s busy life is explored...

A Bridge Over Troubled Water?

Labour’s disunity has been much in evidence recently. ALEX SOBEL argues that Open Labour can act as a bridge for those in the party who want to build an anti-Tory alliance based on an inclusive and empowering politics. At present, our party doesn’t look like a united party to those looking in from the outside....

Ada Salter’s Story Out Now

Graham Taylor’s new biography of pioneering ILPer and ethical socialist Ada Salter has been published by Lawrence & Wishart. Salter played a key part in the ‘Bermondsey Revolution’ in south east London and had a major influence on the development of socialist politics nationally....

Wonder Women at WCML

Glasgow rent strike leader and pioneering ILPer Mary Barbour will be celebrated at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on International Women’s Day as part of Manchester’s ‘Wonder Women’ feminist festival this March....

New Pamphlet: Homage to Tom Maguire

The ILP have re-published EP Thompson’s celebrated 1960 pamphlet on Leeds ILPer, poet, propagandist and photographer Tom Maguire with a new introduction by Labour historian David Howell and an additional profile by former Labour MP, John Battle. Maguire was, according to Howell’s introduction, “the personification of the marginalised”, a radical organiser who played a vital...

The Alf Mattison Collection

The life of 19th century ILPer and Leeds local historian Alf Mattison will be put under the spotlight by Professor Malcolm Chase during a lunchtime talk at Leeds Central Library on 14 January....