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...
Remember the war dead, but remember the conscientious objectors too, says ERNIE JACQUES....
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...
The Daily Mail’s recent claims about Ed Miliband’s father made headline news for more than a week. This article from the POUMISTA website comprehensively destroys the paper’s case....
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...
A lauded film about the life and work of cultural critic and New Left figurehead Stuart Hall will be shown in Leeds on 12 November thanks to a collaboration between the Taking Soundings group and Leeds International Film Festival....
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...