On 6 August 1914, just nine days after the start of what came to be known as World War One, the ILP published a front page appeal in its weekly journal, Labour Leader, imploring the “workers of Great Britain” to unite with those across Europe and resist the government’s call to arms....
WAYNE DAVID recounts the life of Morgan Jones, an ILP councillor and anti-war activist who emerged from the hardship of prison to become the first conscientious objector elected to Parliament. Morgan Jones was born on 3 May 1885 in the village of Gelligaer at the foot of Gelligaer mountain. His birthplace was the small Rhos...
DAVID HOWELL recounts the life and career of Clifford Allen, an ILP chairman and editor between the wars, whose marginalised political vision was, perhaps, a lost alternative for the party and the progressive movement. Reginald Clifford Allen was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, on 9 May 1889. His father owned a drapery business; his mother died...
MICHAEL WADSWORTH looks at the birth of Great Yarmouth ILP and the small role it played in opposing the First World War in a town renowned for seafaring and the Royal Navy. The intention to form a branch of the ILP in Great Yarmouth was announced at an open air meeting held on Brewers...
ILP members and friends gathered at the Circle conference centre in Sheffield at the end of June for the first in a series of one-day workshops on ‘Unbalanced Britain’....
The living wage and the future for young people will be the focus of an ILP seminar on Unbalanced Britain in Sheffield next month. The crash of 2008 and its aftermath revealed the self-destructive and self-serving character of neoliberal capitalism. The high and mighty bankers and financiers, and their allies, stood exposed for unleashing an...
One hundred years ago this month, members of the ILP gathered in Bradford for its ‘Coming of Age’ 21st anniversary conference. In his address to delegates, KEIR HARDIE, the ILP’s guiding spirit and the Labour Party’s first leader, outlined how far the organisation had come since it was founded in the same city in...
A collective of Manchester-based artists have organised a special evening of prose, song, poetry and exhibition to tell the story of the city’s unsung heroes and heroines who went to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War....
Priyamvada Gopal’s article on the resistance to the First World War (Honour those who fought – and those who would not, 28 February) provides an excellent and much needed rebalancing of the debate about the war. She rightly argues that those who opposed the conflict also deserve remembering. Not least the sacrifices that many...
The proposed reforms to Labour’s links with the trade unions are both a significant step forward and a fudge, says WILL BROWN. While the changes should be welcomed (with some reservations), the prospect of a mass, democratic, participatory party is still a long way off....
The ILP has a long history of campaigning for democratic change within the Labour Party. We were at the forefront of the early campaigns for internal reform in the late 1970s when the left agued for (and eventually won, in 1979) the right of constituency Labour Parties to deselect sitting MPs. This right, now...
The ILP played a major role in the anti-war and no conscription movements during the First World War. Many were gaoled, and many abused for their principled, political opposition to the conflict. Yet, not all ILPers became conscientious objectors, as IAN BULLOCK explains....