PAUL SALVESON laments the decline of labour and socialist clubs. But while many are closing, he says, at least one is being re-born in a new co-operative guise....
Labour and the World of Work
After a series of revelations about zero-hours contracts, ERNIE JACQUES calls on the leaders of ‘One Nation Labour’ to show their support for Britain’s exploited working people. ...
Rally to Mark Burston School Strike
A rally to mark ‘the longest strike in history’ will be held in Burston, near Diss in Norfolk, on Sunday 1 September....
‘The Best Asset We Have is Each Other’
BARRY WINTER reports from two meetings in Leeds addressed by the Labour peer and policy advisor Maurice Glasman earlier this month. Maurice Glasman, who is centrally involved in developing Labour’s new programme, began by addressing the question of where the Labour Party is today. New Labour has left us with a difficult inheritance, he argued....
ILP@120: Storm in the Making
DAVE WALSH profiles Whitby-born novelist Storm Jameson, the socialist, feminist and activist who was an early ILP supporter and lifelong campaigner for a better society....
ILP@120: Isabella Ford – Socialist, Feminist and Peace Campaigner
JUNE HANNAM traces the life of Isabella Ford, the Leeds ILPer whose tireless campaigning for women’s rights, ‘new life’ socialism and peace remains an inspiration today. Isabella Ford was one of a small number of middle-class women who joined the Independent Labour Party in the 1890s; for her, the struggle for socialism was inextricably bound...
ILP@120: Jennie Lee – A Child of the ILP
KATH CONNOLLY delves into the early life of socialist firebrand Jennie Lee, finding a woman steeped in the ILP and the politics she learned at the family fireside in Fife. Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s I remember Jennie Lee as a small, grey-haired woman, a fiery speaker and chair of Labour Party conference....
ILP@120: Alfred Salter & the Bermondsey Revolution
GRAHAM TAYLOR celebrates the life and achievements of Alfred Salter, the brilliant doctor, Bermondsey MP and lifelong ILPer who helped transform an impoverished corner of south east London. His life is chiefly known from Fenner Brockway’s 1949 classic of political biography, Bermondsey Story, which describes in moving terms how the young doctor dedicated his life...
ILP@120: Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
DAVID HOWELL remembers DH Lawrence and ‘the Eastwood circle’, a dissenting academy in Nottinghamshire ‘with the ILP at its heart’. Its lost world of Edwardian socialism shows that while ‘vision is essential, it is never enough’. The Eastwood circle epitomised the ILP's moral politics at a moment of optimism and diversity – a politics of...
The Goose and the Commons
The law locks up the man or woman / Who steals the goose from off the common / But leaves the greater villain loose / Who steals the common from off the goose…...
‘Inspirational’ new film on The Rochdale Pioneers
A new film about the birth of the co-operative movement has been described as “inspirational” and “amazing” after being shown three times on Film4 since its premiere in Manchester. ...
Make the Living Wage Compulsory
The campaign for a living wage is now supported by the TUC and the Labour Party, plus many universities, some local authorities, and some businesses and charitable organisations. It is long overdue, says ERNIE JACQUES, but to have a real impact a living wage must be compulsory....