PAUL SALVESON recalls a doyen of the Lancashire labour movement whose dialect writing still has relevance today.
‘I daresay Teddy Ashton’s droll sketches have done more to help reforms than far more pretentious and direct articles. For Teddy, even in his comic (dialect) sketches, pokes sly fun and undermining sarcasm at the iniquities and social injustices [...]
The Compass lecture given by Jon Cruddas attracted a lot of coverage last week. But there was a familiar hole in the heart of his plan for the left, says Matthew Brown
Whatever else you might say about Compass, the Labour left pressure group, those people certainly know which way is north when it comes to [...]
Words are weapons and can also save lives. It’s possible the wise words of a young Danish sociologist could have saved hundreds of lives in Northern Ireland if they had been heeded. Gary Kent explains why
This slim but weighty pamphlet was published by the Independent Labour Party in 1972 and in that year’s Socialist Register. [...]
The annual conference in June of the journal Soundings, Politics after the Crash, provided a valuable and unostentatious forum for the left to discuss some of the key issues of our time. This short report by Barry Winter focuses on the contribution made by the opening speaker, Paul Mason, the economics editor of BBC Newsnight, [...]
When BARRY WINTER went to Belfast to meet the movers and shakers of the new politics, it was the working class unionists who made the strongest impression.
Traditionally, the left has shown great sympathy for the nationalist/Catholic, working-class population of Northern Ireland, and with good reason. Their history of poverty, poor housing, unemployment and discrimination, from [...]
MIKE WADSWORTH reviews the autobiography of SWP founder Tony Cliff.
Tony Cliff’s autobiography was published shortly after his death last year. It is written in an almost conversational manner and shows that, as Paul Foot writes in the introduction, “Tony Cliff was not a humble man and his account (which he started only because he was [...]
MIKE WADSWORTH reviews the recent biography of lifetime communist Edmund Frow, written by his wife.
Ruth Frow points out that this biography of Eddie Frow is largely anecdotal and is not the detached recital of a life that would have been produced by a biographer less closely involved with the subject. In this regard it is [...]
Independent Labour Publications (ILP) is an educational trust, publishing house and pressure group committed to democratic socialism and the success of a democratic socialist Labour Party.
The ILP was formed in 1893 as the Independent Labour Party, which became a co-founder of the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century. Today we remain committed to Labour's aim of creating 'a society for the many, not the few' and seek to engage with others in discussing how this vision can be turned into reality.
Land and Freedom
A short, moving account of the Spanish Civil War. Focusing on events in Catalonia, it shows how even today, there is more to be remembered than the courage of the International Brigade.
ILP - Past & Present
A lively, frank and well-illustrated account of the ILP’s history from its origins in the 1890s, the Labour party’s development, and the rise and fall of the Labour left.