Vote for the hidden treasure of the working class

The Working Class Movement Library, which houses some of the ILP archives, has been shortlisted in the Arts Council-funded Museums at Night competition to win an artist to appear in an event at the library in May. Museums at Night is an annual after-hours celebration when hundreds of museums, galleries, libraries, archives and heritage...

It was 119 years ago today

It was on this day, 13th January, 119 years ago that 120 or so young, working class, mainly male delegates gathered at the Labour Institute in Bradford to found the Independent Labour Party. ...

Diary of a striking giant

John Lowe recorded everything that happened to him and his Nottinghamshire NUM comrades during the 1984-5 miners’ strike. His grandson, JONATHAN SYMCOX, who edited the newly published diary, recalls a man transformed by the dispute. John Lowe of Clipstone in Nottinghamshire was off sick in spring 1984 when the National Coal Board and Margaret Thatcher’s...

Hannah Mitchell Inspires the North

PAUL SALVESON traces the life of early ILPer Hannah Mitchell and explains why her kind of politics is still an inspiration today. When I was getting interested in working class history, back in the early 1970s, I was fascinated by a book called The Hard Way Up. It was written by a Northern working class...

A conversation with Maurice Glasman, part 2

Part two of the ILP's interview with Maurice Glasman, the social thinker most closely associated with the ideas around ‘Blue Labour’, and one of Labour leader Ed Miliband's most influential advisers. Glasman is a senior lecturer in political theory at London Metropolitan University and a former community organiser with London Citizens. He was made a...

ILPer honoured by new northern network

A dozen or so experienced politicos from across the north met at Sowerby Bridge Station one Friday earlier this month to set up ‘The Hannah Mitchell Foundation’, a think tank for northern socialists named after an old ILPer....

Leeds Summat

The Leeds Summat Gathering 2011 is a free, all-day event for people from all walks of life across Leeds and the North....