BARRY WINTER reviews Common Weal, the new book from the Jimmy Reid Foundation, which sets out a vision for Scotland run by its people, for its people. “Scotland’s people are in a unique position – we have been invited to imagine our nation afresh.” So argues Robin McAlpine in the opening sentence of his interesting...
Scotland’s Referendum: Why the Left Should Oppose Independence
Far from being a certain route to social democracy, as some suggest, Scottish independence is a short-cut to nowhere, says WILL BROWN. We need a longer term strategy for a progressive unionist future. A key argument on the left of centre in Scotland, repeated this week by George Monbiot in the Guardian, is that independence...
WWI: Harold Croft and the Northampton Anti-War Campaign
JOHN BUCKELL describes the life and times of Northampton ILPer Harold Croft, who faced prison, hardship and abuse for being a conscientious objector and anti-war activist. On 9 November 1920, at statutory meetings all over England, borough councils elected mayors and aldermen. Almost always these were a formality, the results agreed in advance between the...
Unbalanced Britain: What Future for Young People?
GREG ROBERTS is an apprentice accountant and youth campaigner in north east Derbyshire. In June he spoke to the ILP’s day school on Unbalanced Britain about life for young people in these austere times. Despite being born and spending half of my early childhood in Sheffield, I have, for the past eight years, lived on...
WWI: Resisting the War in Hebden Royd & Calder Valley
JONATHAN TIMBERS looks at the activity of ILP branches in the Upper Calder valley in the period before conscription was introduced in 1916, when the British army relied on volunteers to fight the Germans. It was the period before conscientious objection. The story reveals a lot about the troubled relationship developing between the ILP and...
ILP Profiles: Morgan Jones and the First World War
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...
ILP Profiles: Clifford Allen – The ILP’s Enigmatic Thinker
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...
WWI: Making Socialists & Opposing War in Great Yarmouth
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...
Unbalanced Britain: Corporate Power and our Me-Based Culture
Over the past 30 years the New Right, aided and abetted in some respects by New Labour, has introduced changes that have profoundly damaged, not only our economy, but British culture and politics. The result, says BARRY WINTER, is a seriously unbalanced society. We live in an era of what the American philosopher, Michael Sandel,...
An Editor Reflects
MIKE DAVIS became editor of the Labour left publication Chartist 40 years ago. Here he reflects on the very different political world of 1974, how the left has been weakened in the intervening years, and the daunting challenges it faces today. Chartist was a very different political animal when I took over editing in spring...
Tony Benn, the Labour Left ‘and all that’
BARRY WINTER reflects on Tony Benn’s personality and politics, interweaving his own memories of the period as he considers the left’s failures in the 1970s and ’80s and the lessons for those seeking progressive change today. Few people in contemporary politics have attracted such public affection as Tony Benn. In spite of years of vilification...
No Short Cuts to a Progressive Scotland
The Yes campaign is winning increasing support among the left. But, says VINCE MILLS, this is based on wishful thinking about Scottish social attitudes and a failure to grasp the real difficulties of radical social and economic change. ...