Cyclists, ramblers, singers and activists gathered in the foothills around Pendle, Lancashire, to celebrate the centenary of Clarion House on 11th and 12th August. The rural tea room is the last surviving monument to a once thriving part of the Labour movement, the hundreds of Clarion societies that provided community to working people and promoted...
A Monument to a Movement
Organisers from Clarion House in Pendle, Lancashire, have released more details of the building's centenary celebrations on 11 & 12 August. The Nelson ILP Clarion House is the sole survivor of the early socialist Clarion movement that existed to propagate views for a fairer, more humane society....
Reflections on Bradford West
As the shock of the Bradford West by-election defeat fades, BARRY WINTER argues that we must learn the lessons if Labour is to rebuild a vibrant local politics....
A digital record of the Spanish Civil War
The Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick has completed its project to digitise more than 13,000 pages of archives relating to the Spanish Civil War....
Edward Carpenter in Leeds
The Ford-Maguire Society in Leeds is to host a talk on Edward Carpenter next month. Researcher and author Paul Marshall will explore Carpenter’s connections with Leeds through the friends he knew here....
Present prospects, future hope
“We meet on a weekend of elections,” said ILP chair David Connolly as ILPers and friends gathered in Scarborough on 5/6 May for the organisation’s annual weekend school of political debate and discussion....
Benefit for the Brigade
The International Brigade Memorial Trust are holding a benefit night at Chorlton Irish Club in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on Friday 18 May. The acts include Les Jones and Friends of the Beech, The Madonnnas, and the Bourbon Street Preachers....
Hackney’s Hetty remembers the General Strike
As a 20-year-old member of the Independent Labour party, Hetty Bower from Hackney in East London supported the General Strike, which lasted from 4-13 May 1926. She is now 106 years old, but remembers it vividly....
The crisis, Europe and the left
Successes for left parties in France and Greece are welcome signs of resistance to the right’s austerity measures. But the legacies of the economic crisis mean there are no easy choices for Europe’s social democrats, argues WILL BROWN. Electoral advances for the left in Europe are long overdue coming after a succession of defeats and...
How to overcome the north-south divide
The secretary and chair of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation will speak at a public meeting in Chesterfield on May Day to discuss how to tackle the growing north-south divide. ...
Crisis, Markets and Protest
Today capitalism is news. Talk about capitalist crisis is widespread in ways that have not been heard for decades. Yet, it is the forces of the right that continue to dominate politically, even though the system they most strongly espouse is facing severe upheavals. Often discredited, social democratic parties are struggling to get a...
Socialism with a Northern Accent
“There is much in the British socialist tradition that has been forgotten or ignored, and which runs counter to state centralism, in particular a stress on grass-roots solutions, co-operation and an emphasis on local culture. Applied imaginatively, these traditions open up the possibility of creating a popular democratic culture which reflects different but complementary...