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. ...

Summat’s going on in Leeds

Ed Carlisle is a project manager with Leeds-based charity Together for Peace and one of the organisers of the Leeds Summat Gathering which took place in November last year – strapline ‘Get Connected, Be Inspired, Join in Action for Change’. He talked to BARRY WINTER about the aims and objectives of the initiative, the American...

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...

The public sector strikes back

On a day that saw around two million workers from 29 trade unions take strike action in defence of their pensions, thousands gathered at rallies around the UK on Wednesday 30 November....

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....