A new book on Durham Coalfield communities is a timely testament to working class resilience, says MARY HULL, bringing together evocative tales of ‘marras’, meetings, strikes and marches as well as banners, brass bands and allotments. Full of hope and laughter, sadness and anger, it's a fitting tribute to the area’s rich and radical...
Faith Workers are Workers Too
As a church minister, CHRIS WILSON at least knows “the boss” is OK, although “the middle management can be a real problem”. Clergy need trade unions as much as any other workers, he says....
Winning Hearts & Minds Through Community Enterprise
The success of Sheffield Renewables has shown how attitudes to energy policy can be changed with local engagement and a co-operative business model that offers much more than profit. DAVE BERRY explains....
Co-op Party Launches Community Power Report
The Co-operative Party has teamed up with the Labour Climate and Environment Forum to launch a new report on “the role that community-owned energy in playing in building climate consensus at a local level”....
New Approaches to Tackling the Far Right
Compass and the Co-operative Party have both launched new initiatives in recent weeks aimed at understanding and tackling the rise of the far right....
Cost of Living Crisis: Why We Need a New Wave of Co-operatives
CHRIS OLEWICZ calls for a revival of the consumer co-operatives that once formed a vital pillar of the Labour movement and could play a crucial role in our crisis-riddled times....
Cooperation Town: The New Network Providing Food for All
CHRISTOPHER OLEWICZ celebrates the arrival of a new addition to the co-operative movement, one based on the same vision and principles as the 19th pioneers. A ‘new Rochdale’ is within our grasp, he says. ...
Acting Local: Community Wealth Building – Past, Present & Future
CHRISTOPHER OLEWICZ examines an inside account of Preston Council’s much-hailed ‘model’ for local development, and casts his mind back to the 1980s when his own local authority tried to resist the march of Thatcherism with bottom-up regeneration and municipal enterprise....
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...