Work, Community & Labour’s Renewal

PAUL SALVESON reviews The Dignity of Labour by Labour MP Jon Cruddas, a fascinating engagement with the changing nature of employment and a thoughtful search for a popular, progressive politics that can provide a clear alternative to the Tories....

Throwing a Spotlight on ILP Women

To mark International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the lives of nine ILP women who played important roles in the early years of the Labour movement. All of them were tireless campaigners for women’s votes and gender equality, and against war and poverty....

Making Socialists in Great Yarmouth

East Anglia is hardly known as a bedrock of the early ILP. But as MIKE WADSWORTH illustrates in his portrait of the Great Yarmouth branch before the First World War, local ILPers were as committed and passionate in their socialism as any of the organisation’s more famous figures....

The Origins of Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn’s rise is only the latest in a long line of left-wing ‘corrections’ to a rightward drift in the Labour Party, which date from before it was even founded, argues GRAHAM TAYLOR....

The Interwar ILP – Lessons for Today?

IAN BULLOCK assesses the record of the ILP between the wars and seeks to draw a few lessons for Labour and the left today. All in all, he says, the influence of the radical and democratic ILP on the Labour Party of the later 20th century was an extremely positive one....

The Movement and its Message

BARRY WINTER reviews a new book on the Labour Church, and suggests the much-forgotten movement provides an important guide on how to remake left politics in the modern age. Huddersfield-born Labour leader, Harold Wilson famously declared that the British Labour movement owes more to Methodism than Marxism. While he was right to recognise the religious...

Jayaben Desai and the ILP Tradition

Saturday 20 August 2016 marked the 40th anniversary of the day when Jayaben Desai walked out of the Grunwick photo-developing company in London, igniting a strike which drew support from thousands. GRAHAM TAYLOR remembers the woman whose dignity in dispute recalled the ethical traditions of the ILP. For Jayaben Desai, the Grunwick strike was about...