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...
Under Siege: The ILP in the Interwar Years
Despite its decline, the Independent Labour Party preserved the values of democratic socialism during the interwar years, according to ILP historian Ian Bullock in his new book, due to be published by Athabasca University Press....
Robert Blatchford, the Clarion and Socialism as a Way of Life
STEVE THOMPSON sketches a brief profile of Robert Blatchford, the founding editor of The Clarion newspaper, who campaigned for socialism as a way of life....
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...
A Day for Ada
The Labour left today could do with a few members like Ada Salter, the quietly-spoken, peace-loving ILPer whose pioneering work transformed south-east London in the early decades of the 20th century. MATTHEW BROWN attended the first Ada Salter Day. There have been many reasons in recent weeks to yearn for a different kind of...
London to Celebrate Ada Salter Day
Ada Salter’s 150th birthday will be celebrated in south east London on the weekend of 15-16 July with a series of events to mark the extraordinary legacy of this pioneering ILPer on the people and politics of Bermondsey, London and the country....
Ada Salter and the Origins of Ethical Socialism
In writing his lauded biography of ILPer Ada Salter, GRAHAM TAYLOR began to wonder about the ILP’s ethical socialism. In a recent lecture to the Socialist History Society, he traced the history of those ideas and values which the Salters epitomised through their lives in south east London. I must start with a confession. When...
How the Co-op Lost its Purpose
Without its history, its politics and its connection to the wider movement, the Co-operative Group is just like any other supermarket chain, says STEVE THOMPSON....
Funds Needed for Sylvia Pankhurst Statue
The campaign to build a London statue to the socialist suffragette, Sylvia Pankhurst, is calling for donations towards its goal of erecting a monument outside the Marx Memorial Library on Islington’s Clerkenwell Green....
Hunting for the Real Keir Hardie
We should remember ‘diverse Keir Hardies’, argues DAVID HOWELL, versions of the ILP founder that stretch beyond the simplicities of socialist canonisation and patronising dismissal, but never attain the dubious establishment honour of ‘national treasure’....
ILP Profiles: David Rhys Jones – Welsh Socialist Pioneer
MARTIN WRIGHT assesses the life and contribution of David Rhys Jones, a little-known ILPer and early campaigner for Welsh socialism....
Ada Salter Talk at Marx Memorial Library
Author Graham Taylor will deliver a Socialist History Society lecture on the pioneering ILPer and feminist Ada Salter at London’s Marx Memorial Library on Tuesday 26 April....