The Orwell Society has released the latest recording in its online ‘George Talks’ series featuring an interview with Sylvia Topp, author of the highly-regarded biography of Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy....
How the ILP’s Vision Created the Labour Party
It is a common misconception that trade unions founded the Labour Party in 1900. Not so, says JOHN H GRIGG. It was the ILP that drove the initiative....
ILP Profiles: Johnnie Duxbury – The Quiet Dedication of an Ethical Socialist
Like many working-class socialists, Blackburn ILPer Johnnie Duxbury left only a faint footprint on the historical record. Yet his life of brave activism and everyday kindness ‘enriches our understanding of socialist commitment’, argues ROGER SMALLEY....
ILP Historian Launches New Website on Socialism & Democracy
A new website has been launched by ILP and Labour movement historian Ian Bullock to highlight his decades of work examining the relationship between socialism and democracy in Britain....
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....
ILP Profiles: Johnnie Duxbury – ‘A Noble and Good Man’
BARBARA HARGREAVES pays tribute to her father, an ILPer from Blackburn who dedicated his life to ‘every progressive cause that arose’. ‘His intelligence and integrity allowed him to transcend his circumstances and help those who could not,’ she says....
Building a New Consensus
GARY KENT recalls how some on the British left challenged orthodox thinking and pioneered an alternative approach to Northern Ireland that helped lay the political groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement....
As He Saw It
When Eric Preston died on 20 September this year it not only brought to an end his long and active life in the struggle for socialism, but marked the passing of an era for the ILP too. Eric’s writing and thinking over more than 60 years of ILP membership was hugely influential, not only...
Forgotten Women
JAIME REYNOLDS reveals the remarkable achievements of four unknown ILP women who became important local government leaders between the wars but have since been left out of Labour history....
Pioneering ILPer Selina Cooper to be Honoured in Nelson
One of the founding members of the ILP and a leading suffragist is to be celebrated by a major exhibition and education programme in Nelson next year. The Selina Cooper Project will be launched in 2021 thanks to a £50,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant raised earlier this year by local volunteers Gary and Kevin Webb....
Eric Preston: A life ‘lived for that better day’
Our dear friend and comrade Eric Preston died on 20 September. He was a driving force in the ILP for 60 years, shaping much of its perspective and political thinking. ILP chair DAVID CONNOLLY gave the eulogy at his funeral on 8 October....
From Sympathy to Solidarity
WILL BROWN reviews a fascinating and timely examination of the sources of anticolonial opinion in Britain, one that reinforces the importance of new and more honest accounts of Britain’s imperial past....