The Selina Cooper project and exhibition at Nelson’s Unity Hall will finally open to the public this Saturday with a launch event to celebrate the history of the building, and the community of ILPers and socialists who built and ran it more than 100 years ago....
DAVID CONNOLLY celebrates the political thinking of Eric Preston, the ILP activist and theoretician who died a year ago....
KATH CONNOLLY finds the latest book on the mould-breaking ILPer and Labour MP an unlikely and infuriating mix of fact and fiction....
Allen Clarke was a well-known figure in the north of England socialist movement between the early 1890s and 1930s, yet today he is virtually forgotten. PAUL SALVESON recalls the extraordinary achievements of a working class writer and romantic radical who deserves a larger legacy....
News that the Clarion Cycling Club has dropped its historical association with socialism made national headlines last week as critical voices lamented the demise of one of the left’s oldest institutions. So has the Clarion changed gear? Not quite, explains the club’s former chair, IAN BULLOCK....
How can progressives describe the society they wish to build if they cannot first imagine it? CHRISTOPHER OLEWICZ recalls Fenner Brockway’s forgotten novel and laments the lack of utopian fiction for a post-Covid world....
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....
It’s been a long, hard journey for the Selina Cooper project team in Nelson, from a dusty archive in the local library to a long-delayed public launch at one of the town’s oldest buildings. But with Covid restrictions finally easing, their struggle to commemorate the locality’s proud socialist history is finally coming to fruition....
GARY KENT reflects on the 100th anniversary of partition on 3 May and the distorted thinking that for decades dominated left-wing approaches to the province, the Troubles and the sectarian divide. ...
ROGER SMALLEY recounts the life of a Blackburn ILPer who wanted her work ‘to sting people into rebellion against poverty and fire their hearts with a cause’. Ethel Carnie left an impressive legacy of dissent that continues to have relevance today....
The first ever biography of socialist pioneer and Burnley Labour MP Dan Irving is due to be published by Nelson ILP Land Society....
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....