The GMB union has welcomed the Labour Party’s election pledges to put working people and trade unionists at the centre of the 2015 general election....
Labour Needs to Push its Progressive Electoral Programme
HARRY BARNES has analysed Labour’s electoral programme and believes it starts to ‘open the door’ towards democratic socialism. He’s also provided a readable 16-part summary for those who haven’t yet ploughed through the 200-page document. ...
Labour’s ‘New Approach’ Outlined by Cruddas
“Labour stands for big reform without big spending,” writes Jon Cruddas in the preface to his new pamphlet on the party’s recently completed policy review, a publication published today that claims to set out “Labour’s new approach in a time of financial constraint”....
A Petition for People’s Public Services
We Own It, the anti-privatisation campaign, has launched a public petition calling for a new Public Service Users Bill “to give us a say over our public services, put our needs first and make outsourcing companies transparent and accountable”....
Tony Benn, the Labour Left ‘and all that’
BARRY WINTER reflects on Tony Benn’s personality and politics, interweaving his own memories of the period as he considers the left’s failures in the 1970s and ’80s and the lessons for those seeking progressive change today. Few people in contemporary politics have attracted such public affection as Tony Benn. In spite of years of vilification...
Can Labour Learn to Trust People?
Left of centre think tanks Compass and Progress are joining forces at the end of April to host a discussion on Labour’s approach to public sector reform with Jon Cruddas, coordinator of the party’s policy review process....
Tony Benn: The Left’s Flawed Figurehead
The sad death of Tony Benn has prompted comments and reflections from across the political spectrum. JONATHAN TIMBERS argues that while he was a hero to many, he was also a disastrous leader of the British left whose naive optimism and socialist nostalgia contributed to its decline. I am saddened by news of the death...
Labour MP Calls for Greater Role for Co-ops
Labour and Co-op Party MP Jim Dobbin this week called for community co-ops to be given a greater role on local enterprise partnerships and better understanding and support the business community....
An Unfit System
Whatever internal democratic reforms the Labour Party is going to make, nothing fundamental will change unless the present electoral system and parliamentary institutions are swept away, argues ERNIE JACQUES. ‘The Great Stumble Forward’, by Will Brown, sums up nicely Ed Miliband’s response to the Falkirk debacle where cooking the books and buying votes was the...
Condemn One Dictator; Invite Another?
The UK government is condemning violence in Syria just days before inviting other brutal regimes to shop for weapons at a massive arms fair in London, according to Campaign Against the Arms Trade....
ILP@120: Fred Jowett – ‘A great man of a new kind’
“He was a great man of a new kind, which the history books have not caught up with yet,” wrote JB Priestley of Fred Jowett. IAN BULLOCK profiles the ILPer who campaigned tirelessly for democratic reform. FW – or Fred – Jowett (1864-1944), known widely during his lifetime as ‘Jowett of Bradford’, was a prominent...
Reflections on Bradford West
As the shock of the Bradford West by-election defeat fades, BARRY WINTER argues that we must learn the lessons if Labour is to rebuild a vibrant local politics....