Herbert Witard emerged from a childhood of dire poverty to become an ILP councillor and Labour’s first Lord Mayor of Norwich. MAGGIE PEPLOE tells the tale....
ILP@120: Arthur Raistrick – The Dales’ Own Man of Peace
BARRY WINTER remembers Arthur Raistrick, the writer, geologist, pacifist, educator and ILPer who became the ‘Dalesman of the Millennium’. Arthur Raistrick was born in 1896 into a working class family in the model industrial village of Saltaire in Yorkshire. His mother, Minnie, together with other relatives, worked at the famous Salt’s textile Mill. His father,...
ILP@120: Dorothy Jewson – Norwich Socialist and Suffragette
FRANK MEERES reveals how the daughter of a famous builders’ merchant from Norwich became a suffragette and ILPer, and one of the Labour Party’s first women MPs. Dorothy Jewson was born on 17 August 1884, the daughter of George and Mary Jewson of Braemar, on the Thorpe Road in Norwich. She was christened Dorothea but...
A Club of One’s Own
PAUL SALVESON laments the decline of labour and socialist clubs. But while many are closing, he says, at least one is being re-born in a new co-operative guise....
The Thorn Tree
An article by ARTHUR RAISTRICK written in September 1947. The most familiar tree on the barer limestone uplands of Yorkshire is the stunted hawthorn, gnome-like in the fantastic attitudes adopted by its trunk and branches. Unconsciously, almost, it forms the inevitable ornament or relief to our remembered picture of clints or limestone scars. It...
Life in the Lead Mines
An extract from an article by ARTHUR RAISTRICK in the 1973 Yorkshire Annual. There is now available, in increasing number, books and journals on lead mining in this country. However, an examination of this literature soon reveals that the bulk of it is concerned either with the history of mining in general, processes, the...
ILP@120: Fenner Brockway – Standing out for Socialism
HAZEL KENT traces the life and career of Fenner Brockway, with particular emphasis on his long association with the ILP. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting Fenner Brockway, I spent three fascinating years in his company while researching his contribution to the ILP for my PhD thesis. Study of his books, newspaper articles,...
Derby Honours Anti-War Campaigner
ILPer and anti-First World War campaigner Alice Wheeldon has been honoured with a blue plaque on her home in Derby nearly 100 years after she was arrested and imprisoned on fabricated evidence....
Rally to Mark Burston School Strike
A rally to mark ‘the longest strike in history’ will be held in Burston, near Diss in Norfolk, on Sunday 1 September....
ILP@120: Martin Haddow – Glasgow’s Social Reformer
HELEN CORR recalls the life of Scottish ILP activist and social reformer Martin Haddow who worked tirelessly to improve the health and education of Glasgow’s working class children. Born on 29 March 1865, William Martin Haddow was the second son of Robert Haddow, a grain merchant and his wife Janet (née Martin). At the time...
ILP@120: Storm in the Making
DAVE WALSH profiles Whitby-born novelist Storm Jameson, the socialist, feminist and activist who was an early ILP supporter and lifelong campaigner for a better society....
ILP@120: Isabella Ford – Socialist, Feminist and Peace Campaigner
JUNE HANNAM traces the life of Isabella Ford, the Leeds ILPer whose tireless campaigning for women’s rights, ‘new life’ socialism and peace remains an inspiration today. Isabella Ford was one of a small number of middle-class women who joined the Independent Labour Party in the 1890s; for her, the struggle for socialism was inextricably bound...