Shadow Foreign Secretary to Give Hopper Memorial Lecture

Two of Labour’s leading women shadow ministers will take centre stage at the second Dave Hopper Memorial Lecture on the eve of the Durham Miners’ Gala in what will be a fitting climax to Education 4 Action’s week-long fringe programme called ‘Politics, Pits and Protest’....

Between the Wars

The period between the two world wars was one of the most turbulent in political history. The events of that time had a profound impact on the ILP and the development of British left-wing politics, as Ian Bullock describes in his important new book, Under Siege, reviewed here by HARRY BARNES. After setting the scene...

Voting Behaviour

Behind the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst were many lesser-known figures in the Votes for Women campaign in the north of England, some of them members of the ILP. ANTONIA CHARLESWORTH remembers their contribution to the fight for women’s suffrage and profiles one Lancashire ILPer who played her part. Manchester’s place in the history of...

With Orwell, Cottman and Quinto in Catalonia

ILP Chair DAVID CONNOLLY reports on his visit to Catalonia last year to mark the 80th anniversary of George Orwell’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is one of the great books of political literature of the 20th century. It records his time in Spain as a volunteer with the...

Jack Lawson: A Man’s Life

Harry Barnes’s review of Jack Lawson’s autobiography, A Man’s Life, has been re-published on the North East Labour History website. Like many of his era, Lawson first became politically active through the ILP which he joined in 1904....