Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis ILP Round Table Seminar Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 13th-14th June 2009 Saturday 13th June 2.00 – 5.00pm Sunday 14th June 9.30am – 12.30pm Session 1: The economic crisis • What just happened? • What does it tell us about capitalism? Session 2: The mess we’re in...
Spanish Civil War Commemoration
Seventy years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the first ever memorial plaque to the anti-fascist British and Irish volunteers who fought alongside George Orwell in the ILP Contingent will be unveiled. Two political veterans will do the honours: Sidney Robinson, an Independent Labour Party activist in the 1930s who chaired the...
This world of ours
ERIC PRESTON introduces the themes of the ILP’s forthcoming weekend of discussion and political review ‘Many of us are, I believe, confused by the world we have created for ourselves in the west. We are confused by the consequences of capitalism, whose contribution to well-being cannot be questioned, but which divides rich from poor,...
Marketisation and its effects
WILL BROWN reports on the ILP’s weekend of discussions on the privatisation of public services What is the privatisation of public services? Where is it coming from and with what consequences? And what should our political response be? These are the issues which formed the central focus of the ILP’s successful weekend school in...
Orwell’s boy
BARRY WINTER remembers Staff Cottman, life-long socialist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, who died last year. Last September, after a year’s illness, Stafford Cottman died. Staff was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a life-long socialist and trade unionist. What impressed me most about him was his comradely warmth, abundant energy...
The ILP and social change
The ILP’s Weekend School took place in Scarborough at the beginning of May. BARRY WINTER outlined the ILP’s perspective and explained why it had to change. There are four major points that need to be made about the ILP’s perspective. First, in the early 1990s we came to recognise that we had to remake...
Cook’s report
The ILP’s ‘Conversation of the left’ was held in Leeds on 8 May 2004. Martin Cook reports. This meeting was a deliberately low key ‘conversation’ with no big name speakers and a set of themes on the future of the left and our attitude to the Labour Party. The organisers seemed a bit disappointed...
Introduction
Independent Labour Publications (ILP) is an educational trust, publishing house and pressure group committed to democratic socialism and the success of the democratic socialist Labour Party. The primary aims of its publications are to contribute to political analysis and the development of democratic socialist perspective and policy; to help stimulate a debate within the...
A socialism for our times
Independent Labour Publications (ILP) is an educational trust, publishing house and pressure group committed to democratic socialism and the success of a democratic socialist Labour Party. The ILP was formed in 1893 as the Independent Labour Party, which became a co-founder of the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century. Today we...
A few thoughts on ‘anti-Americanism’
ALISTAIR GRAHAM responds to Alex Miles’ attack on left wing anti-Americanism. I’m at something of a loss about how to respond to the article by Alex Miles (‘An Anti-Americanism of Fools’, Democratic Socialist, Winter 2006/07). While I would not want to disagree too much with the central thesis of his piece, I did wonder...
Leaders not into the future
Does Labour’s change of leadership reflect anything more politically profound than a change of personnel? HAZEL HAED asseses the evidence. Gordon Brown’s long and painful wait to assume the top spot in British politics is now coming to an end. After enduring Tony Blair’s farcically long goodbye, Brown was shorn of the need actually...
Into the cracks of the system
Matthew Brown reports on a weekend of political discussions at the ILP’s annual get together in Scarborough Back at the beginning of May, just two days after Labour limped back into power for a third term, the ILP held its annual get together for members and Friends to discuss the state of the world...