Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
The Labour Party: a complicated birth
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
Leaders of the Labour Representation Committee in 1906. From left to right: Arthur Henderson, G N Barnes, Ramsay Macdonald, Philip Snowden, Will Crooks, Keir Hardie, John Hodge, James O'Grady and David Shackleton
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
125 YEARS AGO on February 27 1900, a meeting took place at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon St to form the Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
The building still stands although today it is a modern office with a plaque to mark the founding of the Labour Party. For many years I represented workers there as a union officer.
The meeting marked the start of a decade and more of events that still provide much of the framework for the Labour Party, the labour movement and the left today.
More from this author
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
10 years ago this month, Corbyn saved Labour from its right-wing problem, and then the party machine turned on him. But all is not lost yet for the left, says KEITH FLETT
Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT
