Are yes the bloated, fat cat capitalist. Substitute the frock coat, spats and top hat for the pin stripe suit and it could be 2012 not recession in the 1930's. This was an Independent Labour Party pamphlet and they produced many of them. There was one about Socialism and the Co-Operative Movement but it doesn't have an interesting cover - just a plain title.
So what did they have to say...
"Collective ownership, democratic control, the abolition of profit, production for use - these are the fundamental principles of Socialism as well as Co-Operation. Both Movements look to their universal application as the necessary foundation for the social system they desire. While Socialism is not yet a reality, the Co-Operative Movement already has done much to translate Socialist principles into practise, and where gaps exist between Socialist theory and Co-Operative practise their causes must be looked for, not in difference of principle, but in the circumstances which inevitably surround ant practical living experiment in the making of a new world."
Well it is still capitalist economics, there are still co-operatives, and then there is still the ILP publications. Discuss?
2 comments:
I didn't know the ILP lived in Finsbury Park. There is a fascinating interjection in 1931 by the then Labour MP for Liverpool Kirkdale in Hansard. Later of the Independent Socialist Party. His daughter Edith May Edwards was the Mayor of Chorley 1953-4, long time councillor and her husband Robert (Bob) Edwards was secy of the Chemical Workers Union, so my Co-operator grandfather would have known her and Elijah. His grandson? Karl Elijah Sandham also was mayor there. It was quite a Tory town, though. I digress
I am guessing it was at no. 348 which became the Lanark Hotel.
Thanks for that. My geography of London is patchy but I have been to Chorley football ground.
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