From 1971 to 1978, the UK women’s liberation movement held ten national conferences at which it formally adopted a total of seven key demands. The fifth of these demands, added in 1974, was for financial and legal independence for women, accepted with widespread support across all wings of the...

The idea of “Progressive Alliance” has really taken off now, especially with the defeat of Zac Goldsmith in the Richmond Park by-election. As with most good ideas it is accumulating a sort of fuzzy vagueness, and so this seems like a good time to return to the question of what “Progressive...

Forgive me, this is as personal as it is political. I don’t know what to do. A world that was getting darker suddenly turned pitch black. Zygmunt Bauman is dead. The towering intellectual colossus of our times and yet such a frail, slight and humble human being is gone. He lived an amazing...

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is: A cash benefit that is: universal – paid to everyone in the population; individual – paid to each adult rather than as a single household payment and; unconditional – paid without means testing or conditions with regard to family or employment status...

Our blog series 'Universal Basic Income: Security for the Future?' is a series exploring the idea of universal basic income. We hope this series will help you familiarise with the concept; it's benefits and possible pitfalls. Our writers include academics, community organisers & welfare rights...

Neoliberal technology is shaping our world and is likely to make us narrow-minded and easily manipulated. At the same time, neoliberal technology is making the wealthy more powerful while little attention is paid to how it destroys our planet. Let’s turn the tables on it, making new technology...

Mark Perryman provides a seasonal round-up of the best books to cheer up the radical spirit.  From #chaoticbrexit to the triumph of Trump via the summertime Labour coup. 2016 will be a year to forget for many  who cling on to an optimism that a better tomorrow remains not only necessary but...

Human rights are central to understanding – and arresting – the rise in right-wing populism. Farage, Trump, Le Pen and their fellow travellers gain strength from the poverty, inequality and unfairness experienced by millions of working and middle class families. Their experience is sometimes...

A string of by-elections on Thursday demonstrate the potential and the pitfalls of a progressive alliance across the UK. The clearest conclusion is that this is complex. Richmond is miles away from Sleaford, in every sense, and it would be too easy to see Telford and Tonbridge as similar. The...

I cannot have been alone in my reaction to last week's Autumn Budget announcements from Philip Hammond in which the government promises that underpinned the austerity agenda for the last six years were at last pronounced officially dead. What I couldn’t stop thinking about was the huge toll...

Politics has been grim for a long time. But today we woke up with a smile. The Tories, UKIP and the candidate they backed in Richmond Park were defeated. He was defeated by a margin so narrow that we can say the Progressive Alliance made a difference. The politics of hard Brexit and soft...

I want to address two issues: to review the Richmond Park “revolution”, its implications and the lessons learned; and secondly to offer practical help to Labour CLPs to enable them to   help develop a Progressive Alliance aimed at achieving the election of a sustainable left of centre...

The Right (yet again) takes advantage of the crisis The Left is in retreat or unable to break through. And there is more to come. These reversals have taken place in the context of a profound crisis of neoliberalism.  Inequalities have grown over recent decades, made worse by the 2008 Crash...

Christian Wolmar is standing as Labour candidate for Richmond in the December 1 by-election caused by Zac Goldsmith’s resignation. This may be a worthy cause. But please, Mr Wolmar, please, I beg you: stand down as left wing candidate and let Sarah Olney try to win the seat from...

Ahead of  the England vs Scotland game Mark Perryman  responds to FIFA’s Poppies ban The last time England played Scotland in a competitive match at Hampden Park was also in November, 1999, it was preceded by none of the manufactured row about whether the teams should have poppies...

So long as we operate on the premise of an abstract and immanentist national unity, political parties and the false economies upon which they operate will thrive. It is finally election day in the US and soon the drawn out, often intolerable, play of American electoral politics will come to a...

When will we ever learn? Brexit, as terrible as it was, was not the wake up call to the progressive sentiment. Now we have Brexit x10. The victory of Donald Trump. But what do we expect when we stand establishment candidates who helped create the conditions for Trumpism? Clintonism and Blairism,...

We had over 60 people come along to the Compass meeting on Thursday 20 October, with a range of perspectives, political leanings and opinions on how to affect change. One issue that preoccupies the residents of South Barking (Thamesside) above all others, and it’s not the one you might...

‘The context for a World Without Poverty’ is a paper that is part of a series for a project that the Webb Memorial Trust (WMT) and Compass conduct together to develop a Theory and Practice of Change for a World Without Poverty. The aim of this project is to look at how poverty can be...

In our world, dominated by neoliberalism, we feel that human beings know perfectly well the best way to pursue their own self-interest. But the huge power of conditioning, exerted by mass media on individuals, when it comes to deciding which products they need or which politicians they should...