Dave Lowes
28th May 2024
7pm-8.30pm
Location: Swathmore Centre (Room 2)
2-7 Woodhouse Square, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS3 1AD
The talk will trace the PLPs acceptance of austerity (Fiscal Rules in todays parlance) through the 1970s back to the May Committee in 1931. It will look at the different approaches to welfare spending within the labour movement historically and outline the different attitudes to democratic theory and practice. Given the current political context and the ongoing dominance of austerity politics the talk will address this issue in a historical context and focus on earlier legacies within the PLP.
The talk is based on a book and doctoral thesis – In defence of local government: an immanent critique of labour movement campaigns to defend jobs, services and local democracy in the 1980s. It was subsequently published by Merlin: Cuts, Privatisation and Resistance: Neoliberalism and the local state 1974-1987
Dave Lowes is an independent scholar, whose activism as a shop steward in Liverpool during the 1980s and 1990s informed his book Cuts, Privatisation and Resistance: Neoliberalism and the local state 1974-1987. Other publications include The Anti-capitalist Dictionary (Zed, 2006), and Mugsborough Then & Now: Robert Tressell’s ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’