About us History

In 1974, socialist businessman Michael Lipman established The Lipman Trust, a charity whose mission was to help support the practice and dissemination of socialist education and research – a rare position for a charity to take at that time.

The Trust’s first director was Professor Ralph Miliband, who led the Trust until his death in 1994. Miliband’s international reputation as an innovative Marxist scholar, and his involvement with The Socialist Register which he co-founded with historian John Saville in 1964, brought the Trust to the attention of a critical mass of socialists and radicals. In 1995, Miliband’s work for the Trust and his lifelong commitment to socialism were posthumously acknowledged when the Trustees renamed the Trust, ‘The Lipman-Miliband Trust’.

Following the Ralph Miliband Memorial Appeal of 1995, the Trust was able to inaugurate a number of one-off awards including the John Saville Award and the Social Justice Award. Today, the Trust continues to play a vital role supporting socialist and radical education and practice through its funding programme. There are three funding rounds annually.

We encourage diverse work within this broad field, taking into consideration new areas of cultural and political work in institutions of learning but also in community organisations, self-organised groups, co-operatives, trade unions and NGOs. It is both a sign of hope and a cause for dismay that the call on the Trust’s funds has always outstripped its limited resources.

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