html - Paragaraph not showing in Internet Explorer

Question

On my website, the titles above the thumbnails do not show in any version of IE. As usual everything works fine in every other modern browser.

the html for a thumbnail is

    <div id="s1" class="stumb">
    <p><a href="emily_cotton.html">Emily Cotton</a></p>
    <a href="emily_cotton.html"><img alt="Emily Cotton" src="img/thumbs/ect.jpg"></a>
    </div>

the css is

p
{
    margin:-20px 0px 0px 0px;
    font: 11px OpenSansRegular, Arial ;
    background: rgb(235,235,235);
    text-align: left;
    padding:0px 2px 0px 2px;
}

and

.stumb

{
    margin:-20px 0px 0px 0px;
    font: 11px OpenSansRegular, Arial ;
    background: rgb(235,235,235);
    text-align: left;
    padding:0px 2px 0px 2px;
}

I tried alternative css, removing the negative margins but this did not work. Besides IE should be able to deal with these negative values anyway. I'm at a point where i am going mad with all the alternative versions floating around, all of them still not showing in IE. My conclusion is that the solution must be so simple that i am blind too it.