Save the date for a two-day conference at Durham University this summer titled ‘Organise! Organise! Organise! Collective Action, Associational Culture and the Politics of Organisation in Britain and Ireland, c.1790-1914’.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN. Registration closes 17 July 2023.

All are also welcome to attend the book launch for Henry Miller’s A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). This will take place on Wednesday, 19 July 2023, 4-5pm, PG.21 (Palace Green 21). Contact:  henry.j.miller@durham.ac.uk

Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Labour History and other bodies, the conference, taking place on 20-21 July 2023, will explore why, how, to what ends, and with what effects people in Britain and Ireland organised and were organised for political purposes during the long nineteenth century.

‘The conference aims to deepen our understanding of the complex and diverse extra-parliamentary politics of organisation, and to drive forward debate about the forms and extent of participatory and representational political cultures, outside of and during elections. From clubs, societies, associations, and unions, to issue-based campaign movements, to party-political bodies, and to electioneering activities, organisational ideas and practices played important roles in shaping and navigating a rapidly changing political world.’

Professor Katrina Navickas (University of Hertfordshire) will deliver the keynote address: ‘Practical representation and battles over locality: the importance of place in British popular politics in the long nineteenth century.’

Other speakers include:

• Professor Matt Roberts (Sheffield Hallam) on ‘Cobden, Peel, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Politics of Feeling in Mid-Victorian England’;
• Dr Laura Forster (University of Manchester) on ‘The political lecture tour in nineteenth-century Britain: activism, hospitality and intimacy on the road’;
• Professor Richard Huzzey (Durham University) with Dr Kathryn Rix (History of Parliament) on ‘Exclusive dealing and the politics of organisation in the age of reform’; and
• Dr Vic Clarke (Durham University) on ‘Advertising Radicalism: Identity and Collective Branding in the Chartist Press’.

Organised by Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Dr Naomi Lloyd-Jones, the event takes place on 20-21 July 2023 at Collingwood College Penthouse Conference Suite, Durham University.

There will be about 35 in-person spaces available each day, and as many online spaces as Zoom can handle. Registration for online attendance will close on 17 July, and attendees will get Zoom links the following day.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN HERE.