The organisers of a major conference on the ‘legacy of inclusivity and change’ left by the Labour politician Tony Benn have issued a call for papers.

Titled The Benn Legacy, the event will take place on the Marylebone Campus of the University of Westminster on 12-13 April 2025, marking the centenary of Benn’s birth. Speakers will include Yanis Varoufakis, Grace Blakeley, Frances O’Grady and Jeremy Corbyn.

Further information can be found on the conference website.

The event is organised by Pippa Catterall, Professor of History and Policy in the School of Humanities at the University of Westminster, and Jad Adams, a historian, author and independent television producer specialising in radical figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The organisers welcome papers of 15-20 minutes on any aspect of Benn’s life and legacy. The Deadline is 30th November 2024. Abstracts (up to 300 words) and biographies (up to 100 words) should be submitted in Word to Pippa Catterall and Jad Adams.

Email: Pippa Catterall and Jad Adams

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Congregationalism/nonconformist contribution to political thought.

• Movement for Colonial Freedom.

• The peerage.

• Technology (notably the post office and Mintech).

• 1960s radicalism.

• Referendum 1975 (and reflections on 2016).

• Manufacturing industry in the 1970s and 1980s.

• Coal and the miner’s strike.

• The Falklands War.

• Gulf War 1.

• Iraq, anti-war protests.

• Radicals in the House of Commons.

• Political diaries.

• The Benn Archive.

Further information can be found on the conference website.