Labour History Review Volume 90 (2025), Issue 1 has now been published. The journal appears both in hard copy and online formats.

 In this issue…

We begin with a round-table discussion of Keir Starmer’s Labour Government in historical perspective. The editors note that if, six months on, the signs might not be as positive as we would like, the election of Starmer’s Labour nevertheless represents some kind of watershed. They write: ‘If the signs might not be as positive as we would like, it seemed to us that it might be interesting, after the initial euphoria had died down, to ask a number of historians of Labour and class to reflect on the historical significance of Starmer’s government. They were given a very wide brief by the editors and no attempt was made to shape their contributions to this round table, which suggest various contexts for better understanding the meaning of Starmer’s Labour.’ The round-table includes contributions from Peter Gurney, Laura Beers, Lawrence Black, Malcolm Petrie, and Martin Wright. This article is open access.

In The Limits to Solidarity: Trade Union Responses to European Workers in Britain, 1945–1948, Avram Taylor exaines the responses of the trade union movement to the inclusion within the labour force of prisoners of war, Polish soldiers and European volunteer workers, and shows how the more general xenophobia of the period eventually centred on the Poles, who became the focus of hostility towards foreign workers. Read more.

We remain in the 1940s for Jim Philips investigation of Workforce Disability and the 1949 ‘Ineffectives’ Strike in the London Docks. The dispute began when thirty-two registered dock workers were terminated because they were regarded as physically incapable of performing the job. Dockers opposed the redundancies for a number of reasons, not least because of the collective benefit to be had in working alongside impaired individuals with valuable occupational knowledge. Read more.

The historian John Samuel Shepherd produced a number of books of labour history, including a major biography of George Lansbury and a study of the first British Labour Government. Keith Laybourn’s obituary of Professor Shepherd reflects on his life. Read more.

This issue also includes book reviews by Joseph Stanley, John Cunningham, Joe Davey, Keith Gildart, Patrick Smylie, Quentin Outram, and Elizabeth Faue. Read more.

Find out more about how to subscribe to Labour History Review and join the Society for the Study of Labour History.