Left on the Shelf Books, the UK’s largest dealer in radical second-hand books, pamphlets and journals, has changed hands following the retirement of its founder and long-term owner Dave Cope. Set up in 1992 after Cope bought the second-hand stock of Central Books, and for many years the main retail and wholesale outlet for the Communist Party of Great Britain, Left on the Shelf relocated … Continue reading Left on the Shelf enters a new era
In 2006, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (HSIR) 21 published ‘The General Strike and Mining Lockout of 1926: A Select Bibliography’, compiled by John McIlroy, Alan Campbell, Keith Laybourn and Quentin Outram. To mark the one hundredth anniversary of the strike, this is now being updated for publication in HSIR 47 later this year by Dave Lyddon and Quentin Outram. We are asking users of … Continue reading HELP NEEDED IN UPDATING Bibliography of the 1926 General Strike
The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2026), 91, (1). Read the reviews. Abhishek Yadav reviews Titas Chakraborty, Empire of Labor: How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work, Oakland: University of California Press, 2025, pp. xiv + 322, h/b, £53.65, ISBN 978 05203 99631 Quentin Outram reviews Jessica Field, Eviction: A Social History of Rent, London: Verso, 2025, pp. vi + 280, h/b, £20, ISBN 978 … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 91 (2026) issue 1
Author: Florencia D’UvaThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2026), 91, (1). Read this article. This article examines the survival strategies employed by the widows of railway workers in Argentina during the early twentieth century. Rather than portraying these women as passive recipients of assistance from trade unions or railway companies, this study highlights their active agency in securing financial support. Through petitions, legal … Continue reading Widows, Subsistence Strategies, and Union Solidarity in Railway Labour in Early Twentieth-Century Argentina
Author: James SquiresThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2026), 91, (1). Read this article. The coming of the Soviet war scare in 1927 obliged all communist parties to spring to the defence of the world’s first socialist state. Kick-started by Britain’s severance of diplomatic relations in May, clear emphasis was placed from the very beginning on the role the Communist Party of Great … Continue reading The CPGB and the Soviet War Scare, 1927-29
Author: Peter GurneyThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2026), 91, (1). Read this article. I would like to begin this lecture with a few autobiographical reflections. John Halstead would not have minded, I think, because one of his many admirable qualities was that he gave you the feeling that he was always genuinely interested in what you had to say, not only about … Continue reading The Chartist Revolution
Labour History Review Volume 91 (2026), Issue 1 has now been published. The journal appears both in hard copy and online formats. In this issue . . . Peter Gurney, “The Chartist Revolution”, pp 1-27. Read more: Florencia D’Uva, “Beyond Mourning: Widows, Subsistence Strategies and Union Solidarity in the World of Railway Labour in Early Twentieth-Century Argentina”, pp 27-49. Read more: James Squires, “‘Widespread Disbelief … Continue reading Labour History Review Volume 91 (2026) issue 1
Naomi Lloyd-Jones (History of Parliament) and Malcolm Petrie (University of St Andrews) have issued a call for papers for their new Companion to Modern Scottish Political History. Call for Papers deadline Monday 18 May 2026 The volume will represent a significant historiographical intervention, providing a comprehensive account of Scottish politics from the Union of 1707 to the early twenty-first century as well as a stimulating … Continue reading CfP: Edinburgh Companion to Modern Scottish Political History
My research investigates female migrant mill and factory workers housed at asylums and poorhouses in Dundee and its environs between 1841 and 1900. I have spent the last four years digging through primary sources, assessing and analysing recorded manifestations of anomic symptoms, and evidence of anomic experience, drawing on data principally from the Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum, Montrose Asylum, the Dundee East poorhouse, and the … Continue reading Theo Christodoulidis (University of Dundee) on industrial Dundee’s female migrant millworkers c.1841-1891.
Financial support from the Society for the Study of Labour History allowed me to fund several research trips to the Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People’s History Museum in Manchester in 2024 and 2025. These visits were used to research and draft the final chapters of my PhD thesis – an exploration of the Labour Party’s relationship with Zionism in the middle … Continue reading John Russell (Queen Mary University of London) on the Labour Party’s reorientation in Middle Eastern policy following the Suez Crisis.
Society for the Study of Labour History 