Author: EditorMC

I am a former journalist by trade, turned labour and family historian with a special interest in Chartism. I launched the Chartist Ancestors website since 2003, and am currently a member of the Society for the Study of Labour History executive committee, managing its website and social media in my free time.
Labour History Review

Conditional Universalism: Immigration and Nationalist Trade Unionism in 1980s Corsica

Author:  Guillaume GenoudThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (3). Read this article. This article examines how Corsican nationalism reshaped trade union practice through the Sindicatu di i Travagliadori Corsi (Corsican Workers’ Union, STC), founded in 1984 after local activists broke with mainstream French confederations. Drawing on archival sources and oral histories, it traces the STC’s evolving stance toward immigration and non-Corsican workers … Continue reading Conditional Universalism: Immigration and Nationalist Trade Unionism in 1980s Corsica

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Labour History Review

The Spectre of Communism: Print Surveillance in the Working-Class Movement of Late Colonial Calcutta (1920–1947)

Author:  Manaswini SenThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (3). Read this article. This paper examines how the empire’s hysteria against militant trade unionism and its anti-colonial essence lay at the root of the colonial state’s proliferation of surveillance apparatus in late colonial Bengal. It primarily focuses on how the state censored, proscribed, and surveilled the literary output of trade unionists and other … Continue reading The Spectre of Communism: Print Surveillance in the Working-Class Movement of Late Colonial Calcutta (1920–1947)

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Labour History Review

The Sentier Strike in Paris (1980): The Mobilization of Immigrant Workers as an Anti-Imperialist Struggle

Author:  Camille Fauroux and Fatma Çıngı KocadostThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (3). Read this article. In the 1970s, young activists of the Turkish revolutionary left found themselves in France as refugees, students, or workers. Amongst them, members of Devrimci Yol (Revolutionary Way), galvanized by the intensity of the struggles in Turkey, decided to do their bit by organizing migrant workers … Continue reading The Sentier Strike in Paris (1980): The Mobilization of Immigrant Workers as an Anti-Imperialist Struggle

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Labour History Review

Britain’s Labour Party and the Anti-Colonial Labour Movement in Fiji (1945–1970)

Author:  Adrien RoddThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (3). Read this article. The Labour Party in Britain achieved its first ever absolute parliamentary majority in the 1945 general election, at the tail end of the Second World War. Historically a socialist and internationalist party founded with the aim of providing parliamentary representation to trade unionists and the working class, Labour formed … Continue reading Britain’s Labour Party and the Anti-Colonial Labour Movement in Fiji (1945–1970)

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Books etc, Labour History Review

Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 90 (2025), Issue 3

The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (3). Read the reviews. Matthew Stibbe reviews Michael Braddick, Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian, London and New York: Verso, 2025, pp. x + 308, h/b, £35, ISBN 978 18397 60778 Bill Longshaw reviews Nick Mansfield and Martin Wright, Made by Labour, A Material and Visual History of British Labour c.1780–1924, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 90 (2025), Issue 3

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

Srajit M Kumar (Heidelberg) on time and the working-class movement in 20th century North India

My dissertation focuses upon the various intersections between time and working-class politics through a study of the North Indian industrial city of Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in the early 20th century. I interpret time here in two ways. First, in its objective sense, as in its interpretation as linear time, represented through the ‘tyranny of clock time’. In other words, how time played a central role … Continue reading Srajit M Kumar (Heidelberg) on time and the working-class movement in 20th century North India

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Events

Call for papers: General Strike Exploration Day

Date – 9 May 2026Venue – People’s History MuseumAudience – Public audience and those with an interest in the working-class history, the labour movement and Manchester regional history May 2026 will mark the centenary of the General Strike when, for 9 days in May 1926, industrial production in Britain ground to a halt after trade unionists and workers tried unsuccessfully to force the government to … Continue reading Call for papers: General Strike Exploration Day

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Events

Votes for Women in Halifax and West Yorkshire

Writer and historian Jill Liddington is to talk at an event on ‘Votes for Women in Halifax and West Yorkshire’. The event takes place in the Albany Club, Hope Hall, Halifax, on the evening of Friday 20 February, and will include book signing opportunities. Tickets can be booked via Eventbrite here. Event details When Votes for Women campaigns swept the country, Yorkshire was no exception. … Continue reading Votes for Women in Halifax and West Yorkshire

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

Micaela Panes (Cardiff) on Labour women’s political activism in south Wales and south-west England, c.1920s-1969.

My thesis explores the experiences of socialist women throughout south Wales and south-west England across a period of rapid political, social, and economic change (c.1920s-1969). Local histories of Labour Party politics have long demonstrated the importance of exploring the grassroots and have been vital in uncovering the role and experiences of women. While historians have covered substantial ground in this area, particularly when exploring interwar … Continue reading Micaela Panes (Cardiff) on Labour women’s political activism in south Wales and south-west England, c.1920s-1969.

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Books etc

Len Johnson, Manchester’s uncrowned boxing champion and communist

‘I am here  to meet all comers’: the story of Len Johnson, Manchester’s Uncrowned Boxing Champion and Communist, by Michael Herbert. ‘Anything that I have and anything that I am, I owe unconditionally to the booth. The booth with its work, its careful living and, above all, its frame of mind… I am here to meet all comers and all comers I must meet,’ so … Continue reading Len Johnson, Manchester’s uncrowned boxing champion and communist

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