The Marx Memorial Library is offering a course of six consecutive online classes in labour movement history spanning two centuries and with a focus on race and empire. Run by Professor Mary Davis, professor of labour history and secretary of the Marx Memorial Library, the first lecture is on 19 March, at a cost of £30 (£15 concessions) for all six classes. The series covers: … Continue reading Online classes in labour history at MML
With the National Union of Mineworkers’ archive now transferred to the Modern Records Centre, work is under way to catalogue this vast collection and decide how it can best be made available to researchers and mining communities. Mark Crail reports on the story so far. On a chilly morning in January 2023, a lorry drew up outside the Modern Records Centre at the University of … Continue reading Inside the NUM archive: 150 years of coal mining history
Forty years on from the start of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, a selection of material from the National Union of Mineworkers’ archive has gone online. Digitised and published by the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, the selection runs to 95 leaflets, bulletins and other items of ephemera. The collection’s emphasis is on the NUM at local and national level, and the support … Continue reading Forty years on: selections from the NUM archive mark the start of the miners’ strike
Britain has experienced continual crises for half a century, argues Neville Kirk. His new book examines the development of neo-liberal globalisation from the 1970s; the financial crash and its systemic effects from 2007 to 2009; and the ‘present crisis’ beginning in 2010. Here he introduces the book and the three crises at its heart. We currently live in a period often described, since 2022, as … Continue reading British society in crisis: from 1970s globalisation to the Brexit referendum
Every year the SSLH-Archives and Resources Committee publishes a guide to new labour history accessions in UK archives for the previous twelve months. The latest guide, for 2023, has now been published and can be freely downloaded below. Among the largest new additions to the archives this year is a collection of 100 boxes of material on political songs, including songsheets, vinyl records, journals and … Continue reading Additions to labour history archive collections 2023
We are delighted to have been able to add a page to our Archives and Resources Committee listings for the University of Nottingham. The university’s Manuscripts and Special Collections include collections from the Institute for Workers’ Control, the Feminist Archive (East Midlands), the Nottingham Clarion Choir, Nottingham and District Trades Union Council, and the papers of individual activists including Ken Coates MEP, Fred Westacott, and … Continue reading University of Nottingham special collections
Historic England has announced funding for 56 new working-class history projects over the next two years. Awards under the £875,000 Everyday Heritage Grants programme range from £6,800 to £25,000 per individual project. Among those to receive funding are the Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust, which gets £9,978 for its Tolpuddle Family Lives: A People’s Heritage project, and LGBT+ Northern Social Group, which gets £10,940 for Pink Triangles and … Continue reading Cash boost for working-class history projects
Two more books in the Studies in Labour History series will soon be published in paperback. The series is published by the Society in association with Liverpool University Press and currently includes nineteen books. Workers of the Empire, Unite: Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s-1960s, by Yann Béliard and Professor Neville Kirk, is due out on 1 March 2024. An important contribution to … Continue reading Labour history books in paperback
Six awards have been made in the latest funding round for BME history projects. Administered by the Social History Society, the BME small grants scheme is a partnership between the the SHS, Society for the Study of Labour History, the Economic History Society, History UK, History of Education Society (UK), History Workshop Journal, Royal Historical Society, and Women’s History Network. It was set up in … Continue reading Small grants scheme backs six BME history projects
Had he lived to see it, Edward Palmer (E.P.) Thompson would have turned 100 on Saturday 3 February. To mark the occasion Calderdale TUC, with support from the Society for the Study of Labour History, Yorkshire CND, Calderdale National Education Union, and the Independent Working Class Education Network, organised a celebratory commemorative event. The venue, Trinity Sixth Form Academy, located in the town centre of … Continue reading E.P. Thompson at 100: the personal and political
Society for the Study of Labour History 