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.
Events

From 1984 to 2024: industrial disputes and social movements in the UK since the Great Miners’ Strike

Call for papers  This CFP concerns submissions:    Please see below for the submission guidelines for the one-day conference and the journal issue.    The one-day conference and journal issue focus on the past four decades of industrial disputes and social movements in the UK. The year 2024 is the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985. As such, it provides an … Continue reading From 1984 to 2024: industrial disputes and social movements in the UK since the Great Miners’ Strike

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Events

Chile Solidarity Campaign: fiftieth anniversary archive open day

The People’s History Museum is marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Chilean military coup of 1973, by offering an opportunity to join the Manchester museum’s archive team to delve into material from the Chile Solidarity Campaign (CSC) collection. The event runs from 11am to 3pm on Saturday 9 September. Find out more and book a ticket. The coup led to international outcry. In its aftermath, … Continue reading Chile Solidarity Campaign: fiftieth anniversary archive open day

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

Duncan Hamilton (Manchester) on the abandoned romances of Thomas Cooper

My PhD focuses on the literary activism of the Chartist poet and autodidact, Thomas Cooper. Unlike several other members of Chartism’s leadership, who came from middle-class or even aristocratic backgrounds, Cooper was proudly a working-class leader who worked as a shoemaker in Gainsborough before his entry into the movement. Aspiring to a career as an author, Cooper wrote prodigiously throughout his life, particularly during a … Continue reading Duncan Hamilton (Manchester) on the abandoned romances of Thomas Cooper

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Notes & queries

Researching the Preston lock-out

Dr Andrew Hobbs writes… I’m writing something on weekly publications produced during the 1853-54 Preston Lock-Out in North-West England, when thousands of cotton workers were locked out of the mills over their demand for a 10% restoration of wages (the event which inspired Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South). These publications called themselves balance sheets — they list donations to the … Continue reading Researching the Preston lock-out

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SSLH news

University of Chichester: cuts to history programmes

The Society for the Study of Labour History joins the Social History Society and many other organisations and individuals in regretting the announcement by the University of Chichester to suspend recruitment to two important history programmes, the unique MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora and the BA Modern History. In axing these programmes, the University of Chichester has placed two highly respected historians … Continue reading University of Chichester: cuts to history programmes

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Notes & queries

In search of the International Freedom League

Researcher Michael Samaras is seeking information about an organisation called the International Freedom League, which was active in the UK in the early 1930s. It was closely associated with an Australian radical Edward Alexander ‘Ted’ Dickinson (sometimes, in error, Dickenson). Dickinson was born in Grimsby and grew up a Wobbly in Australia, where he was jailed for riot and sedition. Returning to the UK in … Continue reading In search of the International Freedom League

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Commentary, Labour history news

Ticket to Ryde: how Labour’s leaders took a weekend break to write a manifesto

By the spring of 1949, the post-war Labour government had already delivered great swathes of the manifesto on which it had been elected less that four years earlier. The Bank of England had been in public ownership since 1946; the railways, coal industry and road freight had all been nationalized; and the National Health Service was up and running. All of which raised the question … Continue reading Ticket to Ryde: how Labour’s leaders took a weekend break to write a manifesto

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Events, Labour history news

Celebrating 50 years of the Modern Records Centre

The Modern Records Centre (MRC) at the University of Warwick celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. Founded in 1973, the MRC boasts more than 1,500 collections specialising in political, economic, and social history – in particular industrial relations and industrial politics, including the archive collections of numerous trade unions. To celebrate this milestone, the MRC is hosting a number of events in the coming months: The … Continue reading Celebrating 50 years of the Modern Records Centre

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Events, Grants

How Oldham found the funny thanks to Sam Fitton

Funding from the Society for the Study of Labour History helped to enable Gallery Oldham to take working-class history and Lancashire dialect to new audiences, as Karen Heatley explains. This year marks the centenary of Sam Fitton’s death. Fitton was fun-loving and multi-talented, his career started in the local textile mills but he went on to make a living as a skilled illustrator, poet, dialect … Continue reading How Oldham found the funny thanks to Sam Fitton

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

Left-wing, woman, aristocrat: in search of Elinor Bethell (1869-1943)

Dr Quentin Gasteuil explains how he tracked down Elinor Bethell, a little known British woman who played a leading role in the Labour Party in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, with help from an SSLH bursary. I came across the widely unknown character of Elinor Frances Bethell during my PhD research. When I first made archival contact with her, she was a British woman … Continue reading Left-wing, woman, aristocrat: in search of Elinor Bethell (1869-1943)

Unknown's avatarEditorMC