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 news

Birmingham People’s History Archive finds a home

What started as a personal collection of labour movement papers has grown into a substantial archive for local, national and international working-class history. Now it has found a home and work is under way to catalogue its contents, writes Peter Higgins. The Birmingham People’s History Archive (BPHA) has been a project long in the planning stage. When Paul Cooper, the archive’s creator, was a student … Continue reading Birmingham People’s History Archive finds a home

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Books etc

Well read: labour historians recommend books that deserve to be better known

Newspapers and magazines always like to list their ‘best books of the year’ as Christmas approaches. But what if the best books weren’t published this year? Preferring to take a longer perspective, we asked labour historians to tell us about a work relevant to labour history that they felt was overlooked, should be better known – or which simply meant something to them. Here’s what … Continue reading Well read: labour historians recommend books that deserve to be better known

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Books etc, SSLH news

Communist lives in twentieth century Ireland

Above: Mike Mecham presents Meirian Jump of the Marx Memorial Library with a copy of Left Lives in Twentieth-Century Ireland, Vol. 3: Communist Lives, edited by Francis Devine and Patrick Smylie (Umiskin Press, Dublin, April 2020). An inscription in the book reads, ‘Presented by Umiskin Press, Dublin, to the Marx Memorial Library in recognition of its major contribution to the preservation and enhancement of Socialist … Continue reading Communist lives in twentieth century Ireland

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Books etc, Labour history news

Going underground: Henry Moore and the Yorkshire miners

Henry Moore is best known for his monumental bronze sculptures. His wartime sketches of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from the Blitz are also widely known and admired. Now a book and accompanying exhibition are drawing attention to a lesser known series of drawings of coal miners at work. Moore was a miner’s son from Castleford in Yorkshire, and commissioned by the … Continue reading Going underground: Henry Moore and the Yorkshire miners

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Labour History Review

Labour History Review Volume 87 (2022), Issue 3

Labour History Review Volume 87 (2022), Issue 3 has now been published. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine is having profound repercussions in Britain, not least on our cultural and intellectual life. However, although the media has presented this unfolding crisis in exhaustive detail, no one could reasonably argue that there has been much depth to the general treatment. The round table in our current issue … Continue reading Labour History Review Volume 87 (2022), Issue 3

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Labour History Review

Roundtable on the ‘New Cold War’

Authors: Peter Gurney, Matthew Grant, Grace Huxford, Christoph Laucht, Jennifer Luff, Holger NehringThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2022), 87, (3), 277-312. Read more. This article is currently freely available. Introduction: Peter Gurney on The Marginalization of HistoryThe ongoing conflict in Ukraine is having profound repercussions in Britain, not least on our cultural and intellectual life. However, although the … Continue reading Roundtable on the ‘New Cold War’

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Labour History Review

Suburban Labour: The Labour Party in Penge to 1919

Author: Martin SpenceThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2022), 87, (3), 227-253. Read more. This article examines the efforts of the early Labour Party to establish a foothold in a Conservative-dominated London suburb. It revisits the notion of a divided working class and ‘labour aristocracy’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and argues for its relevance in … Continue reading Suburban Labour: The Labour Party in Penge to 1919

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Labour History Review

A Strikers’ ‘Soviet’ in Belfast? The Great Belfast Strike of 1919

Author: Olivier CoquelinThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2022), 87, (3), 255-275. Read more. The Great Belfast Strike of January–February 1919, although hardly explored until now, was part of the movement to reduce the working week, which affected large British industrial centres in the aftermath of the First World War. Apart from its longevity (four weeks), this social dispute … Continue reading A Strikers’ ‘Soviet’ in Belfast? The Great Belfast Strike of 1919

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Labour History Review, Obituaries

John L. Halstead (1936–2021): Some Comments and Reflections

Authors: Keith Laybourn, Emmet O’Connor, Mike Mecham These are the introductions to a series of appreciations published in Labour History Review (2022), 87, (3), 313-322. Keith Laybourn writes: John Halstead is one of those rare individuals genuinely committed to the development of working-class citizenship through the extension of educational opportunities. This is reflected in his support for the active involvement of working-class adults in their … Continue reading John L. Halstead (1936–2021): Some Comments and Reflections

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