Calderdale Trades Council and Calderdale Industrial Museum are teaming up this Sunday (17 July) to host a free public meeting at the museum on ‘The Great Strike of 1842: Halifax’s Peterloo?’ The event is supported by the Society for the Study of Labour History. This event is being held in person and there are limited tickets – please only book a ticket if you are … Continue reading The great strike of 1842: Halifax’s Peterloo?
By the early twentieth century, an increasingly confident trade union movement was building statement ‘castles’ in which to house their headquarters. Mark Crail looks at what came close to being a trade union quarter in central London. As trade unions grew in size and complexity in the 1920s, so increasingly they moved into larger, more imposing, and often purpose-built headquarters – some leaving their original … Continue reading Castles of the labour movement: inside the trade union head office building boom
Ninety years of socialist newspaper history is at risk from the ravages of time. Meirian Jump, Archivist & Library Manager at the Marx Memorial Library, explains how you can help. The Marx Memorial Library is the proud custodian of a complete archive of the Daily Worker/Morning Star newspaper dating back to the first issue in January 1930. For decades copies of the paper have been … Continue reading Help preserve the Marx Memorial Library socialist newspaper archive
James Parker tells the story of Labour’s by-election victory in the Wakefield by-election of 1932. A by-election victory at Wakefield ninety years ago marked the start of the Labour Party’s slow recovery from electoral disaster in 1931. In opposition after the unhappy experience of minority government from 1929-31 and the loss of some of its key leaders to the National Government in August 1931, Labour … Continue reading ‘The beginning of a flowing tide for Labour’? Labour’s Wakefield by-election victory
There can be few visitors to Tolpuddle over the past twenty years who have resisted the temptation to sit on the bench that forms part of sculptor Thompson Dagnall’s statue the ‘Tolpuddle Six’. Unveiled in 2002 and depicting an anguished George Loveless awaiting transportation to Australia, the work, carved from local Portland stone, has proved a popular addition to the small circuit of sites in … Continue reading Commemorating the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’: a trade union origin story in brick and stone
My research focuses on the history of syndicalism and industrial unionism among maritime workers in Liverpool and Glasgow during the early twentieth century. Both cities were centres of labour unrest during the Edwardian and inter-war years, with Liverpool experiencing the 1911 transport strike and Glasgow being the host city to the dual unionist British Seafarers Union (BSU) and Scottish Union of Dock Labourers (SCUDL). Thanks … Continue reading David Isserman (Edge Hill) on transnational syndicalism and industrial unionism in Liverpool and Glasgow, 1905-1926
Tom Paine was one of the great figures of the enlightenment. Norfolk-born but exiled from his English homeland for his radicalism, he took up arms in America for the cause of independence, and narrowly escaped execution in revolutionary France, where he served as a member of the National Convention. Today he is widely remembered and celebrated as the author of Common Sense and The Rights … Continue reading Tom Paine: a fantastical visual biography
Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions was a ground-breaking publication when it first appeared in 1887, helping shed light on the true scale of trade unionism. Continue reading John Burnett and the origins of official labour statistics
Keith Laybourn drew on a lifetime of learning and experience for his valedictory lecture this month to an audience filled with colleagues and friends, as Janette Martin reports. Diamond Jubilee Professor Emeritus Keith Laybourn delivered his valedictory lecture, marking fifty years’ service at the University of Huddersfield, to an audience filled with friends, colleagues and former students. Keith’s theme was ‘The politics of working-class gambling … Continue reading Going to the dogs: celebrating fifty years with Professor Keith Laybourn
The first People’s March for Jobs had been a great success. Five hundred marchers set off from Liverpool, Yorkshire and South Wales, heading towards Westminster in a conscious echo of the Jarrow Crusade of 1936 and with a similar objective – to highlight the plight of those at the sharp end of government economic policies that were devastating whole industries. Initiated by the North West … Continue reading The People’s March for Jobs: taking the protest to Westminster
Society for the Study of Labour History 