Postgraduates are encouraged to submit articles for consideration for the 2022 essay prize to the editors of Labour History Review. This annual prize awards £500 for the best essay, which will be published in the LHR. The essay prize is open to anyone currently registered for a higher research degree, in Britain or abroad, or to anyone who completed such a degree no earlier than February 2019. … Continue reading LHR postgraduate essay prize 2022
Archivist Sarah Chubb reports on a workshop exploring newly catalogued records for the coal mining industry in the Midlands, and at ways these might be developed and made easier to access and use Continue reading Mining the seams: exploring Derbyshire and Warwickshire’s coal archives
The National Library of Scotland is to host a celebration of the pioneering work of Scotland’s two leading labour history societies. Continue reading Hard work, ye ken: the past, present and future of Scottish labour history
John Halstead, who has died aged 85, was among the earliest members of the Society for the Study of Labour History, and over a period of six decades occupied nearly every post within the Society, contributing his time and expertise unstintingly to serve as editor, chair, secretary and latterly vice-president. Born in Huddersfield, and educated at Highburton Church of England elementary school and Penistone Grammar … Continue reading John L Halstead (1936-2021)
Published by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1961, Meet the Communists is a recruitment leaflet aimed squarely at railway workers. Continue reading Meet the Communists: recruiting on the railways
Ireland’s first working-class studies conference is to take place from 8-12 November. The first three days will be online via Zoom, followed by two face-to-face days at Liberty Hall, Dublin. The event includes 30 panels, two keynote Speakers and two live performance evenings. The Organising Committee is made up of working-class and feminist scholars currently researching and teaching in Ireland and overseas. The keynote speakers … Continue reading Conference: working-class studies in Ireland
Believed to have been taken in 1855, the year in which the Manchester Mechanics Institute moved to these smart new premises on Princes Street (then known as David Street), the photograph shown here is now held in the University of Manchester Library and is part of the John Rylands online images collection. Continue reading Manchester Mechanics Institute: birthplace of the TUC
The 2021 funding round for the Joint BME Events and Activities Small Grants scheme designed to support Black and Minority Ethnic history in the UK has now closed. Grants of up to £1,000 for available for eligible projects, and the deadline for applications was 12 November 2021. The scheme is administered by the Social History Society in partnership with the Society for the Study of … Continue reading Funding round for 2021 BME history projects now closed
Mick Ekers visits Norfolk Record Office to research the life in politics of Tom Higdon, one of the two teachers at the heart of the famous Burston School Strike which lasted from 1914 to 1939. The story of the Burston School Strike is quite well known. In 1914 Annie and Tom Higdon, two teachers in a village school in Norfolk, were sacked as a result … Continue reading Mick Ekers (Essex) on Burston strike school master Tom Higdon and labour activism between the wars
Titled ‘The new social order: work for all, art for all’, this powerful image was created by the socialist artist Walter Crane (1845-1915) for a leaflet for the so-called Ancoats Brotherhood – named for the district of Manchester in which they were based. The brotherhood had been founded in 1878 with the aim of bringing art and literature to the working class; it organised lectures, … Continue reading Walter Crane’s artistic vision of a new social order
Society for the Study of Labour History 