On 13 February 1906 the Labour Group of MPs gathered on the terrace of the House of Commons for a photograph. That photograph would be turned into a postcard, a slightly battered copy of which appears here. Continue reading The Labour Group in the Commons: a postcard from February 1906
Edda Nicolson offers a reading list and guide to sources for labour historians interested in the topic and methodologies of emotions history Continue reading Labour History and the Emotions: a Bibliography
Red Wedge brought both music and the most cutting edge designs to Labour politics in the mid 1980s. Mark Crail looks at the badges coveted by a generation – and at the organisation that produced them. The platform was too small for the numerous politicians and musicians intent on making their presence felt in front of a battery of press cameras. But despite the crush, … Continue reading Red Wedge badges: from Constructivism to Neil Kinnock and the Style Council
Dr Quentin Outram examines the emotions at play in one of the largest industrial disputes ever to take place in Victorian England In the summer of 1893, mine owners sought to reduce wages across the coalfields organised by the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain – including Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire. The lockout developed into what was then the largest industrial dispute ever … Continue reading Video: Anger and Reason in the English Coal Lockout of 1893
Dr Matthew Roberts looks at the relevance of emotions to labour history, and explains why he challenges the idea that the political sphere was an arena of reason in which feelings had no part to play Continue reading What might labour historians do with emotions?
Far from being ‘ruffians officered by gentlemen’, the British army of the nineteenth century was made up of a typical cross-section of working-class men whose military lives mirrored those of the civilian working class, says Nick Mansfield, author of Soldiers as Workers – Class, Employment, Conflict and the Nineteenth-Century Military. As a labour historian, I have always retained a slightly odd interest in military history. … Continue reading Soldiers as workers: working-class life and conflict in the British army of the nineteenth century
Histories of the transition from war to peace at the end of the First World War tend to focus on the role of statesmen and imperial powers. Now a new book in the Studies in Labour History Series aims to re-examine the year 1919 from below, as its editor, Dr Matt Perry explains Continue reading The Global Challenge of Peace: introducing book 17 in the Studies in Labour History series
Labour’s European policies in the Wilson era were shaped not just in Whitehall but by formal and informal links between key players in the party and its Danish counterpart, says Dr Matt Broad, author of Harold Wilson, Denmark and the Making of Labour European Policy, 1958–72 Continue reading The Copenhagen connection: Harold Wilson, Jens Otto Krag and Labour European policy
What a day to be a headline writer on a Labour newspaper. On 23 January 1924, the TUC-owned Daily Herald led its news coverage with the formation of the first ever Labour government. But big as it was, the story had to share the front page with news from Moscow of the sudden death of Lenin. Born out of a strike bulletin first published by … Continue reading Daily Herald’s front page reports the first Labour government and the death of Lenin
Dr Hannah Parker reports on 10th International Congress for Central and East European Studies Continue reading Strategies of letter-writing and letter-reading in the 1920s-1930s Soviet Union
Society for the Study of Labour History 