John Clare (1793-1864) is considered England’s greatest working class poet. Greatly admired for his poetry and prose on the natural world, its joys and its losses, he has become an icon for the environmental movement. But in a new selection by Mike Mecham, a member of the Society for the Study of Labour History’s EC and chair of the John Clare Society, the poet is … Continue reading Clare’s People: poetry from below
Chartism Day 2025 will take place on Saturday, 6 September at Heritage Quay, University of Huddersfield. Book your ticket now on Eventbrite PAPERSProfessor Peter Gurney: The Chartist Revolution: an argumentDr Joan Allen Daniel O’Connell, the Chartists and contested understandings of the language of emancipation, 1819-1840Dr Dave Steele: The Powerful Crowd: reputational power and Chartist meetingsProfessor Stephen Milner: Pre-modern Italy and the working class: the renaissance … Continue reading Chartism Day 2025: book now
Labour History Review Volume 90 (2025), Issue 2 has now been published. The journal appears both in hard copy and online formats. In this issue… Keith Laybourn and Neil Pye investigate the early political involvement of Eric Heffer in the Communist Party of Great Britain and Socialist Workers’ Federation, and reveal how his experiences and reading shaped his later politics as a leading figure on … Continue reading Labour History Review Volume 90 (2025), issue 2
Author: Keith Laybourn and Neil PyeThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (2). Read this article. Eric Heffer, who rose to the top of the Labour Party’s left-wing hierarchy in the 1970s and 1980s, spent much of his early political career in the Communist Party of Great Britain and, after being expelled in 1948, in the Socialist Workers’ Federation, an anti-Communist … Continue reading A Rebel with a Cause: Eric Heffer, the Marxist Years, 1938-1958
Author: Michael BaileyThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (2). Read this article. Although there are relatively large bodies of interrelated literature concerning trade unions, industrial politics, workers’ education and leisure in post-war Britain, little has been written about the importance of Wortley Hall (also known as ‘The Workers’ Stately Home’ or ‘Labour’s Home’) as a popular educational and holiday centre … Continue reading ‘The Workers’ Stately Home’: Wortley Hall in Post-War Britain
Author: Diego LatorreThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (2). Read this article. The 1960s and 1970s in Spain were a period of intense social mobilization against Franco’s dictatorship. The clandestine and democratic labour movement was the main political agent behind efforts to improve working conditions and to achieve a political transition towards democracy in Spain. However, within this context, domestic … Continue reading Domestic Service and the Labour Movement in Franco-Era Spain: The Young Christian Workers and the Struggles of Domestic Workers (1960–1976)
The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (2). Read the reviews. In this issue of Labour History Review… Steve Poole reviews Matthew Roberts (ed.), Memory and Modern British Politics: Commemoration, Tradition, Legacy, London: Bloomsbury, 2024, pp. 296, h/b, £76.50, ISBN 948 13501 90467 Edward Royle reviews Rebecca Gill and Janette Martin (eds), An Ordinary Life: Florence Lockwood’s Memoir of Life, Suffrage and War in the … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 90 (2025), Issue 2
In the summer of 1925, all eyes were on the coal industry, where employers had been forced to back off from their threat to cut miners’ wages. But in the parlous economic circumstances of that year, the miners were not alone in fighting to preserve their living standards from attack. That July and August, more than 150,000 workers in West Yorkshire’s textiles industry came out … Continue reading West Yorkshire textile workers’ strike: one hundred years on
My MA dissertation research focuses on a wave of state repression of Italian militants from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. On 7 April 1979 several Italian militants and intellectuals of Potere Operaio (workers’ power), Autonomia Operaia (workers’ autonomy), and unaffiliated activists critical of the Italian Communist Party, were arrested for participation in the armed group ‘The Red Brigades’ and the suspected kidnapping and killing of … Continue reading Jamila Squire (Westminster) on international solidarity with Italian political prisoners: 1979-84
The July 2025 issue of our members’ newsletter is out now. If you are a member of the Society for the Study of Labour History, you will have received this in a PDF document by email. You can also download it from the Members’ Resources page here on the website. The newsletter is not sent to non-members, who are, instead, invited to join us. Continue reading SSLH members’ newsletter, July 2025
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