Category: Books etc

The SSLH publishes the book series Studies in Labour History in association with Liverpool University Press. We also publish book reviews in our journal, the Labour History Review.

The articles below draw attention to new books, reports, pamphlets, and online publications and projects of interest to labour historians.

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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Books etc, Labour History Review

Book reviews in Labour History Review Volume 87 (2022), Issue 3

The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2022), 87, (3), 323-337. Find out more. Claudia Jarzebowski reviews Mary Nejedly, The Industrious Child Worker: Child Labour and Childhood in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1750–1900, Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2021, pp. viii + 214, p/b, £16.99, ISBN 978 19122 60430 Janette Martin reviews Lyndsey Jenkins, Sisters and Sisterhood: The Kenney Family, Class, and Suffrage, 1890–1965, Oxford: Oxford … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review Volume 87 (2022), Issue 3

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Books etc, Labour history news

Communist Party bookshops: a history

Alternative and Left book shops were once a common sight in larger cities – and could even be found in smaller towns when there was a sufficiently vibrant radical culture to support them. Some failed after no more than a few months, while others traded more or less successfully for decades. And while many later arrivals from the 1960s onwards were eclectic in their radical … Continue reading Communist Party bookshops: a history

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Books etc

Nature’s missionary: the life of Seth Lister Mosley

Seth Lister Mosley was one of those great Victorian social radicals who by the latter years of the nineteenth century were doing so much to transform life in Britain’s towns and cities. Born into a working-class family and with little formal education, he became a pioneering naturalist and populariser of science – and can fairly be described as an early exponent of environmentalism. Widely known … Continue reading Nature’s missionary: the life of Seth Lister Mosley

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Mobbings, struggles and strikes: reclaiming the working class history of Dumfries

Mobbings, Struggles and Strikes: Episodes in the History of the Organised Working Class of Dumfries, 1771-1914, by Ian Gasse: the author, in association with the Scottish Labour History Society, 2022, pp. xvi + 400, h/b, £20 + £4p&p, ISBN 978 9163050 4 5 Class conflict in Dumfries so often centred on that most basic of staples, bread. From food riots in the 1770s during which … Continue reading Mobbings, struggles and strikes: reclaiming the working class history of Dumfries

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Fighting Deindustrialisation: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982

The fight led by women workers against factory closures in early 1980s Scotland has been largely ignored in both popular and academic history, argues Andy Clark. His new book aims to bring their story in from the margins and restore the gender balance in accounts of the fight against deindustrialisation. Popular accounts of industrial closure and working-class resistance in the 1980s overwhelmingly focus on the … Continue reading Fighting Deindustrialisation: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982

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Bread not profits: a story of celebration and regret

Bread Not Profits: Provincial Working-Class Politics During the Irish RevolutionFrancis Devine & Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh (eds), Dublin: Umiskin Press, May 2022, h/b €48.50, pb €40.00 (UK including postage) The latest collection from the estimable Umiskin [labour history] Press, of Dublin, is notable for carrying the story of Irish working class mobilisation beyond the metropolitan centres and into the regions of Ireland during the revolutionary period … Continue reading Bread not profits: a story of celebration and regret

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Books etc

Tom Paine: a fantastical visual biography

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

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