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.
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
Their numbers were small but France’s revolutionary exiles were to have a significant impact on international politics, says Dr Constance Bantman, author of The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914, now published in paperback. The history of the French anarchists exiled in London between the late 1870s and 1914 has long been treated like a footnote in the history of the French anarchist movement. Looking at … Continue reading The delights of exile: French anarchists in Victorian and Edwardian London
This is a short history of the Carnegie Libraries in Wales. Continue reading Andrew Carnegie and the libraries of Wales
This small but compelling book tells the remarkable story of Margaret Skinnider (1892-1971), feminist, Irish revolutionary, trade unionist, political activist and teacher. Continue reading Margaret Skinnider: Irish revolutionary and activist – a biography
Walter Citrine served as TUC general secretary from the time of the General Strike to the arrival of the post-war Labour Government. Though sometimes seen as a hardline anti-communist, his relationship with communism in the UK and internationally deserves a more nuanced understanding, as his biographer Dr Jim Moher explains Continue reading Walter Citrine’s dealings with communism and communists
Co-editor Yann Béliard introduces the latest volume in the Studies in Labour History book series. In most studies of British decolonisation, the world of labour is neglected, the key roles being allocated to metropolitan statesmen and native elites. Instead this volume focuses on the role played by working people, their experiences, initiatives and organisations, in the dissolution of the British Empire, both in the metropole … Continue reading Workers of the Empire Unite: introducing book 15 in the Studies in Labour History series
“Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good,” declared Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man. Yet by the end of his life, the Norfolk-born radical had been exiled from Britain, narrowly escaped the guillotine in revolutionary France, and was widely shunned in his adopted homeland by his former comrades-in-arms in the struggle for American independence. Paine … Continue reading Tom Paine’s graphic life story to be told anew with the support of the SSLH
One hundred years ago this month, the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield effectively “bought itself” when its corporation paid £1.3m for the Ramsden estate, which included the whole of the town centre and over half of the land within the Borough boundary. Now, marking the centenary of the event, Huddersfield Local History Society has brought together a series of original essays on the Ramsden family’s role in … Continue reading ‘The town that bought itself’
The Charter, Our Right! Huddersfield Chartism Re-consideredEdited by John A. Hargreaves, featuring essays by Alan Brooke, Matthew Roberts, Malcolm Chase and John Halstead.Published by the Huddersfield Local History Society. “The Huddersfield district lay at the centre of many of the social and political protest and reform movements of the first half of the nineteenth century – Luddism, the war of the unstamped press, the ten-hours … Continue reading Essays on Chartism in Huddersfield
Society for the Study of Labour History 