Category: Commentary

These articles provide comment and analysis on topics of interest to labour historians. They are typically signed.

Commentary, Documents & objects

Slogans and souvenirs: TUC delegate badges from 1899 to the present day

Delegates to the TUC’s annual congresses have been sent home with a commemorative badge for well over a century. But, as Mark Crail reports, these small souvenirs often carry a message about how the trade union movement sees itself. The Trades Union Congress has produced a badge for delegates to its annual Congress since the very end of the nineteenth century. The practice continues today … Continue reading Slogans and souvenirs: TUC delegate badges from 1899 to the present day

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Commentary

Tracing the Labour Research Department’s struggle against fascism in the archives of the TUC Library

The Labour Research Department has been at the forefront of an information war against the far right for the past hundred years. Jeff Howarth tells the story of this century-long struggle through the LRD publications to be found in the TUC Library. Throughout the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first, the trade union movement has monitored the activities of far-right groups in an attempt … Continue reading Tracing the Labour Research Department’s struggle against fascism in the archives of the TUC Library

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Commentary, Labour history news

Stalinism and ultra-leftism: a warning from history – the leadership of the CPGB, 1928-1934

Alan Campbell and John McIlroy share headline findings from their research into the leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Comintern’s Third Period, 1928–1934. In a recent article for Labor History, we continue our extended prosopographical study of leading British Communists between the wars. It reports on a survey of the 66 members who served on the Central Committee (CC) of the … Continue reading Stalinism and ultra-leftism: a warning from history – the leadership of the CPGB, 1928-1934

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Commentary

Partners in crime: labour historians in the Golden Age of detective fiction

Typically set in a sprawling country house and populated by a cast drawn from the landed gentry and the well-to-do, ‘Golden Age’ detective fiction is not the most obvious genre in which to find two of the country’s leading socialist intellectuals.  This was a world in which money, privilege and titles were taken for granted, servants were ever-present but hardly central to the plot, and … Continue reading Partners in crime: labour historians in the Golden Age of detective fiction

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Commentary, Labour history news

Communist women leaders in the 1920s and 1930s

Alan Campbell and John McIlroy share headline findings from their research into the lives of the women who sat on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain in its first two decades. In two recent articles, we examine a small group of women active in the labour movement who participated in the leadership of British Communism between the foundation of the Communist … Continue reading Communist women leaders in the 1920s and 1930s

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Commentary

Video: Anger and Reason in the English Coal Lockout of 1893

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

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Commentary

Peterloo 1819: the short and long historical view

Most historians take short historical views. There are practical reasons for this, especially when having to produce for dissertations during a limited time period, but more mature historians can be under similar pressure from research assessment exercises. The literature on Peterloo provides an example. The recent definitive book by Robert Poole, Peterloo: The English Uprising (Oxford, 2019) is an essentially short view of 1819, even … Continue reading Peterloo 1819: the short and long historical view

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