Photographs and information about documents and objects with some significance in labour history. Many of these items can be found in archives represented on the SSLH archives and resources committee.
Towards the end of October 1945, Prime Minister Clement Attlee was back in his Limehouse constituency for a victory rally. It had been less than six months since the end of the war in Europe, and just weeks later in the UK a Labour government had been swept to power. A world reshaped by conflict was being remade once again in a new era of … Continue reading ‘Mr Attlee is confident’: a Limehouse declaration
In September 1926, Walter Milne-Bailey, head of the TUC research department, sat down to record his thoughts on the General Strike, which had taken place in May of that year. As we approach the centenary of that event, the typewritten script of his report has been digitized and published online by the TUC Library Collections.1 Milne-Bailey notes at the very start of his report that … Continue reading A Nation on Strike: first thoughts on 1926
The People’s History Museum 2025 Banner Exhibition opens on Saturday 18 January. Running until 29 December 2025, the exhibition includes banners produced by trade unions, political parties, the co-operative movement, peace campaigns and others over more than a century of campaigning. Among the historic trade union banners represented in this year’s exhibition is that of the National Union of Railwaymen, Hither Green branch banner, made … Continue reading PHM to unveil 2025 banners exhibition
‘Are you a socialist?’ enquired the Independent Labour Party in a recruitment leaflet published in March 1909. It went on to list six questions about the reader’s beliefs, to which, if the answer were to be ‘yes’, the appropriate course of action would be to join the ILP and help carry its principles into effect. The leaflet itself is of little significance. It includes an … Continue reading Are you a socialist? The ILP’s six-point test for would-be members
The small copper token shown here is one of a vast number produced by the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence and distributed from his London bookshop, The Hive of Liberty, in High Holborn. Continue reading Thomas Spence and a radical propaganda token from eighteenth century London
This fine rosette carries at its centre the badge of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers’ Union. Originating as the Tea Operatives and General Labourers’ Association in 1887, the union played a central role in the London dock strike two years later, becoming that same year the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers’ Union of Great Britain. The rosette and badge shown here, however, … Continue reading Dockers’ union rosette in red, white and green
Seventeen volumes of papers, photographs and other records collected by the former Labour Party leader George Lansbury and his biographer and son-in-law Raymond Postgate have now been digitized and made available online by the LSE Library. This vast archive, which covers the period 1877 to 1955 (from when Lansbury turned eighteen until sometime after his death in 1940 at the age of eighty-one), includes both … Continue reading George Lansbury archives are now online
Forty years on from the start of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, a selection of material from the National Union of Mineworkers’ archive has gone online. Digitised and published by the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, the selection runs to 95 leaflets, bulletins and other items of ephemera. The collection’s emphasis is on the NUM at local and national level, and the support … Continue reading Forty years on: selections from the NUM archive mark the start of the miners’ strike
Labour’s policy document offers a radical programme for government, and presents it in persuasive language and an attractive package. But Mark Crail wonders whether anyone can put a firm date on it. ‘A Labour Council has built this pleasant estate of happy homes for the people,’ declares the caption on the front of this vintage Labour Party magazine. Printed in bright colours, and with its … Continue reading ‘Your Britain’: Labour’s programme for a general election that never was?
In 1839, the radical London Chartist George Julian Harney was out on bail awaiting trial for sedition. Two letters to his lawyer reveal his anxiety about the case and his desperate lack of cash. Mark Crail tells the story of Harney’s anxious summer. The letter shown here is filled with the angst of a man facing a possible gaol sentence and badly in need of … Continue reading The Chartist, his lawyer and a matter ‘of vital importance’
Society for the Study of Labour History 