Category: Documents & objects

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.

Documents & objects

Who needs the ILP? How Labour’s 1918 constitution set it an existential challenge

In 1918, the Independent Labour Party faced the biggest question in its history to date: if the Labour Party, to which it had been affiliated from the start, was now an individual membership organisation with an avowedly socialist platform, what was the point of the ILP? The leaflet shown here was its first attempt to provide an answer to that far from trivial question. Formally … Continue reading Who needs the ILP? How Labour’s 1918 constitution set it an existential challenge

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Documents & objects

‘There will be no bevvying’: the 1971 UCS work-in

Introducing a pamphlet published by the Communist Party of Great Britain during the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in. The pamphlet can be downloaded from this page. ‘We are not going to strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. Nobody and nothing will come in, and nothing will go out, without our permission. And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, … Continue reading ‘There will be no bevvying’: the 1971 UCS work-in

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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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Documents & objects

Steaming ahead: trade union imagery that speaks of power and modernity

Trade unions often depict the tools of their members’ trades in their emblems, badges, membership certificates and banners: foundry workers with their huge crucible of molten metal, weavers at the loom, and print compositors hard at work with great cases of metal type. But few unions have done so with quite the verve of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Aslef). The membership … Continue reading Steaming ahead: trade union imagery that speaks of power and modernity

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Documents & objects, Labour history news

Digitised and online: the papers of George Lansbury

As the first of George Lansbury’s papers go online, Daniel Payne sets out how LSE Library is digitising its vast archive of material relating to the former Labour Party leader, and introduces some of the treasures it contains. Starting with the first two volumes, which are available online now, LSE Library recently announced plans to digitise its entire George Lansbury archive. An early supporter of … Continue reading Digitised and online: the papers of George Lansbury

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Documents & objects

Introducing Labour’s women MPs, 1929

When the Labour Party returned to power in 1929 to form its second minority government, the number of Labour women MPs doubled from four to nine. In this short newsreel, which would have been shown in cinemas all over the country, Margaret Bondfield introduces her colleagues – four of whom had been re-elected in the general election held on 30 May that year, and five … Continue reading Introducing Labour’s women MPs, 1929

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Documents & objects

From Joe Hill to the Man Who Waters the Workers’ Beer: a Labour Party song book

In 1955, as Little Richard tore up the norms of popular music with the opening ‘a wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom’ of Tutti Frutti, the Labour Party reissued its song book. Eschewing the musical revolution then making its way across the Atlantic, the party instead drew on the ‘old favourites’ Continue reading From Joe Hill to the Man Who Waters the Workers’ Beer: a Labour Party song book

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Documents & objects

Commemorating the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’: a trade union origin story in brick and stone

There can be few visitors to Tolpuddle over the past twenty years who have resisted the temptation to sit on the bench that forms part of sculptor Thompson Dagnall’s statue the ‘Tolpuddle Six’. Unveiled in 2002 and depicting an anguished George Loveless awaiting transportation to Australia, the work, carved from local Portland stone, has proved a popular addition to the small circuit of sites in … Continue reading Commemorating the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’: a trade union origin story in brick and stone

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Documents & objects

The People’s March for Jobs: taking the protest to Westminster

The first People’s March for Jobs had been a great success. Five hundred marchers set off from Liverpool, Yorkshire and South Wales, heading towards Westminster in a conscious echo of the Jarrow Crusade of 1936 and with a similar objective – to highlight the plight of those at the sharp end of government economic policies that were devastating whole industries. Initiated by the North West … Continue reading The People’s March for Jobs: taking the protest to Westminster

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