Seminar to mark 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute

The Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School is holding a day-long seminar marking forty years since the Wapping dispute. The seminar will take place on Saturday 24 January and it will be possible to attend either online or onsite. This event will commemorate the year-long struggle of workers for their jobs and trade union rights and reflect on its legacy. The Wapping dispute began when Rupert Murdoch’s News … Continue reading Seminar to mark 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute

CfP: Blood is the price of coal: coal communities, health and welfare in Britain and beyond

The organisers of a one-day conference on coal communities, health and welfare in Britain and abroad are calling for contributions from new and established researchers working inside and outside higher education. The event takes place at the University of Warwick, Coventry, on Thursday 18 June 2026, and has a submission deadline of 25 January 2026. Find out more. Conference summaryThis free one-day conference aims to … Continue reading CfP: Blood is the price of coal: coal communities, health and welfare in Britain and beyond

Roundtable report: the politics of overseas labour migrations from India

Pritam Singh reports on the roundtable event ‘Freedom and Whatever that Means: A History of the Politics of Overseas Labour Migrations from India c1833-1967’. Following the abolition of slavery in 1833, colonial India was the largest supplier of labour not just to the British but also to French and Dutch colonies. Whether as convicts, as indentured workers on five-year contracts, or under debt bondage to … Continue reading Roundtable report: the politics of overseas labour migrations from India

CfP: The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research

To commemorate the centenary of the British General Strike and miners’ lock-out, Newcastle University’s Labour & Society Research Group (LSRG) is organising a conference that revisits the historical experience of 1926 through the lens of new scholarship that is concerned with the global, spatial and maritime turns in labour history. Titled ‘The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research’, the conference will take … Continue reading CfP: The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research

Lunchtime lectures in Manchester

Manchester (with Liverpool and Chester) Branch of the Historical Association is running a series of lunchtime lectures, taking place at Friends’ Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester, M2 5NS. Admission is free for members of the Historical Association and £4 for non-members. All lectures begin at 12 midday. Saturday, 18 October 2025. Talk by Dr. Natalie Zacek (University of Manchester) on Manchester and Transatlantic Slavery. Saturday, … Continue reading Lunchtime lectures in Manchester

Roundtable: the politics of overseas labour migrations from India c1833 to 1967

‘Freedom and Whatever that Means: a roundtable discussion on the politics of overseas labour migrations from India between c1833 and 1967’ takes place on 23 October 2025 from 3pm to 6pm at the Graham Wallace Room, Old Building, London School of Economics. Attendance is in-person or online via Zoom. Please register using the links below. The event is supported by a grant from the Society … Continue reading Roundtable: the politics of overseas labour migrations from India c1833 to 1967

Exhibition: working-class community and mutual aid during the First World War

Remembering to Help, Helping to Remember, an exhibition funded by an SSLH grant, has opened at the Heugh Battery Museum in Hartlepool. Michael Reeve reports. Stories of the struggles, heroism and sacrifice of ordinary people in wartime continue to emerge in social history and war studies. While we have learned much from conventional military history about how wars were fought, social and cultural histories of … Continue reading Exhibition: working-class community and mutual aid during the First World War

Chartism Day 2025 report: landscape and the crowd, emancipation and revolution

Academic and independent historians, Chartist enthusiasts and the Chartism curious gathered in Huddersfield for the annual Chartism Day event, the latest in a series of conferences that first ran in 1993. With centuries of history as a site of working-class radicalism from Luddism to Owenite socialism and beyond, Huddersfield proved to be the ideal venue for Chartism Day 2025. Taking place at Heritage Quay, a … Continue reading Chartism Day 2025 report: landscape and the crowd, emancipation and revolution

Chartism Day 2025: book now

Chartism Day 2025 will take place on Saturday, 6 September at Heritage Quay, University of Huddersfield. Book your ticket now on Eventbrite PAPERSProfessor Peter Gurney: The Chartist Revolution: an argumentDr Joan Allen Daniel O’Connell, the Chartists and contested understandings of the language of emancipation, 1819-1840Dr Dave Steele: The Powerful Crowd: reputational power and Chartist meetingsProfessor Stephen Milner: Pre-modern Italy and the working class: the renaissance … Continue reading Chartism Day 2025: book now

West Yorkshire textile workers’ strike: one hundred years on

In the summer of 1925, all eyes were on the coal industry, where employers had been forced to back off from their threat to cut miners’ wages. But in the parlous economic circumstances of that year, the miners were not alone in fighting to preserve their living standards from attack. That July and August, more than 150,000 workers in West Yorkshire’s textiles industry came out … Continue reading West Yorkshire textile workers’ strike: one hundred years on