News and information of interest to labour historians.
The Durham Miners Hall is a unique and historically important building. But if it is to survive, it needs financial support, as Dave Anderson, Ambassador for the Redhills Appeal and Chair of the Marras – the Friends of Durham Miners Gala, explains. Continue reading Building a future for the Durham Miners Hall and the Pitman’s Parliament
The Society for the Study of Labour History is adding its voice to calls for “fair funding” for the National Library of Wales. The move comes as the Library, which is home to many of the historic, artistic and intellectual treasures of Wales, and to important labour history collections, faces budget cuts which threaten 30 jobs, in addition to 100 already lost over the past … Continue reading SSLH backs fair funding call for National Library of Wales
Index entries for ‘The English Cabinet’ collection in Moscow’s Centre of Social and Political History are now available online. Continue reading ‘The English Cabinet’, Moscow
Working in partnership with the School of Social Sciences’ sociology department, The University of Manchester Library has digitised a unique collection of documents reflecting the events, and aftermath, of the Peterloo Massacre. This set of material provides a range of perspectives on that day’s tragic events and its legacy. It includes a full run of the radical newspaper, the Manchester Observer (1818-1822), whose editor, James Wroe, was … Continue reading Peterloo: digitised sources available
Jules Durand (1880-1926) was a French longshoreman who led a strike of coal-porters in Le Havre in 1910, and was condemned to death after a frame-up organized by the Compagnie générale transatlantique, the leading shipper. June 15 2018 will be the one hundredth anniversary of his judicial rehabilitation and the association – Amis de Jules Durand – is planning a series of events to commemorate the … Continue reading Jules Durand, unsung human rights hero
Conway Hall, once the home of an eighteenth-century dissident congregation at historic Red Lion Square, has been awarded £88,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund to support a new digitisation project. As Conway Hall states:Victorian Blogging – The Pamphleteers Who Dared to Dream of a Better World will digitise and open online access to over 1,300 19th century pamphlets, many extremely rare. Victorian radicals used this cheap … Continue reading Victorian Blogging – The Pamphleteers Who Dared to Dream of a Better World
The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, has completed a project to digitise some of its archive holdings on the relationship between Britain and Russia / the Soviet Union in the decade after the Russian Revolution. The digital collection contains just over 650 documents (with full text transcriptions) – reports, correspondence, photographs, memoranda, ephemera and more – including documents from the archives of the Trades … Continue reading Britain and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1928
The family of Sarah Chapman, one of the leaders of the 1888 Matchgirls Strike in East London, have devised a petition to save her grave and install a fitting memorial. Graham Johnson, the husband of Chapman’s great-granddaughter, Sam, told the SSLH:‘[Chapman] was a leader in the Matchgirls Strike of 1888 in East London. After a few weeks on strike, 129 years ago on 17th July, she … Continue reading Save 1888 Matchgirl Strike leader Sarah Chapman’s grave
Working Together: recording and preserving the heritage of the workers’ co-operative movement Working Together, aims to identify and make accessible for the first time records from some of the major workers’ co-operatives of the time, together with co-operative support organisations. A trained archivist will be employed for a twelve month period to undertake the work of finding the material, and then in ensuring that where … Continue reading HLF funding for Working Together
Staff at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, have digitised more than 450 documents on Britain’s only General Strike of May 1926. The digitised documents include internal reports from the Trades Union Congress (the strike’s co-ordinator), bulletins issued by newspapers and strike committees, and the TUC’s transcripts of BBC radio broadcasts. As well as presenting the sources as a database of digitised documents, the team has been … Continue reading Mapping the 1926 General Strike
