Category: Labour history news

News and information of interest to labour historians.

Books etc, Labour history news

Visions of labour and class in Ireland and Europe: conference proceedings

The Irish Labour History Society (ILHS) embarked on an ambitious programme to mark its fiftieth anniversary involving an international conference in Dublin titled ‘Visions of Labour and Class’ and a collection of essays exploring the role of labour history in Irish historical narratives – Labour History in Irish History (reviewed in Labour History Review). Both were graced by the involvement of Irish President, Michael D. … Continue reading Visions of labour and class in Ireland and Europe: conference proceedings

EditorMC
Documents & objects, Labour history news

George Lansbury archives are now online

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

EditorMC
Books etc, Labour history news

Mills Transformed: new uses for buildings that shaped the North of England

Neil Horsley introduces a project documenting the repurposing of derelict textile mills across the North of England. Over the past three years I have visited, photographed and interviewed mill renovators at thirty-three mill conversions across the North of England for a project titled Mills Transformed. The focus of the project was initially on the physical aspects of building regeneration schemes but what became apparent to … Continue reading Mills Transformed: new uses for buildings that shaped the North of England

EditorMC
Commentary, Labour history news

‘The most fruitful period in the history of the British left’?: Communists and the Popular Front in the 1930s

In ‘“The most fruitful period in the history of the British left”[1]?: Communists and the Popular Front in the 1930s’, John McIlroy and Alan Campbell introduce a brace of recent articles examining the Comintern, the British Communist Party (CPGB) and the Popular Front in Britain, France and Spain between 1935 and 1939. The Popular Front policy which was put together through 1934 and formally adopted … Continue reading ‘The most fruitful period in the history of the British left’?: Communists and the Popular Front in the 1930s

EditorMC
Labour history news

WCML gets £100k Big Flame grant

The Working Class Movement Library has been awarded £99,847 to fund a project opening up access to its records of the Big Flame revolutionary group. Started in Liverpool in 1970, Big Flame was a revolutionary socialist group with a feminist, anti-racist, internationalist vision that emphasized mass class engagement and prioritized non-sectarian, non-authoritarian community organizing and political methods. It spread to Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham and … Continue reading WCML gets £100k Big Flame grant

EditorMC
Commentary, Labour history news

Inside the NUM archive: 150 years of coal mining history

With the National Union of Mineworkers’ archive now transferred to the Modern Records Centre, work is under way to catalogue this vast collection and decide how it can best be made available to researchers and mining communities. Mark Crail reports on the story so far. On a chilly morning in January 2023, a lorry drew up outside the Modern Records Centre at the University of … Continue reading Inside the NUM archive: 150 years of coal mining history

EditorMC
Documents & objects, Labour history news

Forty years on: selections from the NUM archive mark the start of the miners’ strike

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

EditorMC
Labour history news

Cash boost for working-class history projects

Historic England has announced funding for 56 new working-class history projects over the next two years. Awards under the £875,000 Everyday Heritage Grants programme range from £6,800 to £25,000 per individual project. Among those to receive funding are the Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust, which gets £9,978 for its Tolpuddle Family Lives: A People’s Heritage project, and LGBT+ Northern Social Group, which gets £10,940 for Pink Triangles and … Continue reading Cash boost for working-class history projects

EditorMC
Books etc, Labour history news

Labour history books in paperback

Two more books in the Studies in Labour History series will soon be published in paperback. The series is published by the Society in association with Liverpool University Press and currently includes nineteen books. Workers of the Empire, Unite: Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s-1960s, by Yann Béliard and Professor Neville Kirk, is due out on 1 March 2024. An important contribution to … Continue reading Labour history books in paperback

EditorMC