News and information of interest to labour historians.
Who wrote The Red Flag – and are you singing it all wrong? This brief history of a labour movement classic has some answers. Jim Connell was travelling the short distance home with friends by train from Charing Cross to New Cross after a meeting one evening shortly after the London Dock Strike of 1889 when he wrote the first two stanzas and chorus of … Continue reading The Red Flag and the White Cockade
The President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, has planted a tree and unveiled a commemorative plaque in memory of trade union and labour leader Tom Johnson, author of the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil, at an event to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Irish Labour History Society (ILHS). Tom Johnson, who was born in Liverpool on 17 May 1872, died sixty years ago … Continue reading Ireland’s President marks fifty years of the Irish Labour History Society
When the driver and firemen of an express train were killed in an horrific railway accident in 1898, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was on hand to offer financial and moral support to their families. Somewhere in the vast expanse of Kensal Green Cemetery there are two near-identical gravestones. Carved from Portland stone, with plaques depicting a train and green slate ‘rails’ to represent … Continue reading How the ASRS supported the bereaved families of the ‘heroes of the footplate’
The booklet shown here was published by the Independent Labour Party in 1943 to mark its fiftieth anniversary. Appearing in wartime, it was necessarily restricted in scale, but still managed to pack a great deal, including nearly fifty illustrations, into its 60 A5 pages. The membership of the ILP had been in decline since its decision to disaffiliate from the Labour Party in 1932, and … Continue reading The Independent Labour Party at fifty: a souvenir
A series of recent articles from Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (HSIR) which explore the history of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) are currently free to read for a limited time. The articles are being made freely available thanks to an initiative by HSIR and Liverpool University Press. Writing on the LUP website, Steve French, a member of the journal’s editorial committee, explains … Continue reading Exploring the history of the National Union of Public Employees
The picture above shows the former stable in which London’s ultra radicals met in 1820 to plan the murder of the Cabinet and the installation of a provisional government. From the outside, the building in Cato Street, now an expensive residential area close to the busy Edgware Road, appears much as it did two hundred years ago (see below). But behind the blue plaque on … Continue reading Cato Street: inside the building where London’s ultra radicals met their end
At any other time, a few hundred manufacturing workers calling a strike over pay would hardly merit much more than a footnote in the history books. But the dispute at Silentnight’s bed factories in the mid 1980s was a pivotal moment in industrial relations – and, for trade unions and their members at least, this was a clear warning of the difficult times to come. … Continue reading Britain’s longest strike? How Silentnight bed makers held out for eighteen months
As plans come together to unveil a blue plaque marking the Corruganza boxmakers’ strike of 1908, Geoff Simmons explores a dispute that helped Mary Macarthur hone the campaigning skills she would bring to future disputes. In the summer of 1908, 44 young women at the Corruganza box factory in Summerstown, south west London came out on strike in response to a pay cut in the firm’s … Continue reading Box makers at bay: commemorating the Corruganza strike of 1908
Protests against the Vietnam War took many forms. But the most sanguine approach to solidarity work was surely that adopted by the Medical Aid Committee for Vietnam (MACV). In 1967, activists in London organised a blood donor session, collecting 56 pints with the help of workers from the blood transfusion service. Further donor sessions were organised, and the MACV developed a system for safely storing … Continue reading Very nearly an armful… donating blood for Vietnam
Untold thousands of trade union emblems were produced in the Victorian era, but by the twentieth century they looked out of date and their use was in decline. Mark Crail looks at a 1930s revival that briefly breathed new life into the genre. The trade union membership certificate shown here (Fig. 1) was based on an emblem adopted in the 1930s by the National Union … Continue reading Planes, trains and automobiles: rethinking Victorian union imagery in the 1930s
Society for the Study of Labour History 