Category: Notes & queries

Notes & queries is a forum for the exchange of information. Do you have a query for us about labour history? Or a note you want to share on current research, archives or the preservation of labour history? Get in touch.

Notes & queries

Seeking information on the mining explosion at Maypole Colliery, Wigan (1908)

Do you have information on the mining explosion at the Mapole Colliery, in Abram, Wigan in August 1908? Tish Gibbons would like to hear from you. Tish is researching the Irish men killed in the mining explosion at the Maypole Colliery, in Abram, Wigan on the 18 August 1908.  Newspaper coverage at the time suggested that 18 were Irish, and 13 from County Mayo alone. … Continue reading Seeking information on the mining explosion at Maypole Colliery, Wigan (1908)

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Documents & objects, Notes & queries

Appeal for help locating a Peace Pledge Union poster

The Peace Museum is looking for help locating a historic poster originally printed by the Peace Pledge Union as part of their upcoming exhibition. The museum, which explores the history and untold stories of peacemakers, reform and peace movements, has issued an appeal to all who may have information about the poster. The museum hopes to acquire a copy so that they can permanently hold … Continue reading Appeal for help locating a Peace Pledge Union poster

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Notes & queries

In search of Striking Women: can you help find the exhibition?

Forty years ago Brenda Prince was one of four women photographers commissioned to do an exhibition titled Striking Women. Made up of more than 40 large black and white panels, it was shown at the Photographers Gallery in London in 1985 – but has since disappeared. Now, with the anniversary of the miners’ strike very much to the fore, Ms Prince is trying to track … Continue reading In search of Striking Women: can you help find the exhibition?

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Notes & queries

Researching an oral history of the New Left

Do you have memories of the New Left? Andrew Whitehead would like to hear from you. The New Left was a strand in British radicalism which distanced itself from both Stalinism and social democracy and proved to be an enduring and influential part of the left. It emerged in 1956, the year of Khruschev’s ‘secret’ speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, as well as of the … Continue reading Researching an oral history of the New Left

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Notes & queries

Researching the Preston lock-out

Dr Andrew Hobbs writes… I’m writing something on weekly publications produced during the 1853-54 Preston Lock-Out in North-West England, when thousands of cotton workers were locked out of the mills over their demand for a 10% restoration of wages (the event which inspired Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South). These publications called themselves balance sheets — they list donations to the … Continue reading Researching the Preston lock-out

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Notes & queries

In search of the International Freedom League

Researcher Michael Samaras is seeking information about an organisation called the International Freedom League, which was active in the UK in the early 1930s. It was closely associated with an Australian radical Edward Alexander ‘Ted’ Dickinson (sometimes, in error, Dickenson). Dickinson was born in Grimsby and grew up a Wobbly in Australia, where he was jailed for riot and sedition. Returning to the UK in … Continue reading In search of the International Freedom League

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Documents & objects, Notes & queries

‘Your Britain’: Labour’s programme for a general election that never was?

Labour’s policy document offers a radical programme for government, and presents it in persuasive language and an attractive package. But Mark Crail wonders whether anyone can put a firm date on it. ‘A Labour Council has built this pleasant estate of happy homes for the people,’ declares the caption on the front of this vintage Labour Party magazine. Printed in bright colours, and with its … Continue reading ‘Your Britain’: Labour’s programme for a general election that never was?

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Books etc, Notes & queries

Walter Citrine’s dealings with communism and communists

Walter Citrine served as TUC general secretary from the time of the General Strike to the arrival of the post-war Labour Government. Though sometimes seen as a hardline anti-communist, his relationship with communism in the UK and internationally deserves a more nuanced understanding, as his biographer Dr Jim Moher explains Continue reading Walter Citrine’s dealings with communism and communists

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