Tag: 1940s

Labour History Review

A Rebel with a Cause: Eric Heffer, the Marxist Years, 1938-1958

Author: Keith Laybourn and Neil PyeThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (2). Read this article. Eric Heffer, who rose to the top of the Labour Party’s left-wing hierarchy in the 1970s and 1980s, spent much of his early political career in the Communist Party of Great Britain and, after being expelled in 1948, in the Socialist Workers’ Federation, an anti-Communist … Continue reading A Rebel with a Cause: Eric Heffer, the Marxist Years, 1938-1958

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Labour History Review

‘The Workers’ Stately Home’: Wortley Hall in Post-War Britain

Author: Michael BaileyThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (2). Read this article. Although there are relatively large bodies of interrelated literature concerning trade unions, industrial politics, workers’ education and leisure in post-war Britain, little has been written about the importance of Wortley Hall (also known as ‘The Workers’ Stately Home’ or ‘Labour’s Home’) as a popular educational and holiday centre … Continue reading ‘The Workers’ Stately Home’: Wortley Hall in Post-War Britain

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Commentary

Co-operative Party campaigning in the constituencies at the 1945 election

The 1945 general election saw the Co-operative Party return a record twenty-three MPs in alliance with the Labour Party. Here, Ellie Townsend introduces research that shows how candidates tailored their electoral message about co-operation to suit local circumstances. The Co-operative Party, set up in 1917, was an attempt to protect the interests of the consumer co-operative movement in parliament.1 From its outset, the Co-operative Party … Continue reading Co-operative Party campaigning in the constituencies at the 1945 election

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Documents & objects

‘Mr Attlee is confident’: a Limehouse declaration

Towards the end of October 1945, Prime Minister Clement Attlee was back in his Limehouse constituency for a victory rally. It had been less than six months since the end of the war in Europe, and just weeks later in the UK a Labour government had been swept to power. A world reshaped by conflict was being remade once again in a new era of … Continue reading ‘Mr Attlee is confident’: a Limehouse declaration

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Labour History Review

The Limits to Solidarity: Trade Union Responses to European Workers in Britain, 1945–1948

Author: Avram TaylorThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (1). Read more. During the first years of the post-war Labour government (1945–8), three groups of foreign workers were incorporated into the labour force: prisoners of war (POWs), Polish soldiers who had fought with the British, and European volunteer workers (EVWs). This article examines the responses of the trade union movement to … Continue reading The Limits to Solidarity: Trade Union Responses to European Workers in Britain, 1945–1948

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Labour History Review

Workforce Disability and the 1949 ‘Ineffectives’ Strike in London Docks

Author: Jim PhillipsThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2025), 90, (1). Read more. In April 1949 the employment of thirty-two registered dock workers in London was terminated because they were regarded as ‘ineffective’, incapable physically of performing the job. Their redundancies were briefly resisted through strike action. This ended when the Labour government threatened to prosecute strike leaders. The episode highlighted the … Continue reading Workforce Disability and the 1949 ‘Ineffectives’ Strike in London Docks

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

The Labour Party and empire in the 1940s

Jack Taylor reports on his research into 1940s’ attitudes to empire in the Labour Party policy apparatus and among the leading Labour figures of the era. In researching the Labour Party’s post-war imperial policy in the Middle East, I became interested in ideas around British expertise and experience in shaping political institutions. A Society for the Study of Labour History research bursary allowed me to … Continue reading The Labour Party and empire in the 1940s

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Commentary

Class Encounters: A.V. Alexander, co-operator

In the eleventh of our series on meetings with figures from labour history, Jane Donaldson encounters co-operator, government minister and peer A.V. Alexander. My place of work at the Co-op Archives in Holyoake House in Manchester is among many buildings in an area still known sometimes as the Co-operative Quarter and I am surrounded by collections which tell the history of the co-operative movement. Holyoake … Continue reading Class Encounters: A.V. Alexander, co-operator

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Labour History Review

Édouard Dolléans: First Modern Historian of Chartism?

Author: Kevin MorganThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2024), 89, (3). Read more. Though Édouard Dolléans (1877–1954) was described by Malcolm Chase as Chartism’s first modern historian, his writings on the subject have never been translated into English and are largely unfamiliar to current historians of the movement. This paper discusses the two editions of Dolléans’s history of Chartism, published in 1912–13 … Continue reading Édouard Dolléans: First Modern Historian of Chartism?

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