From Old Labour to the Third Way: The UK Labour Party’s Social and Welfare Policy Evolution between 1975 and 1997

Author: Ben Williams This is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2024), 89, (3). Read more. In parallel to the emergence and subsequent dominance of Thatcherite ideology across the realm of British politics from the mid-1970s, the UK Labour Party’s social and welfare policy agenda reacted and evolved for over two decades, a simultaneous and often futile process that occurred largely during a sustained and … Continue reading From Old Labour to the Third Way: The UK Labour Party’s Social and Welfare Policy Evolution between 1975 and 1997

Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 89 (2024), Issue 3

The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2024), 89, (3). Read more. Siân Davies reviews Randy M. Browne, The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024, pp. 224, h/b, £36, ISBN 978 15128 25862 Andrew Frow-Jones reviews Vic Gatrell, Conspiracy on Cato Street: A Tale of Liberty and Revolution in Regency London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 89 (2024), Issue 3

Video: Remembering the Strike: the miners’ strike of 1984-5 in popular memory

Dr Natalie Thomlinson delivered the Society’s third annual John Halstead Memorial Lecture, Remembering the Strike: the miners’ strike of 1984-5 in popular memory at the University of Huddersfield on Saturday 9 November 2024. The lecture can be viewed on YouTube here. Dr Thomlinson is Associate Professor of Modern British Cultural History at the University of Reading, and co-author of Women and the Miners’ Strike (2023). She has … Continue reading Video: Remembering the Strike: the miners’ strike of 1984-5 in popular memory

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?

Will Graham (Northumbria): Greenham Common peace camp activists, the NUM and Women Against Pit Closures

My dissertation project aims to understand how peace activists at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in Berkshire, interacted and worked with fellow political activists at local and national levels, but also across national borders during the Cold War of the 1980s. An important aspect of this concerns the link between the peace women of Greenham Common and female activists in the National Union of … Continue reading Will Graham (Northumbria): Greenham Common peace camp activists, the NUM and Women Against Pit Closures

Solidarity, the law and how history preserves the memory of the 1984-85 miners’ strike

Two panel discussions hosted by the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School on the legacy of the 1984-85 miners’ strike are now available as podcasts on the Library’s Spotify channel The Miners’ Strike 40 Years On: State Repression, Solidarity and Civil Defence explores the role of the law, the state and communities in the 1984-85 miners’ strike with Lord John Hendy KC on the role … Continue reading Solidarity, the law and how history preserves the memory of the 1984-85 miners’ strike

Remembering the miners’ strike, 1984-85

As events marking the fortieth anniversary of the 1984-85 miners’ strike continue, BBC Sounds has produced a five-part podcast series on the strike presented by the actor, writer and producer Jonny Owen. Among those contributing is Professor Keith Gildart, a member of the Society’s executive committee, and himself a former miner and expert in the historiography of the strike. Listen to Strike on BBC Sounds. … Continue reading Remembering the miners’ strike, 1984-85

UNITE the Union: a history in six volumes

Liverpool University Press and the Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School have been trying to make trade union history accessible again with a history of UNITE published in six cheap paperback volumes (each retails at £6.99) from 2022 onwards. We reviewed the first two volumes which covered the history of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, the core of UNITE, from 1880 to 1931 in … Continue reading UNITE the Union: a history in six volumes