Tag: CPGB

Labour History Review, SSLH news

SSLH honours Labour History Review essay prize winners 2025

Florencia D’Uva of Universidad de Bueons Aires has been awarded the Labour History Review Post-Graduate Essay Prize for 2025. James Squires of Sheffield Hallam University has been named runner up. LHR editor Professor Peter Gurney presented Dr Uva with her winner’s cheque for £700 at an event held by the Society for the Study of Labour History at the Marx Memorial Library on Saturday 29 … Continue reading SSLH honours Labour History Review essay prize winners 2025

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Research bursaries

Harry Griffiths (Bangor) on anti-fascism in South Wales and the North West of England

My PhD research examines the development of anti-fascist activism within industrial communities in twentieth-century Britain. It explores localised anti-fascist movements and how factors such as class, employment, and education influenced political engagement. Focusing on two case studies, South Wales and North West England, the project examines the shared characteristics and distinctive experiences of anti-fascist activism across different industrial regions. While anti-fascism in Britain has received … Continue reading Harry Griffiths (Bangor) on anti-fascism in South Wales and the North West of England

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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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Bursary reports, MA & BA bursaries

Ben Howarth (LJMU) on anti-fascist mobilisation in 1930s Merseyside

My MA dissertation focuses on the ways in which anti-fascism manifested in 1930s Merseyside, a topic that has received little attention in existing scholarship. I am particularly interested in identifying the key individuals and organisations active in the region, and in exploring how class, religion, and ethnicity intersected in shaping local anti-fascist responses. I am also examining what made Merseyside a significant battleground for fascist … Continue reading Ben Howarth (LJMU) on anti-fascist mobilisation in 1930s Merseyside

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Events

Play: Chopped Liver and Unions

Manchester Jewish Museum is hosting a performance of the one-woman play Chopped Liver and Unions on Thursday 1 May to mark International Workers’ Day. The play is based on the life of Sara Wesker, a Jewish trade unionist and activist in the Communist Party of Great Britain who led the “singing strikers” walk-out at the Rego Factory in London’s Bethnal Green in 1928, stood on … Continue reading Play: Chopped Liver and Unions

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Commentary

Class Encounters: Walter Hannington unemployed workers activist

In the twelfth of our series on meetings with figures from labour history, Gregory Billam encounters Walter Hannington of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. Walter Hannington was a young toolmaker from Camden, best known as the National Secretary of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) during the interwar period. The 1930s, often popularly referred to as the ‘Hungry Thirties’, was a period marked by high … Continue reading Class Encounters: Walter Hannington unemployed workers activist

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Commentary

Recuperating and re-evaluating the life and work of Walter Kendall

Walter Kendall was a socialist historian and labour movement activist who for more than fifty years combined his research with a commitment to active membership of the shopworkers’ union USDAW and the Labour Party. Politically, he was a a Labour Party Marxist and opponent of Communism who occupied the ground between reform and revolution, becoming involved in initiatives such as the Socialist Workers’ Federation, the … Continue reading Recuperating and re-evaluating the life and work of Walter Kendall

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Labour History Review

Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 89 (2024), Issue 1

The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2024), 89, (1), 73-93. Read more. Mike Mecham reviews John Cunningham, Francis Devine, and Sonja Tiernan (eds), Labour History in Irish History: Essays Celebrating Fifty Years of the Irish Labour History Society, Dublin: Umiskin Press, 2023, pp. 451, p/b, £25, ISBN 978 18381 11212 Martin Spence reviews Michael Tichelar, Labour in the Suburbs: Political Change in Croydon during the Twentieth … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 89 (2024), Issue 1

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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

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

James Squires (Sheffield Hallam) on the CPGB, anti-militarism and pacifism after the First World War

My PhD researches the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and its relationship with anti-militarist and pacifist ideas from the First World War. The thesis reassesses the political development of the CPGB by focusing on the conscientious objector cohort that joined the Party following its formation in 1920. I explore the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolutions on the largest anti-war group, the No-Conscription Fellowship … Continue reading James Squires (Sheffield Hallam) on the CPGB, anti-militarism and pacifism after the First World War

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