Gavin McCann is researching a book on trade unions and education. Here he writes about his visit to the South Wales Miners’ Library in search of a lost culture of socialist education. ‘I was in a second-hand bookshop in Cambridge — it would have been 73-74 — and came across two volumes of the history of the mining industry. I thought, bloody hell, where has … Continue reading Gavin McCann on the libraries of the South Wales miners
Believed to have been taken in 1855, the year in which the Manchester Mechanics Institute moved to these smart new premises on Princes Street (then known as David Street), the photograph shown here is now held in the University of Manchester Library and is part of the John Rylands online images collection. Continue reading Manchester Mechanics Institute: birthplace of the TUC
Mick Ekers visits Norfolk Record Office to research the life in politics of Tom Higdon, one of the two teachers at the heart of the famous Burston School Strike which lasted from 1914 to 1939. The story of the Burston School Strike is quite well known. In 1914 Annie and Tom Higdon, two teachers in a village school in Norfolk, were sacked as a result … Continue reading Mick Ekers (Essex) on Burston strike school master Tom Higdon and labour activism between the wars
The Workers Educational Association and the General Federation of Trade Unions are launching a series of online classes with leading experts in their fields on key components in working class history that have lasting impact. Continue reading Their legacy – our heritage: online classes in labour history from the WEA and GFTU
Society for the Study of Labour History 