In the first of a series of articles on places of significance in labour history, Duncan Hamilton tells the story of the Durham Miners’ Gala’s long association with the County Hotel. On the corner of Old Elvet and New Elvet in the city of Durham sits the Royal County Hotel. The Grade II listed building is an amalgam of upper-class housing from the late eighteenth … Continue reading County Hotel, Durham: a place in labour history
Buried in the records of the Durham Assizes are the proceedings of a coroner’s inquest on the body of a sailor named Thomas Aird. The document reveals details of a dramatic but little-known seamen’s strike that was brutally suppressed by troops under orders from a Sunderland magistrate. In an article for The National Archives website, Dr Joe Cozens, nineteenth century social and political records researcher … Continue reading Blood in the Wear: the Sunderland sailors’ strike and the 1825 North Sands massacre
In the final part of our series on meetings with figures from labour history, Quentin Outram tells the story of miners’ leader Thomas Hepburn’s encounter with mine owner Lord Londonderry, and the two men’s very different lives. Thomas Hepburn (1796-1864) and Charles William Vane, formerly Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCB, GCH, PC (1778-1854) ‘Where is this great man of yours, your leader Hepburn?’ … Continue reading Class Encounters: Thomas Hepburn, pitmen’s union leader
A one-day archive event in celebration of the Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson will take place at People’s History Museum in Manchester on Saturday 9 November. The event marks the centenary of her election to Parliament, as MP for Middlesbrough East, on 29 October 1924. Continue reading PHM opens up the Ellen Wilkinson archives
Just over half way through its three-year project to conserve and catalogue the archives of the National Union of Mineworkers, the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick has published the first five catalogues relating to early workers’ organisations in the mining industry. The vast archive collection, previously held at the NUM headquarters in Barnsley, was relocated to Warwick in January 2023 following specialist … Continue reading First tranche of NUM archives now indexed online in huge Warwick MRC project
Sean Creighton, who has died aged 76, was a community activist and independent historian who worked extensively on the working-class history of his native South London, and in particular on Black history in the area, but also made a significant and lasting contribution to the study of labour history in the North East of England. Born in Wandsworth, Sean gained a history degree from the … Continue reading Sean Creighton (1947 – 2024)
Author: Sarah HellawellThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2023), 88, (3), 221-243. Read more. Selected as the Labour Party’s chief woman officer in 1918, Dr Marion Phillips played a prominent role in the British labour women’s movement before, during and after the Great War. However, her brief stint as Labour MP for Sunderland between 1929 and 1931 has not attracted the same … Continue reading ‘Sunderland Has Lost a Figure That Will Go Down in History’: Marion Phillips in the North East of England, 1923–1932
Society for the Study of Labour History 