Theo Christodoulidis (University of Dundee) on industrial Dundee’s female migrant millworkers c.1841-1891.

My research investigates female migrant mill and factory workers housed at asylums and poorhouses in Dundee and its environs between 1841 and 1900. I have spent the last four years digging through primary sources, assessing and analysing recorded manifestations of anomic symptoms, and evidence of anomic experience, drawing on data principally from the Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum, Montrose Asylum, the Dundee East poorhouse, and the … Continue reading Theo Christodoulidis (University of Dundee) on industrial Dundee’s female migrant millworkers c.1841-1891.

Lewis Willcox (St Andrews) on the rural labour movement in Scotland, c.1918-1935.

The ‘Celtic Fringe’ is a somewhat unorthodox location for a labour historian to conduct archival research. Beyond the dynamics of agrarian protest between the 1880s and the 1920s, studied by historians such as Jim Hunter, Eric Hobsbawm, Iain Robertson, and Neville Kirk’s study of industrial unrest in Ballachulish, rural Scotland has received little attention from labour history. My PhD thesis aims to challenge the prevailing … Continue reading Lewis Willcox (St Andrews) on the rural labour movement in Scotland, c.1918-1935.

Book: A History of the Scottish Labour Party

A History of the Scottish Labour Party by Dr David Torrance, Edinburgh University Press, 2024. 320pp. The Scottish Labour Party – or rather the Labour Party in Scotland – was the dominant political party in Scotland from the 1950s until the early twenty-first century. It won the largest share of the vote at every UK general election between 1964 and 2010. While its electoral fortunes … Continue reading Book: A History of the Scottish Labour Party

Ian Andrew Gasse (1948 – 2024): an appreciation

In 2012, Ian Gasse came to live in Dumfries and Galloway, settling in the Kirkcudbrightshire village of Kirkpatrick Durham. Then aged 64, Ian was guided by several impulses, but retirement as we know it was surely not among them. In his new location, Ian found the local bus service facilitated his genius for connection. It was at a bus stop that he first met his … Continue reading Ian Andrew Gasse (1948 – 2024): an appreciation

David Torrance on researching the history of the Labour Party in Scotland

I am currently working on a book titled A History of the Labour Party in Scotland (to be published by Edinburgh University Press) which will examine the party’s origins in late nineteenth-century working-class politics and trade unionism, through to the formation of a distinct and ‘national’ Scottish Advisory Committee during the First World War. It will then chart the breakthrough of the Red Clydesiders’ at … Continue reading David Torrance on researching the history of the Labour Party in Scotland

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