West Yorkshire textile workers’ strike: one hundred years on

In the summer of 1925, all eyes were on the coal industry, where employers had been forced to back off from their threat to cut miners’ wages. But in the parlous economic circumstances of that year, the miners were not alone in fighting to preserve their living standards from attack. That July and August, more than 150,000 workers in West Yorkshire’s textiles industry came out … Continue reading West Yorkshire textile workers’ strike: one hundred years on

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

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

Border Mills: Lives of Peeblesshire Textile Workers

The 2024 Ian MacDougall Memorial Lecture takes place at the National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh – Thursday 4 April 2024, 5 pm. It will be delivered by Caroline Milligan. Based on a series of oral history interviews made by the late Ian MacDougal with mill workers between 1996 and 2004, Border Mills: Lives of Peeblesshire Textile Workers is a new book that … Continue reading Border Mills: Lives of Peeblesshire Textile Workers