Walter Citrine served as TUC general secretary from the time of the General Strike to the arrival of the post-war Labour Government. Though sometimes seen as a hardline anti-communist, his relationship with communism in the UK and internationally deserves a more nuanced understanding, as his biographer Dr Jim Moher explains Continue reading Walter Citrine’s dealings with communism and communists
George Smith was the final general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, and the first of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians. His son, also George Smith, offers a personal recollection of his father’s life. Continue reading George Smith (1914-1978) the joiner who built a union
Labour History Review Volume 86 (2021), Issue 1 has now been published. From the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of 1971, to the Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) occupation of 2017, there is a long history of workplace occupations. However, despite the prominence and significance of occupation as a tactic, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, current historical examinations have been fragmented. This special issue of Labour History … Continue reading Labour History Review Volume 86 (2021), Issue 1
Author: Alan TuckmanThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 7-35. Find out more. This paper traces the development of this form of industrial action through the 1970s, the emergence of an alternative economic voice, ultimately almost silenced in the 1980s with the dominance of new-liberalism, leaving a sedimentary alternative which periodically reappears. We first need to consider the … Continue reading After UCS: Workplace Occupation in Britain in the 1970s
Author: Valerie Wright, Jim Philips, Jim TomlinsonThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 63-90. Find out more. In January 1983 the US-owned multinational Timex, a prominent employer in Dundee since 1946, announced it would cease production of mechanical wristwatches in the city. Substantial redundancies would accompany closure of the Milton of Craigie production unit where 2,000 mainly male … Continue reading Defending the Right to Work: The 1983 Timex Workers’ Occupation in Dundee
The PDF document below includes an overview of new collections which were reported by archives to the Society for the Study of Labour History’s Archive and Resources sub-committee (SSLH-ARC) and which may be of interest to labour historians. Among the numerous collections noted by the SSLH-ARC are: Archive material relating to the Pilkington strike and to pottery workers – now in the Working Class Movement … Continue reading Additions to labour history archive collections 2020
Lewis Minkin, who has died aged 84, wrote three authoritative, even definitive, books on the exercise of power and political influence inside the Labour Party. In researching The Labour Party Conference (1978), The Contentious Alliance (1991), and The Blair Supremacy (2014), Minkin accessed records available to few and clearly spoke to everyone; equally clearly, everyone spoke to him. Taken together, these three monumental works are … Continue reading Lewis Minkin (1936-2021)
The General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) took part in an international conference initiated by the University of Bochum and the German trade union centre the DGB to explore how trade unions preserve and transmit labour history across the generations. This is the contribution given by Doug Nicholls, General Secretary of the GFTU. “You do not know where you are going to if you do … Continue reading Keeping our history alive: the work of the GFTU on history, memory and tradition.
Author: Steven ParfittThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2020), 85, (2), 127–156. Find out more. Between 1883 and 1900 an American working-class movement, the Knights of Labor, spread around the world. Their assemblies appeared in Europe, Australasia, and Southern Europe, as well as North America. Yet they also inspired a range of emulating movements in different parts of the world. … Continue reading Transnational Borrowings: Scottish Sons of Labour and American Knights of Labor, 1887–1890
Author: Rosalind EybenThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2020), 85, (1), 33–58. Find out more. This article takes a reflexive approach in a case study of the dubious career of a syndicalist trade unionist and journalist just before and during the First World War. E.L. Pratt was an elusive trickster and a convincing (self-) publicist, who between 1914 and 1918 … Continue reading ‘The Question of Pratt’: A Syndicalist Conundrum
