Liverpool University Press and the Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School have been trying to make trade union history accessible again with a history of UNITE published in six cheap paperback volumes (each retails at £6.99) from 2022 onwards. We reviewed the first two volumes which covered the history of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, the core of UNITE, from 1880 to 1931 in … Continue reading UNITE the Union: a history in six volumes
My PhD thesis asks: when do trade unions come to support universal welfare policies? It pursues the question through a comparison of the British and American labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century. Thanks to the funding from the Society for the Study of Labour History, I was able to make two archival visits which hugely advanced my research. The first was to … Continue reading Maya Adereth (LSE) on trade unions and friendly society benefits in the UK and US at the turn of the 20th century
Writing in the October 2023 issue of Workers of the World: International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflict, Dr Dave Lyddon explores ‘Three hundred years of British strikes: contours, legal frameworks, and tactics’. The article, which is available open access, is a first attempt to cover the topic over such a long time span. Read the article in full. Abstract Britain has the longest … Continue reading The long view: three hundred years of British strikes: contours, legal frameworks, and tactics
The Printworkers’ Collection is a huge documentary archive of labour history. Mark Crail visited the Marx Memorial Library to ask director Meirian Jump about a project to conserve and open it up to researchers and the public. Since 2009, the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School has been home to a unique collection of material on the history of those who worked in the print, … Continue reading Print matters: conserving and promoting the printworkers’ story
The archive of Arthur Scargill, activist and former President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982-2002, has found a new home at the University of Sheffield Library Special Collections, Heritage and Archives. The Arthur Scargill Archive covers his life, from the day he started work at the age of 15 at Woolley Colliery in the North Barnsley area; his time in the Young … Continue reading University of Sheffield acquires Arthur Scargill archive
The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2023), 88, (1), 323-337. Read more. Edda Nicolson reviews Matthew Roberts, Democratic Passions: The Politics of Feeling in British Popular Radicalism, 1809–48, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022, pp. vi + 262, h/b, £80, ISBN 978 15261 37043 Colin Heywood reviews Elisabeth Anderson, Agents of Reform: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review Volume 88 (2023), Issue 1
A series of recent articles from Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (HSIR) which explore the history of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) are currently free to read for a limited time. The articles are being made freely available thanks to an initiative by HSIR and Liverpool University Press. Writing on the LUP website, Steve French, a member of the journal’s editorial committee, explains … Continue reading Exploring the history of the National Union of Public Employees
At any other time, a few hundred manufacturing workers calling a strike over pay would hardly merit much more than a footnote in the history books. But the dispute at Silentnight’s bed factories in the mid 1980s was a pivotal moment in industrial relations – and, for trade unions and their members at least, this was a clear warning of the difficult times to come. … Continue reading Britain’s longest strike? How Silentnight bed makers held out for eighteen months
Untold thousands of trade union emblems were produced in the Victorian era, but by the twentieth century they looked out of date and their use was in decline. Mark Crail looks at a 1930s revival that briefly breathed new life into the genre. The trade union membership certificate shown here (Fig. 1) was based on an emblem adopted in the 1930s by the National Union … Continue reading Planes, trains and automobiles: rethinking Victorian union imagery in the 1930s
Since shifting its approach on digitisation to make as many union journals as possible available online, the Modern Records Centre has managed to scan a vast quantity of material and make it available free of charge to researchers, as Liz Wood explains. After two years of steady scanning, the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick has hit the milestone of 100,000 pages of … Continue reading From New Dawn to Labour Prophet: taking union journals to a wider audience
Society for the Study of Labour History 