Kerrie McGiveron (Liverpool) on Big Flame, women and the Tower Hill Base Group

With generous financial backing from SSLH, in the summer of 2017 I was able to travel to various sites to undertake research for my MA dissertation entitled ‘Notes on a Community Struggle:’ Big Flame, Women, and The Kirkby Resistance. Big Flame were a radical New Left organisation, whose unique commitment to both socialism and feminism renders them vital to the narrative of 1970s activism in … Continue reading Kerrie McGiveron (Liverpool) on Big Flame, women and the Tower Hill Base Group

David Strittmatter (Buffalo) on the erasure of St Peter’s Field as a site of commemoration

The great E.P. Thompson wrote in his magisterial The Making of the English Working Class that ‘1819 was a rehearsal for 1832’. Thompson drew a direct line from the Peterloo Massacre to the Great Reform Act. Indeed, the crowd of 60,000 that gathered in an open space near St. Peter’s Church in central Manchester on August 16, 1819, came to hear reform-minded speakers. Famously, the … Continue reading David Strittmatter (Buffalo) on the erasure of St Peter’s Field as a site of commemoration

Maxine Peake and the SSLH support the WCML

The Society has issued a a letter in support of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford after recent accusations made in an election pamphlet by Robin Garrido. Garrido, a councillor and leader of Salford Conservative party, claims that the WCML “is not a proper accessible library, you need to make an appointment to visit. Also you can’t borrow books like you can at an ordinary library.” … Continue reading Maxine Peake and the SSLH support the WCML