Chartism Day 2025 report: landscape and the crowd, emancipation and revolution

Academic and independent historians, Chartist enthusiasts and the Chartism curious gathered in Huddersfield for the annual Chartism Day event, the latest in a series of conferences that first ran in 1993. With centuries of history as a site of working-class radicalism from Luddism to Owenite socialism and beyond, Huddersfield proved to be the ideal venue for Chartism Day 2025. Taking place at Heritage Quay, a … Continue reading Chartism Day 2025 report: landscape and the crowd, emancipation and revolution

Charles Glyde’s The Bradford Socialist Vanguard is now available online

Researchers and labour historians can now get access to The Bradford Socialist Vanguard via The British Newspaper Archive. Launched in 1908 by its editor Charles Glyde, the paper was to ‘be run in the interest of the wage-earners’ as an alternative to ‘chaotic capitalism’. Originaly costing just one halfpenny as a monthly edition, it is available in two runs from 1908-10 and 1912-1920. The Bradford … Continue reading Charles Glyde’s The Bradford Socialist Vanguard is now available online

Chartism Day 2025: book now

Chartism Day 2025 will take place on Saturday, 6 September at Heritage Quay, University of Huddersfield. Book your ticket now on Eventbrite PAPERSProfessor Peter Gurney: The Chartist Revolution: an argumentDr Joan Allen Daniel O’Connell, the Chartists and contested understandings of the language of emancipation, 1819-1840Dr Dave Steele: The Powerful Crowd: reputational power and Chartist meetingsProfessor Stephen Milner: Pre-modern Italy and the working class: the renaissance … Continue reading Chartism Day 2025: book now

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

Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 90 (2025), Issue 1

The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2024), 89, (3). Read more. Joseph Stanley reviews John Sanders, Workers of Their Own Emancipation: Working-Class Leadership and Organisation in the West Riding Textile District, 1829–1839, London: Breviary Stuff Publications, 2024, pp. xii + 536, p/b, £24.99, ISBN 978 19161 58672 John Cunningham reviews Peter Gray, William Sharman Crawford and Ulster Radicalism, Dublin: UCD Press, 2023, pp. xix + 467, … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 90 (2025), Issue 1

E.P. Thompson at 100: the personal and political

Had he lived to see it, Edward Palmer (E.P.) Thompson would have turned 100 on Saturday 3 February. To mark the occasion Calderdale TUC, with support from the Society for the Study of Labour History, Yorkshire CND, Calderdale National Education Union, and the Independent Working Class Education Network, organised a celebratory commemorative event. The venue, Trinity Sixth Form Academy, located in the town centre of … Continue reading E.P. Thompson at 100: the personal and political

E.P. Thompson at 100: Halifax event, 3 February 2024

On Saturday 3 February 2024, historian and political activist Edward Palmer Thompson would have turned 100 – had he not passed away in 1993. Meanwhile, the year 2023 also marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of Thompson’s magnum opus, The Making of the English Working Class, commemorated by a set of essays broadcast on Radio Three. The responses to the Radio Three essays demonstrates that there is still … Continue reading E.P. Thompson at 100: Halifax event, 3 February 2024

In tune: Foster’s Mill

A song commemorating the Luddite attack on Foster’s Mill survives only in fragments but helps provide an insight into community solidarity in this early period of labour history, writes Joe Stanley. Foster’s MillBill Price (traditional) Most labour historians will be familiar with West Riding Luddism in 1812. E.P. Thompson paid particular attention to the movement, and stressed its political undertones, in chapter 14 of The … Continue reading In tune: Foster’s Mill

Video: The Rising Sun of Socialism and the Labour Movement in West Yorkshire 1884-1914

The Labour Movement originated not in a single event or location but over time and as the result of events in many places. Among the most important of these was the West Riding of Yorkshire, where the Independent Labour Party was formed in the 1880s. In the second annual John L. Halstead Memorial Lecture, Professor Keith Laybourn spoke on ‘The Rising Sun of Socialism: The … Continue reading Video: The Rising Sun of Socialism and the Labour Movement in West Yorkshire 1884-1914

Bread not bayonets: Chartism and the strikes of 1842 on film

The West Yorkshire town of Halifax was absolutely at the centre of the great strike wave associated with Chartism in 1842. And in the summer of 2022, the 180th anniversary of these strikes for bread and the ballot were commemorated at events backed by Calderdale Trades Council, the Society for the Study of Labour History and others – to great acclaim. Now there is a … Continue reading Bread not bayonets: Chartism and the strikes of 1842 on film