The second Applied History Network event will be held at the Marx Memorial Library (London EC1R 0DU) on Tuesday 1 December at 6.30pm. We will be discussing why labour history still matters. This event is again free but registration is required. Please sign up on our Eventbrite page.
Labour history was central to many constructions of radical history in Britain in the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, however, the decline in the strength of the British trade union movement alongside intellectual trends away from the centrality of class have coincided with an apparent ‘crisis’ of labour history. Yet trade unions still have 6 million members in this country, work is still a central experience of everyday life, and antagonism at the point of production must still have a role in radical politics. But what place does recounting the experience of labour in the past have to play in this process? This session will bring together people who have engaged with the history of labour and trade unions from a variety of approaches to engage with this question.
Speakers
- Sarah Boston (film maker and author of Women Workers and the Trade Unions)
- Mary Davis (Professor of Labour History, editor of Class and Gender in British Labour History, author of Comrade or Brother?)
- Owen Gower (Director of Still the Enemy Within, a documentary about the 1984-5 British miners’ strike)
- Jeff Howarth (Librarian at the Trades Union Congress Library Collections)
This event in supported by the Raphael Samuel History Centre
Applied History Network 