CLR James / Beyond a Boundary films

Two superb films by Mike Dibb about CLR James have recently been put online - Beyond a Boundary - a fine introduction to James's seminal study of cricket from 1976 and an interview with the great man himself from the 1980s, CLR James in conversation with Stuart Hall - enjoy!

When Jim Crow met John Bull

When Jim Crow met John Bull: The Battle of Bamber Bridge 1943
 
University of Central Lancashire and Preston Black History Group
present a weekend of commemorative events
 
21st- 23rd June 2013
 
Friday 21st June, 1-7pm, University of Central Lancashire
Symposium with Film Showing and Performance
 
Speakers:
 
Graham Smith (Author: When Jim Crow Met John Bull)
Neil Wynn (Author: The Afro-American and the Second World War)
Steven Bourne (Author: The Motherland Calls: Britain’s Black Servicemen 

and Women 1939-45)
Alan Rice (Author: Creating Memorials, Building Identities) 
Gregory Cook (Producer: Choc’late Soldiers from the USA)
 
Film showing of Choc’late Soldiers from the USA (first shown at the 

Smithsonian, Washington DC, 2009) and discussion with producer Gregory 

Cook from Philadelphia
 
'Lie Back and Think of America'
Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe, a one-woman show and post-show 

discussion with Front Room Theatre Company’s Natalie Wicox
 
Symposium is free and open to all: please book with Professor 

Alan Rice arice@uclan.ac.uk by June 7th
 
22nd - 23rd June:  Events in Bamber Bridge including church service etc. 

Organised by Preston Black History Group, Chair Clinton Smith 

clinton@Prestonblackhistorygroup.org.uk

Conscientious Objectors in Britain in WWI

An upcoming talk on Conscientious Objectors in Britain during WW1.

Tuesday 7 May - Senate House, London - 5.15pm. Cyril Pearce (University of Leeds)

Communities of resistance: towards a geography of dissent in First World War Britain

Cyril Pearce is mapping the geography of Conscientious Objectors in WW1 using a unique database he's compiled from archives in National Archives, Friends House and other archives.  If you have names of particular people you're interested in bring them along and see what he knows about them!  It is hoped the the database will be launched for public access in the near future.

A review of one of Cyril Pearce's earlier books on dissent in Huddersfield during the war is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/feb/23/historybooks.highereducation1

The seminar is part of the London Group of Historical Geographers seminar series and takes place on Tuesday 7 May, in Senate House at 5.15pm.

Leveller Thomas Rainsborough plaque unveiling

For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under…
 – Colonel Thomas Rainsborough at the Putney Debates, London, 1647.

Come to the unveiling of the plaque to Leveller Thomas Rainsborough with Tony Benn, Councillor Rania Khan, John Rees and the Tower Regiment (Rainsborough's Regiment) of the Sealed Knot.

Tower Hamlets Council are installing a plaque to Thomas Rainsborough in St Johns Churchyard, Wapping, East London, the place of Rainsborough's burial in 1648. The event is supported by the Leveller Association and the National Civil War Centre in Newark. Rainsborough was the most senior officer in the New Model Army to support the Levellers. He spoke in defence of the Levellers Agreement of the People in the Putney Debates in 1647.He was killed by a Royalist raiding party during the siege of Pontefract castle and his funeral became a mass demonstration of the Leveller movement. It concluded at St Johns Churchyard, Wapping. Join us on Sunday 12th May to remember the life of Thomas Rainsborough at 1pm in St Johns churchyard, where Wapping High Street meets Scadrett Street, near the Town of Ramesgate pub.

Edited to add - a note from John Rees: Just a quick note to thank everyone who made the Rainsborough plaque ceremony such a great success on Sunday.

The cameras were clicking all afternoon so there are a great series of pictures. Many are posted on the Levellers' Association facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Levellers-Association/128792937138196?fref=ts

Please do repost and share the images (and like the facebook page!).

And you can follow @Levellers1649 on twitter here: https://twitter.com/Levellers1649

Dublin 1913 - Unfinished Business group

We’re not leaving - Public meeting of young people against forced emigration
 The 1913 Unfinished Business group has come together with the Dublin Council of Trade Unions to organise a public meeting on the issues surrounding youth emigration on Monday, April 29th, 7PM in Wynn's Hotel on Lower Abbey Street.

Eric Hobsbawm Memorial Livestream

PROFESSOR ERIC HOBSBAWM MEMORIAL:

LIVE STREAM FROM BIRKBECK, 24TH APRIL 2013, 4pm-6pm

 

See http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/professor-eric-hobsbawm-memorial for more details.

Also, in case you didn't already know, the BBC have an online archive of past Desert Island Dics programmes. Amongst the 1,500 episodes you'll find:

• E P Thompson (from 1991) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/48e09905#p0093yqd
• Eric Hobsbawm (from 1995) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/767c82de#p0093pss
• Richard Hoggart (from 1995) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/d6a86f6d#p0093p7j
• Stuart Hall (from 2000) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/caed0ab9#p0094b6r

There are plenty more too in the archive. And you can download and keep them for ever more!

Oral Labour Histories symposium timetable

Oral Labour Histories: Britain at Work 1945-95


Britain at Work (B@W) in association with:

British Universities Industrial Relations (BUIRA) IR History Group and

Oral History Society (OHS)

SYMPOSIUM

Saturday 11 May 2013

The Goss Room, Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate (nearest tube: Liverpool Street)

Click on this hyperlink for full location details:

http://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/content.aspx?CategoryID=980

One again Britain at Work(B@W) is organising an Oral Labour History Day at the Bishopsgate Institute in London, this time on Saturday 11 May. It will be similar to the one organised in March 2012, but with an afternoon theme focusing on migrant workers and their experiences in the UK. B@W is an initiative to capture the memories of people at work between 1945-1995. Working life as experienced during the half-century 1945-1995 was marked by extreme diversity and change and by the growth of trade union organisation and influence to a high point in the mid-1970s. The trade union movement injected a strong democratic current into British workplaces, to which management responded in different ways, as evident from the significant conflicts between unions and employers, associated with the problems of technological change, de-industrialisation and new union legislation. The main theme this year is migrant workers, in particular Irish and Black workers and those involved in the NHS. The day will, however, begin with round table introductions on the projects in which different participants are involved and their interest in oral labour history. Following lunch, the afternoon will focus on migrant workers, and the day will conclude with the showing of Philip Donnellan’s 1965 film The Irishmen. All those engaged in or with an interest in oral labour history are welcome to participate. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Gold (M.Gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)
Programme

Coffee/ tea 10.30am

11.00am: Welcome and introduction: Stefan Dickers, Bishopsgate Institute

11.15 – 11.45/ 12.00 noon Opening address: Dr Sundari Anitha, University of Lincoln on ‘Asian Women’s experiences in the Grunwick Dispute: recording and disseminating oral history’ with accompanying exhibition

11.45 – 12.00 Michael Gold – Oral History with a Purpose – Oral Labour History, followed by:

12.00 – 1.00pm B@W updates: Round table introductions:

Five minutes from everyone (if they wish), saying who they are, the project(s) they are involved in and their interest in oral labour history

Lunch 1.00-1.40pm

Presentations and panel discussions (in plenaries)

1.40-2.30 Irish migrant workers –led by Linda Clarke and Christine Wall, with Sara Goek

2.30-3.15 Black workers in London – led by Wilf Sullivan (TUC), with Glenroy Watson (RMT)

3.15-3.30 Break

3.30-4.15 Creating the NHS - led by Joanna Bornat (OHS) – Asian doctors, Irish workers

4.15-4.30 Conclusions

4.30 – 5.30 Film showing: Philip Donnellan’s The Irishmen (1965)

LSHG: Summer term seminars

London Socialist Historians: Summer term seminars 2013
 

Monday May 13^th
Andrew Stone: Michael Gove’s Island Story- why history teachers are up in arms [5.30pm]

Monday June 24^th
Tayo Aluko (writer, performer, producer Call Mr. Robeson), Luke Daniels (President of Caribbean Labour Solidarity), Marika Sherwood, Christian Høgsbjerg and Keith Flett on ''CLR James: From Toussaint Louverture to Beyond a Boundary'' [6pm]

Seminars in Room G34 South Block, Institute of Historical Research, London, WC1. Free, all welcome

Defend School History seminar

From here:

The Defend School History Campaign will hold a seminar on Saturday 20 April in central London.
Teachers, educationalists and others set up the campaign to fight education secretary Michael Gove’s new draft history curriculum.
This curriculum has a narrow focus on filling children’s heads with lists of events and dates.
It presents a history of the world as seen through the British Empire.
Gove’s curriculum doesn’t encourage children to think critically, but simply to memorise facts.
It will put children off learning history.
Defend School History is demanding that Gove’s curriculum is scrapped.
Teachers at the NUT union conference earlier this month voted unanimously to call for Gove to resign.

 

Defend School History seminar, speakers include historian and Labour MP Tristram Hunt and NUT deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney. Saturday 20 April, 2-4pm, Canterbury Hall,

12-18 Cartwright Gardens, London WC1H 9EE.
To attend or for more information about the campaign email andystone2002@yahoo.com

Struggle, Solidarity and Defeat - 1913 Dublin Lockout Centenary Conference

Struggle, Solidarity and Defeat:  1913 Dublin Lockout Centenary Conference

Saturday 19 October 2013

Old Fire Station, The Crescent, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT (next to the Salford Working Class Movement Library)

Organised by the University of Salford and Salford Working Class Movement Library sponsored by the Society for the Study of Labour History, Irish Labour History Society, North West Labour History Society, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations journal and North West Trades Union Congress (TUC)

Programme

9.45am-10.30am: Registration and Coffee
10.30am- 10.45am:Welcome and Introduction
10.45am-11.45am: The Dublin Lockout
Speaker: PadraigYeates, former Irish Times industry and employment correspondent; author of Lockout: Dublin 1913; project manager of the Irish 1913 Committee
11.45am-12.45pm: The Irish Transport and General Workers Union
Speaker: Francy Devine, author of Organising History: A Centenary of SIPTU; 1909-2009, former President of Irish Labour History Society and editor of journal Saothar; ex-tutor in the SIPTU Education and Training Department
12.45pm-2.00pm: Lunch,Music and Exhibition Display
2.00pm-3.00pm: Jim Larkin
Speaker: Emmet O’Connor, senior lecturer in History, Magee College, University of Ulster; author of James Larkin and Syndicalism in Ireland
3.00pm-4.00pm: Solidarity and Defeat
Speaker: Ralph Darlington, Professor of Employment Relations, University of Salford; author of The Political Trajectory of J.T. Murphy and Syndicalism and theTransition to Communism: An International Comparative Analysis
Conference Registration:
£15 waged and £5 unwaged, with lunch provided
£5 donation requested
To reserve your place in advance please email
J.Curtis@salford.ac.uk

Keith Flett on EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class

 

Anyone looking at the sheer length and range of the book today must surely wonder how Thompson managed to write such an epic volume, particularly in an age when all research notes were at best bashed out on a typewriter. Indeed the scale of his achievement, 50 years on, is marked by the reality that there has never been a successor or updating volume from another historian...

Full article here, from this month's Socialist Review.  Incidentally, am not sure actually how much involvement EPT actually had in the CP Historians' Group, which Keith mentions, as I think EPT saw himself more as a writer rather than a historian at this point in his life.... 

Edited to add: Another one day Conference on The Making at Anglia Ruskin University on 11 May 2013

CfP: Historical Materialism London conference 2013

 As well as Marxism 2013, in central London from 11-15 July, see the following Call for Papers for another Marxist gathering later in the year in London: 

Call for papers for the 10th Annual Historical Materialism Conference

HM 2013: Making the World Working Class

7-10 November
Central London

Organised in collaboration with the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Committee and Socialist Register

‘Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons’ - and between classes. The complex task of analysing class structures and, at the same time, transforming and transcending them is at the core of Marx's legacy. 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of CLR James’s "The Black Jacobins" and the 50th anniversary of EP Thompson’s "The Making of the English Working Class". Wary of all reifications of class, Thompson showed how the working class was not only made by capital, but made itself in everyday struggles and political agitation. James affirmed the need to look at the international division of labour in the context of race and imperialism, and gave voice to the revolutionary agency of the ‘black Jacobins’ and other historically neglected enemies of capitalism and colonialism.

In the wake of the new conflicts thrown up by decolonisation and more recent processes of neoliberal ‘globalisation’, research in the field of labour and working class history has acquired an increasingly global dimension, and become more attentive to the critical role played by race and gender in the formations of working classes. Social struggles and resistance – from Latin America to Eastern Europe, from the Arab-Islamic world to East Asia – continue to show that working classes worldwide have not ceased remaking themselves, at the same time as they struggle against capitalist strategies to turn class composition into class decomposition, to unmake a world working class. Significantly, in order to understand this changing reality and the roots of the crisis of the neoliberal system, a growing body of scholarship questions the representation of labour as a passive factor in production, and investigates how workers’ struggles co-determine processes of capitalist development, as well as cultural mutations and political transformations.  

Despite rising levels of class struggle - from a growing working class movement in China to the Arab uprisings and mobilisation against austerity in Southern Europe - discourses of class remain largely marginal to political debate and action. Class struggle is often recognised, namely through the language of inequality, but is being increasingly filtered, also on the left, through notions of ‘the people’ or ‘the 99%’. The tenth annual Historical Materialism aims to provide a forum for debating  the descriptive and prescriptive roles that concepts of class and class struggle can have today. More generally, we seek contributions that account for how Marxist theory, historiography and empirical research can explain and intervene in the contemporary conjuncture. We will be hosting a stream on "Race and Capital" (for which a separate call for papers is forthcoming, along with a CFP building on last year's "Marxism and Feminism" stream), and we especially welcome papers that address the following themes:

· class, imperialism and migration

· class and gender

· Marxism and feminism

· geographies and spaces of class

· class, capitalism and environment in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)

· changing geographies of accumulation and resistance

· working class movements today

· class strategies against the crisis and 'austerity'

· revisiting Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class

· revisiting the legacy of CLR James

· history of the international communist movement

· Marxism and theories of intersectionality

· class struggle and political organisation, party and class

· theories of class formation and class composition

· crisis, austerity, and proletarianisation

· class and the agrarian question

· class, literature and literary theory

· cultures of class

· 'class struggle without classes'

· class, poverty, inequality

· representing class and capital in art and culture

· proletarianisation, pauperisation and precarity

We are, of course, open to proposals on other themes as well.

Abstracts (100-200 words) should be submitted at www.historicalmaterialism.org (shortly to go online). Panels can also be proposed but we reserve the right to disaggregate them and accept only some papers - they are not "package deals". Deadline: 1 May 2013

Please note: the HM conference is not a conventional academic conference but rather a space for discussion, debate and the launching of collective projects. We therefore discourage "cameo appearances" and encourage speakers to participate in the whole of the conference. We also strongly urge all speakers to take out personal subscriptions to the journal.

For all queries: historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk

John Archer and Black Politics

INVITATION Re: John Archer and Black Politics. Free presentation @ Battersea Library  (Clapham Junction)  April 16, 6.30pm BTWSC NARM African British Histories Rolls On With NARM Paul Stephenson & Bristol Bus Boycott @ 50 And NARM John Archer London's First African Mayor @ 100  John Archer and Black Politics. A free, audio-visual presentation by history consultant Kwaku which highlights the community and local political activities by Archer, who became London's first African mayor when he was elected Mayor of Battersea 100 years ago in 1913. Archer, initially a Liberal politician, he became a stalwart of Battersea's Labour party and trade union movement, and successfully worked with an Asian Communist to be twice elected MP. Archer was also involved in pan-Africanism. Tuesday 16 April. 6.30-8pm. John Archer and Black Politics. An audio-visual presentation by Kwaku @ Battersea Library, 265 Lavender Hill, SW11 1JB (Clapham Junction).  For more information or to book: www.narm2013.eventbrite.com

Chartism Day 2013

Chartism Day 2013: Annual Chartism conference

Saturday, June 29 2013

Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University St Mary's Church, Bramall Lane
Sheffield S24QZ
United Kingdom

To register, please send a cheque for £13, payable to Sheffield Hallam University, to: Matthew Roberts, Owen Building Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 1WB.
Registration deadline: Friday, May 31 2013, 9:00am
How to register: matthew.robertsshu.ac.uk

Programme

10.00-10.20 Registration and coffee
10.20-10.30 Welcome

10.30-12.15 Panel 1
Martin Hewitt (University of Huddersfield), ‘Chartism and the Taxes on Knowledge Campaign’
Robert G Hall (Ball State University), ‘Bookstores for the Millions: The Politics of Reading and Chartism, 1838-1848’
David Goodway, ‘George Julian Harney’s Late Journalism: The Newcastle Weekly Chronicle column, 1890-97’

12:15 Lunch

1.30-3:15 Panel 2
Jenny Cadwallender (PhD candidate. Manchester University), ‘“Amidst Tears, Cheers and Execrations”: Domesticity and the Politics of Chartist Women’
Timothy Keane, ‘Chartism and the Irish Famine’
Fabrice Bensimon, ‘Fraternal Democrats, French Republican Exiles and London Chartists’

3.15: Tea Break

3.30-4.30 Panel 3
Steve Poole, ‘Chartism and the Rural World’
Katrina Navickas, ‘What next for Chartist Studies’
4.30 Closing remarks

*NB: Professor Paul Pickering (ANU), leading historian of Chartism, will be giving a public lecture on Friday 28 June, entitled 'Telling the peoples’ story: writing, representing and selling the past in the age of affective history’. The lecture will commence at 6pm in the Peak Lecture Theatre, Sheffield Hallam University's City Campus. Please contact Matthew Roberts for further details.

Oral Labour History Symposium

Oral Labour Histories: Britain at Work 1945-95



Britain at Work (B@W) in association with:

British Universities Industrial Relations (BUIRA) IR History Group and

Oral History Society (OHS)



SYMPOSIUM

Saturday 11 May 2013



The Goss Room, Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate (nearest tube: Liverpool Street)

Click on this hyperlink for full location details:

http://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/content.aspx?CategoryID=980



One again Britain at Work(B@W) is organising an Oral Labour History Day at the Bishopsgate Institute in London, this time on Saturday 11 May. It will be similar to the one organised in March 2012, but with an afternoon theme focusing on migrant workers and their experiences in the UK. B@W is an initiative to capture the memories of people at work between 1945-1995. Working life as experienced during the half-century 1945-1995 was marked by extreme diversity and change and by the growth of trade union organisation and influence to a high point in the mid-1970s. The trade union movement injected a strong democratic current into British workplaces, to which management responded in different ways, as evident from the significant conflicts between unions and employers, associated with the problems of technological change, de-industrialisation and new union legislation. The main theme this year is migrant workers, in particular Irish and Black workers and those involved in the NHS. The day will, however, begin with round table introductions on the projects in which different participants are involved and their interest in oral labour history. Following lunch, the afternoon will focus on migrant workers, and the day will conclude with the showing of Philip Donnellan’s 1965 film The Irishmen. All those engaged in or with an interest in oral labour history are welcome to participate. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Gold (M.Gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk)



Programme

Coffee/ tea 10.30am

11.00am: Welcome and introduction: Stefan Dickers, Bishopsgate Institute

11.15 – 11.45/ 12.00 noon Opening address: Dr Sundari Anitha, University of Lincoln on ‘Asian Women’s experiences in the Grunwick Dispute: recording and disseminating oral history’ with accompanying exhibition

11.45 – 12.00 Michael Gold – Oral History with a Purpose – Oral Labour History, followed by:

12.00 – 1.00pm B@W updates: Round table introductions:

Five minutes from everyone (if they wish), saying who they are, the project(s) they are involved in and their interest in oral labour history

Lunch 1.00-1.40pm

Presentations and panel discussions (in plenaries)

1.40-2.30 Irish migrant workers –led by Linda Clarke and Christine Wall, with Sara Goek

2.30-3.15 Black workers in London – led by Wilf Sullivan (TUC), with Glenroy Watson (RMT)

3.15-3.30 Break

3.30-4.15 Creating the NHS - led by Joanna Bornat (OHS) – Asian doctors, Irish workers

4.15-4.30 Conclusions



4.30 – 5.30 Film showing: Philip Donnellan’s The Irishmen (1965)