London Socialist Historians Group seminars - Autumn Term

Socialist History Seminars Autumn Term 2025

Monday 6^th October 5.30pm Geoff Brown, a People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League

On Zoom. To Book: A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League | Institute of Historical Research

Monday 20^th October TBA

Monday 3^rd November, 5.30pm  Elaine Graham Leigh But we have horns’: Finding a Revolution in Medieval Carcassonne, Room 301, Institute of Historical Research. To Book But we have horns’: Finding a Revolution in Medieval Carcassonne | Institute of Historical Research

Monday 17^th November Steve Cushion, 5.30pm, The Legacies of African Enslavement and the Case for Reparations, Room 301, Institute of Historical Research. To Book The Legacies of African Enslavement and the Case for Reparations | Institute of Historical Research

Monday 1^st December, 5.30pm, Vassilis Fouskas, Cyprus 1974. Anatomy of an invasion, Room 301, Institute of Historical Research. To Book Cyprus 1974. Anatomy of an invasion | Institute of Historical Research

All seminars are free. Please book at the link as space is limited.

Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London, WC1

LSHG seminar - Monday 20 January - Tony Collins, Rethinking the Roots of British Communism

LSHG Seminar Monday 20th January 2025 In Person, Room 301 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1. 5.30pm. In person. Please book at this link as space is limited: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/raising-red-flag-rethinking-roots-british-communism

Tony Collins will talk about his new book which re-examines the rich and complex roots of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Using a range of original sources, he will investigate how the young CPGB was shaped by the experiences of the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist Labour Party and the Workers’ Socialist Federation during the years of war, intense class struggle, and the rise of Labourism before 1920. Rather than being an imposition from Moscow, he will argue that the CPGB was an organic development of the British left, something that was both its strength and its weakness.’

The seminar is organised by the Socialist History Seminar at the IHR and the London Socialist Historians Group. Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

LSHG Autumn Seminar series

 Monday 7th October 5.30pm Rosalind Eyben, John Horner & the Communist Party, Uncomfortable Encounter with Truth. On Zoom. To book (required, free) https://www.history.ac.uk/events/john-horner-and-communist-party-uncomfortable-encounter-truth

Monday 21st October 5.30pm Fabrice Bensimon, The Chartist Meeting at Kennington Common, 10th April 1848. The daguerreotypes, the crowd and the coachman. In person, Room 301, Institute of Historical Research https://www.history.ac.uk/events/chartist-meeting-kennington-common-10-april-1848-daguerreotypes-crowd-and-coachman

Monday 4th November 5.30pm Gregor Gall, Mick Lynch. The Making & the Unmaking of a Working Class Hero? On Zoom To book (required, free) https://www.history.ac.uk/events/mick-lynch-making-and-unmaking-a-working-class-hero

Monday 18th November 5.30pm, Bob Henderson, Lenin in London. In person. Room 301 Institute of Historical Research

Monday 2nd December 5.30pm, Aidan Beatty. Gerry Healy & the WRP. Violence, Gender & the Perils of Trotskyism. On Zoom

All seminars are free to attend. Registration required, details to follow. Organised by the Socialist HIstory Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research & the London Socialist Historians Group

LSHG seminar - The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the business of political culture in the late Twentieth Century

Monday June 3rd 5.30pm on Zoom Colm Murphy. 'The forgotten rival of Marxism Today: The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the business of political culture in the late Twentieth Century' Free. Book at this link https://www.history.ac.uk/events/forgotten-rival-marxism-today-british-labour-partys-new-socialist-and-business-political This paper explores the world of the 1980s left in the UK and argues that political historians should integrate ‘business history’ questions to situate and evaluate sites for political debate. No history of the 1980s is complete without reference to the Communist Party’s glamorous Marxism Today. However, scholars have overlooked one of its significant market competitors. In 1981, the Labour Party founded its own intellectual magazine, the New Socialist. Initially, it was highly successful, recording healthy circulation figures and attracting iconoclastic pieces by leading socialists. Its early commercial success shows that it has been unjustly neglected since. Yet unfavourable political winds and internal editorial divisions fatally overlapped with ruinous business decisions in a worsening financial environment. This precipitated the collapse of New Socialist in the later 1980s—just as its Eurocommunist rival declared the arrival of the ‘New Times’ and wrote itself into history books. Closer attention to business contexts thus returns New Socialist to histories of the left and provides a better map of its ideological debates during a transformative decade. It also situates the travails of the 1980s left within social and cultural trends over the twentieth century.

LSHG seminar - Tony Collins on the Rugby World Cup

Socialist History Seminar Mon 23^rd Oct 5.30pm. Tony Collins on the Rugby World Cup. William Webb Ellis- his role in the class struggle

In person seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1

Free but please register as space is limited:

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/rugby-william-webb-ellis-his-role-class-struggle

Room 301 on the 3^rd Floor

Tony Collins will look at the origins of the William Webb Ellis trophy currently being played for in the Rugby World Cup in France, and the class struggles behind its origins

LSHG seminar- Chartism in London in 1848

 Socialist History Seminar - Monday 9^th October. Catherine Howe, Chartism in London in 1848

1848 was a year of revolution across Europe, but Britain appeared to be an exception.

Catherine Howe’s book on London Chartism in 1848, 175 years ago, explores a rather different reality. The revolutionary currents and activists at work in the Spring and Summer of 1848 that caused a significant response from the State.

Chartism in London in 1848 Catherine Howe Monday 9th October Time: 5.30pm

Free on Zoom. Book here: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/chartism-london-1848

Organised by the Socialist History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research and the London Socialist Historians Group.

London Socialist Historians Summer Term Seminars 2023

 London Socialist Historians Summer Term Seminars 2023

Monday 15^th May 5.30pm - Keith Flett: The Coronation. Inventing and Reinventing Royal Traditions.

Free on Zoom

Book at this link: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/coronation-inventing-and-reinventing-royal-traditions

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger argued that all traditions are invented and the British monarchy have been experts at it for centuries.

This seminar will look at what is real and what is invented in the Coronation of a monarch and grapple with what this means for an understanding of British history beyond patriotic posing

Monday 22^nd May 5.30pm - Duncan Stone: Gentlemen v Players 60 years on. Deconstructing the Gentleman Amateur

Free on Zoom Link to Book https://www.history.ac.uk/events/60-years-gentlemen-v-players-deconstructing-gentleman-amateur

Duncan Stone, author of one of the most insightful cricket books of recent years, Different Class, speaks on the Gentleman Amateur in cricket 60 years after Gentlemen v Players was abolished and the 60 over a side Gillette Cup started

Monday 5^th June 5.30pm - Ralph Darlington, Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-1914. In person seminar only Room 301. Institute of Historical Research

LSHG Summer Seminars 2022

Socialist History Seminars Summer 2022

[Update - both of these seminars have had to be postponed due to illness]

Below are details of London Socialist Historians seminars for the Summer Term 2022.

We have been rather constrained by meeting on Mondays and clashing with Bank Holidays this year. Once again seminars are on Zoom. We had hoped to resume in person seminars and while the IHR is allowing this, arrangements are not I’m afraid yet back to pre-pandemic times. We hope to resume some in person seminars in the Autumn term 2022.

You will need to register via the Institute of Historical Research site (free). They will send you joining details and a reminder of the seminar details the day before.

Keith Flett, Convenor

Monday May 16th 5.30pm Jane McChrystal and Anne Padfield. 'The Splendid Mrs McCheyne & the East London Federation of Suffragettes'.

Jane McChrystal writes "The Splendid Mrs McCheyne and the East London Federation of Suffragettes" tells the story of an unsung heroine of ELFS who worked tirelessly in the "back room" supporting brave women such as Nellie Cressall and Annie Barnes, whose names have lived on, in their struggles on behalf of the women, men and children of the East End. Sylvia Pankhurst wrote this about her: " All the ELFS’ members know Mrs McCheyne, for she was one of our first recruits in East London, and has always been one of our hardest workers, having served on the ELFS Social Committees and in many other ways as well as Joint Honorary Secretary in Bromley".

I first came across her name in the minutes of ELFS' committee meetings and was struck by how often she attended and, yet, how infrequently she spoke or was mentioned there. Intrigued, I resolved to find out whatever I could about her. In the course of my investigation, I was fortunate to be put in touch with her relative, Anne Padfield, who was able to tell me all about her origins, family and the life she led after ELFS.

Sylvia Pankhurst left behind a record of her years as the leader of ELFS in her collected papers, which proved an invaluable source of background material for "The Splendid Mrs McCheyne". My own research into the key political and social changes in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century provides an historical context for Rosaline's life and work, while an interview with Anne Padfield gives a fascinating insight into the woman her family knew.

Monday May 30th 5.30pm. Catherine Howe. 1848: London Story

London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter online and final Spring seminar

The latest issue of the London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter 75 (spring 2022) is now online on this site - with pieces by Ian Birchall, John Newsinger and Keith Flett among other things - and the final seminar in our Spring programme will be: 

Simon Hannah 'Lessons of Lambeth: municipal socialism in the 1980s' 

Monday 14^th March 5.30pm

This is the last in our series of Spring seminars. Simon Hannah will talk on his latest book on radical Lambeth

It is free on Zoom but you need to register below

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/lessons-lambeth-municipal-socialism-1980z

In the 1980s Lambeth was synonymous with rebel Labour councillors and featured regularly in national newspaper headlines for its protests, its squatting, and its resistance to and defiance of central government. From the Town Hall to the front line of Railton Road it confronted racism in the police, the Poll Tax, the Gulf War, and the nascent Thatcherism of the Conservative government. It was a site of overlapping resistance from trade unionists, black residents, the LGBTQ community, and other local people.

Condemned in the press as a ‘loony left’ borough, Lambeth was at the heart of the struggle against the Conservative agenda in the capital. This was a fight for municipal socialism, for solidarity with causes both at home and abroad, and against the crisis of inner city urban life in a decade dominated by greed is good capitalism at the expense of working people.

Drawing on first-hand accounts from those involved, this book tells the story of Radical Lambeth, an inner London community that fought back.

Socialism in the English-speaking Caribbean seminar series

The Socialist History Society, The Institute of Commonwealth Studies and The Society for Caribbean Studies will be holding a series of online research seminars.

The participants have been invited to submit written papers in advance of the seminars. These will be available to everyone who registers.

Attendance is free, but advance registration is necessary.

You can download the programme and the abstracts of the presentations here…

16th March – register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rd–vqTgoGdbtgRcXT2iQMtBrSmDvk_Wu

Ozzi Warwick	History of Socialism in the English-speaking Caribbean
Valentine Smith	The New Left and the Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago
Ben Gowland	Black Power and Socialism in the West Indies

23rd March – register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIucOyopzwqHtYXc9zcGRNv2IKnpSzFjRuc

Michael Niblett & Chris Campbell	Caribbean Socialism, Revolutionary Literature, and the Education of Feeling
Loraine Thomas	Politics and Caribbean Literature – The Case of St Vincent and the Grenadines in the Era of Independence.
Tennyson Joseph	The Caribbean Left since the Collapse of the Grenada Revolution

30th March – register here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0oc–srDwoGdPcbCS9vlSPeSE49e9Lnm2R

Matthew Myers	‘Jamaica – Britain – One Struggle!’: Transnational socialisms and black workers’ newspapers between the Caribbean and Britain (Flame, 1975-1979)
Marsha Hinds	Woman and Caribbean Socialism
Anne’el Bain	Under The Eagle’s Eye: Cooperation As A Survival Mechanism Among Leftist Cuba, Grenada And Nicaragua, 1979-1990

LSHG seminars spring 2022

 

London Socialist Historians Group Seminars Spring 2022

Monday 31^st January 5.30pm John Newsinger The Forgotten Feminist: Ethel Mannin, Women and the Revolution - link to recording for those missed it here: 

https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/socialist-history-seminar-31st-jan-john-newsinger-on-ethel-mannin-forgotten-feminist-revolutionary/

Monday 14^th February 5.30pm Patrick Hegarty Morrish Interwar Swedish Cycling and the socialist ethos

Free on Zoom. Register at the link below

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/inter-war-swedish-cycling-and-socialist-ethos

Monday 28^th February 5.30pm. Duncan Stone, Different Class. The untold story of English cricket

to register please go to here: 

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/different-class-untold-story-english-cricket

Monday 14^th March 5.30pm Simon Hannah, The Lessons of Lambeth: municipal socialism in the 1980s

The Spring term seminars will once again be via Zoom.

Attendance is free but registration on the IHR site is essential.

A link to register for each seminar will be posted well in advance and after registering the IHR will mail you joining details.

We hope to return to in person seminars in the Summer term from May 2022 though I doubt we will entirely forsake Zoom!

Keith Flett, Convenor

Working class history revival - New free courses.

The WEA (formerly known as The Workers’ Educational Association), the UK’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education has jointly organised with the GFTU a series of online discussions about key moments in working class history from the Peasant Rebellions in 1381 onwards.  

Each 90 minute session will be facilitated by a leading expert on the topic and delivered in an inclusive and accessible manner. The courses are completely free of charge. The series is titled Their Legacy – Our History. Among topics to be considered also will be the 1549 rebellions, the development of the Chartists, the fight for the provision of adult education, great women trade unionists, Winstanley and the Diggers, the Levellers, Captain Swing, how songs changed history. 

The series begins on September 15th with Labour Historian Professor Keith Gildart discussing the origin of the modern trade union movement. A recent warning by leading academic historians that the closure of two university history departments reflected the trend that was seeing British history becoming more and more a subject for the elite, has been reflected in the adult education and trade union education worlds. Working class history was one of the primary subjects alongside politics, philosophy and economics on the trade union education curriculum. Now it is rarely looked at.   

The General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) has been working to reverse this trend by commissioning, plays, poetry, songs and graphic novels which keep this history alive in an accessible format. 

Simon Parkinson Chief Executive Officer of the WEA said: "We are dedicating this new series of history courses in memory of Nigel Todd a former WEA tutor, co‐operator and working class historian. The tradition of which Nigel was an important part deserves rekindling. Whole generations of activists in trade unions and community organisations were inspired by our history of winning rights, overturning injustices and creating greater commitments to equality. We hope future generations can feel this power and the living presence of what those who went before us achieved." (See further comment https://www.wea.org.uk/news‐events/news/tribute‐nigel‐todd) 

Doug Nicholls, General Secretary of the GFTU said: "So much of our history has been deliberately buried, people might have heard of Henry VIII, but not of equally important figures like Robert Kett or Anne Askew, and there's been a reason for hiding our past. This is going to be a pioneering series of learning opportunities led by some of our great popular educators with exceptional knowledge of the subjects covered.  

 Selina Todd, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University added: "This series represents all that is best in adult and trade union education and something that my father would have been proud of.  To forget the past is to ignore the future. The areas of study in this series cover moments in time when the people made history very decisively and with an impact still felt today."    

Contacts for further information and comment:   

Doug Nicholls,  doug@gftu.org.uk 

Phil Coward,    pcoward@wea.org.uk  

 Further information. 

Founded in 1903, the WEA is the UK’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education, delivering over 6,600 part‐time courses for over 39,000 people each year in England and Scotland. With the active support of around 350 local branches, 2,000 volunteers, 3,000 part‐time tutors and 5,000 members, the WEA provides high quality, student‐centred and tutor‐led education for adults from all walks of life. We also maintain our special mission to provide educational opportunities to adults facing social and economic disadvantage. For further information on the charity, please visit http://www.wea.org.uk 

The GFTU was founded in 1899 and played a leading role in providing welfare services for workers and their families, campaigning for the creation of the welfare state and was the original international arm of the British Labour Movement. It provides free adult education provision for some 2,000 learners a year and a full range of services to trade unions and community organisations, and runs a hotel and learning centre, please visit www.gftu.org.uk.

London Socialist Historian Group seminars - a review and some dates for your diaries

What a long, strange trip it’s been. 

An academic year of socialist history seminars on Zoom. A year of socialist history seminars at the Institute of Historical Research is complete. Far from meeting in Room 304 at the IHR in Senate House in Bloomsbury, they were all done virtually on Zoom. 

Details of the seminars are below. Special thanks are due to the speakers who joined us on Zoom from Australia and Ghana. Suffice to say this would not otherwise have happened. Attendances too were hugely up, edging towards 100 for most seminars as opposed to the 15-30 that would be the usual in-person attendance. We probably had more and varied contributions from those attending than in-person seminars often get, including one made from a London bus, which would definitely not have happened previously. We will be continuing on Zoom at least for the autumn term 2021/22. Look out for provisional details. 

List of London Socialist Historians Seminars held in 2020/21:

 12 October 2020: Rhys Williams, Tom Mann and Australia: 1902 to 1909

 9 November 2020: Mark Hailwood, ‘Between 5 and 6 of the clock’: Time-telling, Time-use and Timediscipline in Pre-industrial England’ 

7 December 2020: Keith Flett, 150 years since the death of William Cuffay black leader of London Chartism in 1848. Has he been ignored by socialist historians? 

25 January 2021: Merilyn Moos and Steve Cushion, German working class resistance to the Nazis 

22 February 2021: John Newsinger, Trump and the Christian Right: A Dark Side of American Exceptionalism 

15 March 2021: Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh, Asking for the Moon: An investigation of memory and hope in activist movements 

26 April 2021: Stella Dadzie A Kick In The Belly, on women, resistance and slavery. 

24 May 2021: Simon Hannah, The Labour Parliament of 1854. 

London Socialist Historians Seminars. Autumn Term 2021: 

Seminars will be on Zoom. Details to follow nearer the time. 

Monday 4 October, 5.30pm, Marika Sherwood, ‘The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their own history’ (George Orwell). What has been obliterated from ‘our’ history here in the UK and in what used to be our colonies? 

Monday 18 October, 5.30pm - Book Launch: The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic

Monday 1 November 5.30pm Judy Meewezen, Turtle Soup & Cato St 

Monday Nov 15^th 5.30pm Merilyn Moos Anti-Nazi Exiles 1933-1945

The Newsletter

 Letters, articles, criticisms and contributions to debate are most welcome. 

Deadline for the next issue is 1 September 2021.  Please contact Keith Flett at the address above for more information.  

London Socialist Historians Group online seminars - Summer term 2021

Socialist History Seminars Summer Term 2021 

Organised by the London Socialist Historians Group with the support of the Institute for Historical Research in London

Monday 26 April 5.30pm Stella Dadzie: 'A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance' [book launch] - register here: 

https://www.history.ac.uk/node/5665

Monday 24 May 5.30pm Simon Hannah: 'A Parliament for Workers! The Labour Parliament of 1854'

Register here for free - https://www.history.ac.uk/node/5666

 Seminars are currently held on Zoom - please check our twitter @LSHGofficial for updates

The latest issue of the London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter, 72 (Spring 2021) is now online - for the next issue, letters, articles, criticisms and contributions to debate are most welcome. The deadline for the next issue is 1 May 2021 - please contact Keith Flett at the address above for more information. 

London Socialist Historians Group seminars Autumn 2020

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London Socialist Historians Group

Autumn Term 2020 Seminars

Revisiting some key issues & figures in socialist history

Oct 12^th Rhys Williams, Tom Mann and Australia: 1902 to 1909

Book (free) at the link below. Once the short form is filled in & submitted you will be e-mailed a link to the meeting details:

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/tom-mann-and-australia-1902-1909

Nov 9th Mark Hailwood, ‘Between 5 and 6 of the clock': Time-telling, Time-use and Time-discipline in Pre-industrial England'

Book (free) at the link below. Once the short form is filled in & submitted you will be e-mailed a link to the meeting details:

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/between-5-and-6-clock-time-telling-time-use-and-time-discipline-pre-industrial-england

Dec 7th Keith Flett, 150 years since the death of William Cuffay black leader of London Chartism in 1848. Has he been ignored by socialist historians?

All Seminars start at 5.30pm via Zoom

Registration details will be provided ahead of each seminar

The Autumn LSHG newsletter will appear during October. Contributions, complaints, letters and notices are all welcome preferably by early October - please contact Keith Flett at the address above for more info thanks 

London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter 70 (Summer 2020) now online

LSHG Summer Term 2020 Update on seminars, newsletter & activities

The Institute of Historical Research is currently closed and we are not able to hold seminars at the moment. Apologies to those who were planning to attend the last seminar of the Spring Term on Monday 16 March, Rhys Williams on Tom Mann in Australia, which I cancelled at short notice but I think prudently so. We plan to re-arrange the seminar for the next time Rhys, who is based in Australia, is in the UK.

The summer term LSHG Newsletter is here - see this comment piece on Covid-19 and these two reviews of works relating to the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820 and London during 1848 - perhaps a little later than usual as there are no seminars to publicise. It is hoped to resume seminars from October 2020 but obviously it is too early yet to be definite on that. We have a number of papers and speakers on a waiting list!

A range of virtual socialist history activities currently being undertaken and details of these are probably best checked by following the London Socialist Historians twitter account @LSHGofficial and by visiting our website, where every issue of the Newsletter back to 1997 is now on-line at our index

You will also find, sadly, a brief appreciation of Neil Davidson who died on 3rd February. Neil was associated with the LSHG for over 20 years: http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/2020/05/neil-davidson.html

Finally there are some socialist history podcasts available on the IHR website. Below is a link to a seminar John Newsinger gave in November 2017 on Orwell and the left: https://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/revolution-labourism-orwell-and-left

and a link to Kevin Morgan on The Left and the Cult of the Individual, an ever present source of discussion!
https://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/left-and-cult-individual

There is plenty for socialists to be doing even in times like these but history remains a vital context to current events.

Keith Flett, LSHG Convenor

The Newsletter  - Letters, articles, criticisms and contributions to debate are most welcome. Deadline for the next issue is  1 September 2020 - please email Keith Flett on the address above for more info about contributing and the society.

LSHG Seminar - Tom Mann in Australia - postponed

LSHG Seminar

Rhys Williams on Tom Mann in Australia (1902-1910)


This seminar has now been postponed to later in the year due to the Coronavirus

LSHG Seminar - Martin Hoyles on Ira Aldridge - 17 February

Dear Comrades,

We are resuming our seminar series at the Institute of Historical Research.

Details of the first seminar are here:

London Socialist Historians Seminar

Martin Hoyles, 'Ira Aldridge, black actor in Victorian London'. 

Monday 17th February, 5.30pm, Room 304, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1. 

Free without ticket. Details contact Keith Flett on address above

Comrades may recall a previous seminar from Martin Hoyles on William Cuffay, the black leader of London Chartism in 1848.

Seminar report - The Slave Ship (2008)

Marcus Rediker, "The Slave Ship"

Written By: Seminar report
Date: January 2008

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 30: Lent 2008  

On Tuesday 6th November 2007, at an LSHG event jointly held with the Raphael Samuel History Centre at UEL, Marcus Rediker spoke about his new book The Slave Ship at the Institute of Historical Research.

Marcus Rediker’s session was chaired by John Marriott of the RSHC and it saw the Pollard Room packed to bursting with historians and activists keen to hear Marcus on his short British tour to promote the book.

Marcus began by noting that he planned to talk about a different maritime tradition, not one to celebrate, but one that used terror to enforce discipline and provoked resistance to it in the process.
The book had its origins in papers originally looked at in the Public Record Office 30 years ago and the idea to write it had crystallised in visits that Marcus had paid to the US Death Row prisoner Abu Jamal. A focus on capital punishment, race and terror led to consideration of whether it was possible to do the subject of slave ships justice and to live with the material over a number of years.

Marcus underlined that violence is central to the rise of capitalism and the slave ship was the epitome of this process. The great historian Walter Rodney had said that in the slave trade capitalism was naked.

The seminar was divided into three sections. Some background, a puzzle about the slave trade and a specific drama that Marcus had uncovered in the archives.

The Transatlantic slave database covering the period from the 1500s to the last voyage in 1867 shows evidence for 12-15 million African slaves of whom 15% died on the journey. There were quite small numbers of sailors, 180-200 thousand. A lot is known about the captains but little about life below decks. Marcus asked how documents written by oppressors could yield information here.

The puzzle was that in the huge literature on the slave trade and business records for 24 thousand voyages we know very little about slave ships. There are three volumes on the subject, none definitive, yet the slave ship was essential to the first phase of globalisation. Marcus asked why this was.

Turning to the drama, Marcus noted that WEB Dubois had called the slave trade the most significant drama in 1000 years of human history. They had descended into hell and on the slave ship a human drama was played out involving captain, sailor and slave.

The slave ship was an instrument of terror and captains ruled through the use of terror. Marcus referred to an archival document from 1791 he had uncovered about a sailor’s evidence to a Grand Jury regarding a charge against Captain James D’Wolfe for throwing an ill female slave overboard to her death. Marcus queried how a captain could be charged with murder when slaves had no rights and concluded that at this peak period of abolitionist agitation its influence had been felt amongst sailors similar to the way that anti-Vietnam war sentiment found its way into the army.

Marcus noted that the three forces to end the slave trade had been rebellious Africans, dissident sailors and middle-class abolitionists.

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture (2005)

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture

Written By: The editor
Date: April 2005

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 24: Summer 2005 

The first-ever Brian Manning Memorial Lecture will be given by Norah Carlin on Saturday 14th May 2005, and is entitled "'For liberties, justice and settlement': petitioning for revolution in 1648-9". It will be held at the Institute of Historical Research and begins at 1pm.

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture is organised by the London Socialist Historians Group and is designed to follow the approach to history followed by the late Brian Manning.

Brian Manning's books and articles were dedicated to the study of England in the 1640s; to the Good Old Cause of republicanism; to Cromwell against King Charles, the Agitators against Cromwell, the Levellers against the New Model Army. He embodied a notion of socialist history with roots outside the academy, as a member of the New Left and CND in the 1950s, and the revolutionary left forty years later.

Each year, the Brian Manning Memorial Lecture will showcase the newest insights and the best research that builds on the same tradition of committed, activist history.

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture will be followed by the Annual Members’ Meeting of the London Socialist Historians Group. Members of the LSHG are being informed about this separately, but it will be an open meeting and all are welcome to stay and participate.