SHS Seminar Reminder: The Real History of Chartism

David Goodway on The Real History of Chartism
Talk followed by q&a

Time 7.00 p.m. Thursday 19th April

Venue: Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2. Admission free, all welcome

David Goodway, who is based in Leeds, is a social and cultural historian who wrote his doctoral thesis on ‘Chartism in London’ under the supervision of Eric Hobsbawm. It was published as London Chartism, 1838-1848 (CUP, 1982; paperback, 2002). David has retained a specialist interest in the Chartist movement ever since. He has more recently written widely about literary figures such as Herbert Read, John Cowper Powys, William Morris and their connections with anarchist and socialist thought. He is a member of the SHS.

Upcoming SHS seminars

REMINDER
Paul Burnham speaks on The Squatters' Movement of 1946.
5th April, Time 7.00 p.m.
Venue: Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2.
http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/news.htm

Also:
Socialist History Society

Public meeting and discussion

'Freemasonry and Communism
The tortured relationship between the Communist Parties and freemasonry'
Speaker Ron Heisler
2pm Saturday 12th May

Ron Heisler, who describes himself as a “delinquent historian”, has written widely on the history of freemasonry and freethought. Among his many published articles are 'Freemasonry and Elizabethan Literature', 'Shakespeare and the Ethos of the Rosicrucians', 'John Dee and the Secret Societies', 'The Forgotten English Roots of Rosicrucianism' and 'Walking Stewart: A Forgotten Great Freethinker'.

Bishopsgate Institute, Liverpool St
SHS AGM will be held at 12.30pm
http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/

CFP: Fifty years of EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class

Call for Papers
50 years of EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class
A day conference with strands to be held at People’s History Museum, Manchester
Saturday 13 April 2013

Edward Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class appeared in 1963 and has become one of the most influential history texts of the twentieth century. It is still in print fifty years on, having survived challenges from Marxist, feminist and postmodern historians. This day conference celebrates Thompson’s classic, and considers its reception, its critics, and why it endures. Speakers will include Neville Kirk, Emeritus Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University

This day conference will bring together papers from scholars for whom The Making has been a major influence. We welcome papers, and suggest the following subjects:
The Making and the new social history
The politics of The Making
The legacy
‘We are all Thompsonians now’
Challenges to The Making: Marxist, feminist
The Englishness of The Making
The Making and the crisis of Stalinism /the New Left

We welcome offers of contributions relating to these and other themes from researchers and students. Please send a proposal of no more than 200 words to Dr Craig Horner on craig.horner@phm.org.uk by 31 May 2012.
The conference will also include displays from the Working Class Movement Library and the Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People’s History Museum. Organised by People’s History Museum Working Class Movement Library www.phm.org.uk www.wcml.org.uk

Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference, London 2012

The Ninth Annual Historical Materialism Conference  will take place in Central London from 8-11 November 2012

Weighs Like a Nightmare
Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference

Has Marx been reanimated once again? From mainstream media to academia, this question hangs in the air. The old ghosts of revolution appear to be shaking off their shackles and getting agitated. What is this spirit? Who are the militants haunting this ramshackle capitalism? Are these new spectres - stalking the streets of Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, Athens, Spain and Wall Street and beyond - or direct descendants of socialist and communist ones? How does the past haunt the present? How might the present haunt the future?

As new conflicts and struggles emerge, the old questions refuse to go away: What type of organisation is needed to sharpen the conflicts, if any? Who are the agents of history and change? Is the scope of political action national or international? What is the political value of alliances and fronts? Does history cunningly work a progressive path through and around the contingencies of struggle? Are the same mistakes to be made, the same failures repeated?

The ninth HM annual conference focuses on the returns and the persistence of political forms and theoretical problems, on the uses and abuses of the history of Marxism in this turbulent present and on the ways and forms in which an inheritance of various Marxist traditions can help us to organise and to act in contemporary struggles.

HM London conference *provisional* programme online http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/HM2012Grid.pdf/view
  Please note: this will change over the next few weeks so please be sure to check the final version posted 24 hours before the start of the conference
Online registration for the HM conference now available! http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/register

Seminar: Colin Grant on Jamaica at 50

Institute of Commonwealth Studies, in conjunction with the Black & Asian Studies Association
Black and Asian Britain seminars


Senate House, University of London, Russell Square, London WC1
6 to 7.30 pm,
Everyone is welcome. You do not have to pre-book/register, but to ensure adequate space, it would be helpful if you would confirm attendance to Chloe Pieters
(Co-ordinator: Marika.Sherwood@sas.ac.uk)

25 April, 2012, room 349, Third floor, Senate House

Colin Grant, “Too long have others spoke for us”
Marking Jamaica’s 50th year of independence, I will discuss Bageye at the Wheel, the final part of a trilogy of books examining African Caribbean life in the 20th century. The first, Negro with a Hat, my biography of Marcus Garvey, echoes Bageye’s Jamaican Bella Figura.

LSHG Seminar on Mary Wollstonecraft

Dear Comrade

A little a late [but the blink of an eye in historical terms] on Monday 19th March, 5.30pm at the Institute of Historical Research [Room G34, Ground Floor, South Block, Senate House] we have a seminar to mark International Women's Day.

Roberta Wedge will speak on 'Mary Wollstonecraft: from journalist, socialist to somewhere else on the political spectrum'

Do come if you can.

If not its the last socialist history seminar of the Spring term. We'll be back in the Summer term with seminars on the history of Royal Jubilees [stuffing of] and the Olympics [politics of].

The summer issue of the LSHG Newsletter should be out in good time for May Day [designer and printer allowing]

regards

Keith Flett

Richard Hyman and Industrial Relations

Dear All

Myself and Ralph Darlington have edited a special edition of Capital and Class (36/1, 2012) on the contribution of Richard Hyman to industrial relations. It's called 'A celebration and critical reassessment' and it's available at the Sage webite (http://cnc.sagepub.com/).

The running order of the special edition is

Gregor Gall and Ralph Darlington - Introduction
Graham Taylor, Andrew Mathers, and Martin Upchurch - Beyond ‘political economism’: New identities for unions in Western Europe?
Miguel Martínez Lucio - Union politics, purpose and democracy: To be or not to be? Optimism, pessimism and the continuing importance of Richard Hyman’s early contributions
John McIlroy - Strikes and class consciousness in the early work of Richard Hyman
Ralph Darlington and Martin Upchurch - A reappraisal of the rank-and-file versus bureaucracy debate
Melanie Simms - Imagined solidarities: Where is class in union organising?
Heather Connolly - Union renewal in France and Hyman’s universal dualism
Gregor Gall - Richard Hyman: An assessment of his Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction
Richard Hyman -Will the real Richard Hyman please stand up?

Gregor

Professor Gregor Gall,
Research Professor of Industrial Relations,
Director of the Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU),
University of Hertfordshire,
Hatfield AL10 9AB
g.gall@herts.ac.uk

For a review of 'Trade Unions and Revolution' see here