Holocaust Memorial Day Wallchart

To mark Holocaust memorial day (30 January), a wall chart has been produced by Gaverne Bennett for UCU which can be accessed here [pdf]:
Lets make sure that what happened is never forgotten or denied.

New Unionism day school

NEW UNIONISM: HOW WORKERS CAN FIGHT BACK
A dayschool hosted by Workers' Liberty
Saturday 18 February 2012, 11:30-17:30

Highgate Newtown Community Centre, 25 Bertram Street, London N19 5DQ
(Archway tube)

In the late 1880s, workers (often unskilled or semi-skilled, often
migrants and often working in casualised and precarious environments)
organised militant industrial unions to fight back against their
bosses. Faced with increasingly similar conditions today, can we build
a New Unionism for the 21st century that transforms and revolutionises
the modern labour movement?

Registration: £15 waged, £8 low-waged/ student, £4 unwaged.

Speakers and sessions are:
* How the socialists organised: the life and times of Tom Mann (Cathy
Nugent and Charlie MacDonald)
* The movement for working-class self-education (Colin Waugh, further
education activist, author of Plebs, the Lost Legacy of Independent
Working-Class Education)
* Finding a political voice: from New Unionism to Labour
representation (Martin Thomas and Sam Greenwood)
* Organising the unorganised: (Mick Duncan, Unite p.c; Ruth Cashman,
Lambeth Unison p.c.)
* From the Matchworkers to the Chainmakers – how women organised (Jill
Mountford and Louise Raw, author of Striking a Light, The Bryant and
May Matchwomen and their Place in History)
* What came next – The Great Unrest 1911-1914 (Edd Mustill)
* Organising at work today: using the ‘Troublemakers’ Handbook’ (Kim
Moody, founder of Labor Notes magazine, academic, author — most
recently US Labor in Trouble and Transition — and activist)
New Unionism 2012? How can we reinvigorate the labour movement?
Speakers include Eamonn Lynch (Bakerloo Line driver tube driver
victimised for his union activity and reinstated following an RMT
campaign) and Jean Lane (Workers' Liberty and Tower Hamlets Unison)

Creche, cheap food and bookstalls

Conference: A Revolutionary Life: Ruth First, 1925-1982

On behalf of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London) and Commonwealth Advisory Bureau, you are cordially invited to attend our upcoming conference ‘A revolutionary life: Ruth First 1925 – 1982' which celebrates the life of anti-apartheid activist, investigative journalist and scholar Ruth First. The conference will take place on the 7th June 2012, 10:00 – 19:00 at Senate House in Bloomsbury, London, and will include, among others, Justice Albie Sachs, Gillian Slovo, Shula Marks, and Bridget O’Laughlin
. Registration fee: £10 (standard); £5 (students/unwaged/retired) – includes lunch and wine reception. We hope that you are able to attend. Please feel free to circulate this message to any colleagues or students who may be interested in attending.

New CLR James library opens

The Dalston CLR James Library in Hackney opens this week - after a campaign that involved over 2,500 people signing a petition. Gaverne Bennett writes to us about the re-opening:

'It is a tremendous victory given there was an attempt to change the name of the library. There will be a special exhibition opening about CLR James at the library the first week of March. Thereafter, there will be some kind of lecture (to be held yearly) in late March.'

Edited to add:
1. Friday 2nd March 2012 - a new CLR James exhibition will open at the library featuring different aspects of CLR James's life and work.

2. Tuesday 27th March 2012 - Gary Younge from The Guardian will be giving a lecture/talk at the library. 7-9pm. Gary will discussing/celebrating CLR James life, legacy, and relevance for today.

Edited to add: a review of Gary's lecture by Joy Francis for Words of Colour

David Montgomery 1927-2011

Jon Weiner remembers the late great historian of the American working class David Montgomery, who died late last year.

Edited to add: From Radical History Review
The radical historian, David Montgomery, who died on December 2, 2011, was the doyen of American labor history. Well known for a half dozen major works on labor and the working class in the long nineteenth century, David's scholarly work, political commitments and personal life exemplified the seamless web that animated his engagement with social justice, peace and equality.

David was also a long-time friend and supporter of this journal and it is telling that many of his former doctoral students have served on our editorial collective. In 1982, when the Radical History Review struggled as an independently financed and operated journal, David signed on as one of eleven world-class historians to serve as Associate Editors, a supportive role that lent his prestige and consequent credibility to a journal largely run by graduate students and recent PhDs. In the last decade he helped found Historians Against the War (HAW) and remained a stalwart force in the organization.

The Radical History Review will publish a fuller appreciation of David Montgomery’s life and work in a forthcoming issue. "Once Upon a Shop Floor: An Interview with David Montgomery," conducted by two RHR editors, Paul Buhle and Mark Naison, gives voice to the remarkable history of this remarkable man, historian and friend. The interview was originally published in the RHR in Spring 1980 and subsequently appeared in the RHR book, Visions of History (Pantheon, 1983).

The interview is now freely available to all at Duke University Press's RHR website: http://rhr.dukejournals.org/content/1980/23/37.full.pdf+html

Daniel Walkowitz, RHR Editorial Collective

Bert Ramelson conference

The Working Class Organised:
A Conference/Rally on the life and times of Bert Ramelson
and the lessons to be learned for today’s struggle

Will be held at
The Bishopsgate Institute Main Hall,
230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH (nearest tube Liverpool St.)
on Saturday 5th May 2012 from 10am till 5pm

Admission Free

Overall Chair Rodney Bickerstaffe
Chairs Tom Sibley/ Louise Raw/ Richard Baxell
Speakers: Max Levitas, Deanna Lubelski, Kevin Halpin, Mick Costello, Keith Ewing, Mary Davis, Graham Stevenson, John Foster, Ann Field, John Haylett, Bill Greenshields and Tony Burke

If you have questions or would like to help, please contact Terry McCarthy at terrylhm@virginmedia.com

LSHG Newsletter # 44 online

Just a quick message to highlight the fact that most of the new Spring LSHG newsletter is now online - contents include Keith Flett on Occupy, David Renton on Seb Coe, Stan Newens on Ray Challinor, and advertisements for forthcoming seminars of LSHG and others such as the Socialist History Society plus of course the annual LSHG conference on 25 February on 'A History of Riots'. Other matters were also flagged up, and John Riddell's report of the session on international Communism at November's Historical Materialism conference in London was reprinted. Future LSHG seminars are listed below, while for more info on submissions for future newsletters or membership of the LSHG contact Keith Flett at the email address above.

23rd January Nicole Ulrich {University of the Witwatersrand] 'Direct Action and Colonial Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Africa: a survey of underclass protest'.

6th February Merilyn Moos 'From the personal to the political: Researching the KPD 1929-37'

20th February Manus McGrogan 'The revolutionary left press after 1968'

5th March Lucian van der Walt [University of Witwatersrand] 'Adding Red to the Black Atlantic: the Industrial Workers of Africa and International Socialist League’s black revolutionary syndicalists and the South Africa Native National Congress's 1917-1920 radicalisation'

19th March Roberta Wedge 'Mary Wollstonecraft: journalist, socialist, or somewhere else on the political spectrum?'

All seminars at 5.30pm
Gordon Room,
Ground Floor
Senate House
South Block
Institute of Historical Research
London