Links
Labour Movement - contemporary
Trade union resources
Co-operative movement
Political organisations/campaign groups
Labour Movement - history
Libraries, archives and museums
History societies
Miscellaneous websites
Culture
Collections of online texts
Newspaper and magazine web sites
Labour Movement - Contemporary
Trade Union resources
These following three sites provide an excellent guide to TU activity the world over and links to a vast range of resources
Cyber Picket Line and their World Trade Union Directory
Co-operative Movement
International Co-operative Alliance and their guide to the international co-operative movement
The U.K. Co-operative Group
Formerly Co-operative Wholesale Society/ Retail Society
Woodcraft Folk
The Co-operative Movement's alternative to the Scouts
Other sites of co-operative interest
University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives
Links to a wide range of co-operatives in the U.S.A.
Political organisations/campaign groups
Soman's Socialist Revolutionary links
Jay's Leftist and 'Progressive' Internet Resources Directory
Labour Movement History
Libraries, Archives and Museums
Archives Hub
A national gateway to descriptions of archives in UK universities and colleges
Bishopsgate Library
The Library offers free public access to its collections which cover a variety of subject areas, including the social and topographical history of London, particularly the East End; the early labour movement; humanism, freethought and secularism; and co-operation. The site includes an online catalogue of holdings.
Commonwealth and Latin American Archives Project
Political archives
George Meany Memorial Archives
Archives of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
Glasgow Women's Library
A key source of information about women, run largely by volunteers
International Association of Labour History Institutions
Umbrella organisation for archives, libraries, document centres, museums and research institutions specialising in the history and theory of the labour movement. Runs http://labourhistory.net, a Web site which includes a Serials Service, tables of contents of over 100 serials in the area of labour history plus an email alerting service and an RSS feed of recently added issues.
International Institute of Social History
Amsterdam. One of the world's largest documentary and research institutions in the field of social history in general and the history of the labour movement in particular. Holds over 2,700 archival collections.
Labor and Working-Class History Association
Promoting a wider understanding of the history of working class people, their communities, and their organizations in the United States.
Marx Memorial Library
Founded in 1933 and housed in an 18th century building once used by the Social Democratic Foundation and by Lenin, the library houses books, pamphlets and periodicals on all aspects of Marxism, the science of Socialism and history of working class movements
Mass Observation Archive
MO was a remarkable project, founded by Charles Madge, Tom Harrisson and Humphrey Jennings in 1937 which aimed to create "the science of ourselves", a documentation of everyday life in Britain carried out through empirical observation, diaries, photographs and much else. The archive is available to researchers.
Modern Records Centre
Based at Warwick University, the Centre aims to collect and make available for research original sources for British social and economic history, especially labour history, industrial relations and industrial politics.
People's History Museum
The museum is a national centre for the collection, conservation, interpretation and study of material relating to the history of working people in Britain. The archives centre includes extensive archives on the history of the Labour Party and Communist Party of Great Britain.
Reuther Library
Detroit-based home to the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs and the Douglas Fraser Center for Workplace Issues.
Robert Owen Museum
Owen was born in Newtown, Powys, Wales in 1771 and is regarded as the founder of the Co-operative Movement. The museum tells the story of his early years.
Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) Archive
The Archive holds all the surviving documentation relating to the STUC and its business from 1897 onwards.
South Wales Coalfield Collection
Tells the history of the South Wales miners through a variety of archives, including trade unions, co-op societies and individual memoirs.
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
At New York University. Holds the archives of New York City's labor unions.
Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum
Housed in Tolpuddle itself, the museum commemorates this important episode in British labour history. The website has many useful resources
TUC Library
The collection holds the records of the Trades Union Congress, trade union press and labour history journals.
William Gallacher Memorial Library
Founded in 1968 as a tribute to the life and work of William Gallacher, the Scottish Communist, who sat in the Commons between 1935 and 1950. The library has an extensive collection of books and pamphlets.
Women's Library
The most extensive collection of women's history in the UK.
History Societies
Communist History Network Newsletter (CHNN)
A twice-yearly publication concerned with all aspects of current historical research into the life and work of communists and communist parties across the world.
Llafur: the Welsh Peoples' History Society
London Socialist Historians
Hold regular events and publish a newsletter, which can be downloaded from site. The site also includes a bulletin board.
North East Labour History Society
North West Labour History Group
The group was established in the early 1970s to promote greater knowledge of the rich history of radical, industrial, political, social and cultural movements in the North West of England. It holds regular events and publishes an annual journal, which is aimed at the general reader and is the best labour history publication in the country. The website includes a listing of all previous articles and reviews.
Scottish Labour History Society
Holds regular events and publishes a journal
Socialist History Society
Holds regular events, meetings and one-off conferences. Publishes the Socialist History journal
Society for the Study of Labour History
Publishers of Labour History Review
Thomas Paine National Historical Association
"America's oldest historical association." Includes on-line texts of Paine's writings
Miscellaneous websites
Anarchist Communism in Britain
History of Anarchist Communism from the late 18th century to the 1970s
British Library: Newspapers Digitisation Project: British Newspapers 1800-1900
1,000,000 pages of content available to the FE and HE community in the United Kingdom. It includes pages from many 19th century periodicals of interest to labour historians.
Children of '37 Association UK
In 1937, during the Spanish civil war, a group of almost 4,000 children were evacuated from Bilbao.This site aims to remember and preserve the story of these children, the 'niños vascos', in its proper historical context.
Chartist Ancestors and Trade Union Ancestors
Genealogy resources
Chelmsford and District Trades Council
Exemplary trade union site, which includes history of the Council and a comprehensive list of published trade union histories and trades council histories as well as many other useful links.
Clarion House
Combines information about the history of the Nelson Independent Labour Party with the present uses of the Clarion House.
Communist International (Comintern) Archives Project
A freely accessible index of the archive contents and a subscription service access to images of the documents.
Communist Party of Great Britain online bibliography
Produced by Dave Cope, who states 'I am confident I have unearthed at least 95% of material published nationally by the CPGB, most local material and the vast majority of key books and many of the articles written about the CPGB'.
CommunityArchives.org.uk
A guide to resources set up by the Community Archive Development Group, a group of the National Council on Archives.
Cyber Picket Line
Labour History links
H-Albion
A discussion list for British and Irish history. Not specifically labour-related
Industrial Revolution
Useful set of original sources on the history of the Industrial Revolution - an Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
International Brigades - Homage to Welsh participants
Photos of memorials and a pamphlet for downloading
International Brigade Memorial Trust
Focus for commemorative activity and research concerning the men and women who fought in the International Brigades and in the medical and other support services in the Spanish Civil War.
Phil Kaiserman - From Barber Shop to Paper Mill
A life spent in the labour movement. Autobiography of a long time friend of, and volunteer at, the WCML.
Labour Heritage
Organisation which promotes the history of the Labour Party
Longsight Memories
A look at the history of the Longsight area of Manchester from the 1930s to the early 1960s. Website created by Dave Boardman, who was born in the area, and grew up there in the 40s and 50s.
Luddite Documents
Guide to sources on the history of the Luddite movement.
Manchester`s Radical History
Aims to collect accounts of different strands in Manchester's history. Particularly concerned with recording the memories of older members of various communities and ensuring that their experiences and knowledge are not lost.
Raymond Williams Society
The Society exists to support and develop intellectual and political projects in areas broadly connected with Williams's work.
Red Clydeside
History of labour politics on Clydeside in Scotland, 1910-1922
Spartacus Educational
An online UK history encyclopedia with many detailed and illustrated entries including such subjects as Chartism, the Peterloo Massacre, child labour and the emancipation of women.
Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee
The Committee is gathering funds to put up a statue to this remarkable political activist
Culture
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
With over 50,000 posters, the CSPG archive is the largest collection of Post World War II graphics in the United States.
Centre for Political Song
A collection established at Glasgow Caledonian University that "exists to promote... an appreciation of the role of political song in the social, political and cultural life of communities; and to facilitate research in all relevant areas of study."
George Orwell 1903-1950
Site devoted to this very influential English Socialist.
George Orwell links
Another useful site on Orwell.
Joe Connell and "The Red Flag"
Peter Watkins's Web site
Maker of The War Game made for and banned by the BBC in the 1960s. Made La Commune (1999) about the Paris Commune.
Collections of online texts
Internet Public Library
Over 7,500 online texts including Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism by Edith Nesbit, better known for The Railway Children .
The IPL also has links to more than 4,500 newspapers and other periodicals worldwide
Marxists' Internet Archive
As well as the usual suspects the MIA contains writings on and by a vast array of other Marxists. A continually developing volunteer project.
The Secular Web
A good library containing modern contributions to the atheist/theist debates and a collection of historical texts, including writings of Tom Paine, Mark Twain, Emma Goldman and Charles Darwin.
Newspaper & Magazine Web sites
Morning Star Online
"The only socialist daily newspaper in the English language worldwide."
Founded on 1January 1930, it is still the only English language socialist daily newspaper published in the world. In addition to that claim to fame, it is also the only newspaper in Britain owned by its readers. Originally published as The Daily Worker, the paper was launched as the organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain.