Labour Movement - Contemporary

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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

LabourNetUK

LabourStart

Cyber Picket Line and their World Trade Union Directory

Co-operative Movement

International Co-operative Alliance and their links by region

The U.K. Co-operative Group
(Was Co-operative Wholesale Society/ Retail Society)

Co-operative College

Co-operative Party

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.

William King Server
Named in honor of Dr. William King, whose writings in the magazine The Cooperator inspired the first generation of cooperators.
Here can be found several essays on co-operation, marxist economics, guild socialism...

Political organisations/campaign groups

Women Working Worldwide

Socialist International

Communist and workers' parties

Anarchist links

Soman's Revolutionary Socialist links

Activist Network (UK)

Jay's Leftist and 'Progressive' Internet Resources Directory and their links page

Red Pepper directory

Labour Left Briefing links

Labour Movement History

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Libraries, Archives and Museums

Archives Hub
A national gateway to descriptions of archives in UK universities and colleges

Commonwealth and Latin American Archives Project - Political Archives

CommunityArchives.org.uk
A guide to resources set up by the Community Archive Development Group, a group of the National Council on 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 labour history archives, libraries and museums.

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 a C18th building once used by the SDF and 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 remarkable 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.

The Peoples' 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. 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.

The Women's Library
The most extensive collection of women's history in the UK.

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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.

Irish Labour 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

The Thomas Paine National Historical Association
"America's oldest historical association." Includes on-line texts of Paine's writings

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Miscellaneous websites

Anarchist Communism in Britain
History of Anarchist Communism from late c18th to 1970s

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.

Bread and Roses
Poetry and History of the American Labor Movement

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.

Cyber Picket Line - Labour History links

George Barnsby's Working Class Library

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

International Brigades - Homage to Welsh participants
Photos of memorials and a pamphlet for downloading

International Brigades 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 History Research Index
Includes a guide to labour history collections,on-line research and websites. There are also features on posters, a homework helper and article on tenants movements, Tom Maguire, the Labour Church and Socialist Sunday Schools.

Labour Party history

Longsight Memories A look at the history of the Longsight area of Manchester from the 1930's to the early 1960's. Website created by Dave Boardman, who was born in the area, and grew up there in the 40's and 50's.

Luddite Documents
Guide to sources on the history of the Luddite movement.

The 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 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 (1860-1920).

Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Committee
The Committee is gathering funds to put up a statue to this remarkable political activist

The Tom Paine Project
The aim of the Project is to raise public awareness of the seminal role that Tom Paine, for six years a Lewes resident, played during what the historian Eric Hobsbawn has termed 'The Age of Revolution'.

Culture

The 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.

Jack London homepage

Joe Connell and "The Red Flag"

Union songs

Peter Watkins' website
Maker of The War Game made for and banned by the BBC in the 1960's. Made La Commune (1999) about the Paris Commune.

William Morris Society

Collections of on-line 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 New Age
Edited by A R Orage, the New Age was an influential journal to which many leading socialists contributed. The site will eventually contain the complete run (1907-1922) as well as background articles and biographical detail on contributors.

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.

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Newspaper & Magazine Websites

The Morning Star Online
"The only socialist daily newspaper in the English language worldwide."
Founded on January 1, 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.