Saturday 26 September 2015 will mark the centenary of the death of James Keir Hardie. To mark this anniversary the Working Class Movement Library, Salford, will host a day conference exploring Hardie’s life and legacy. Hardie died at the comparatively young age of 59. But in those 59 years Hardie had changed the political landscape of Britain. He had been a miner, a journalist, the editor of a number of newspapers, the chairman of political groups and a Member of Parliament
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Joseph Cozens (University of Essex): Civil-Military Relations and Popular Protests in England, 1790-1805

Joe Cozens recently received a postgraduate bursary from the SSLH to examine the experiences of ordinary men who enlisted into the armed forces during the Revolutionary French Wars. His thesis also investigates the state’s increasing use of the army and the auxiliary forces to suppress popular disturbances in England during the final decades of the eighteenth century. Read his research report here

A Gaol Bird’s Lay is just one of many pamphlets held at the Working Class Movement Library, Salford, which shed light on the plight of conscientious objector in the First World War. In January 1916 Conscription was introduced into Britain for the first time to ensure that there were sufficient troops to fight on the Western Front and elsewhere. Salford played a significant role in this ‘conscientious objection’ to the war. The Library has embarked on an HLF-funded Invisible Histories Project drawing upon the rich material held in its collections

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