WWW Virtual Library Labour History: United Kingdom

WWW Virtual Library
Labour History

Chez la Veuve: Women Printers in Great Britain 1475-1700 A brief introduction to the subject with pictures of books printed or sold by women. Online exhibition from the University of Illinois Library.

Archives and Libraries

Alexander Baykov Library The Baykov Library is part of the European Resource Centre, at the University of Birmingham. It was originally established in 1963 as part of the newly created Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) Holdings total aprox. 90,000 volumes and 500 Soviet Era Posters
Archif Wleidyddol Gymreig (Welsh Political Archive) at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. General information
Bishopsgate Institute and Library The library and archives of this educational foundation that opened in 1894, offers free public access to its historical collections about London and the early labour, free thought and co-operative movements.
British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Lots of political cartoons, mainly from the British press. Collections information.
British Library
Commonweal Collection at the University of Bradford Library. An independent specialist library concerned with issues relating to non-violent social change. It contains over 11,000 books and pamphlets, 250 current journals and a variety of videos and educational materials on peace and disarmament, environmentalism etc. It also contains archival material from the peace and other movements.
DANGO Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations This project aims to gather as much information as possible on the availability of records relating to non-governmental organisations and pressure groups active in the UK since 1945. The project's outcome will be a fully functional online database (currently already available for research, although as a trial and incomplete version). DANGO is based at the University of Birmingham.
Dundee University Archives - Indian Textile Industry Source List Detailed index.
Fabian Society Online Archive Around 580 pamphlets published between 1884 and 1997, and some of the earliest Fabian Society minute books are available on the site of the London School of Economics and Political Science LSE.
Guide to 19th Century Pamphlets (1801-1914) in 49 collections housed in the CURL libraries.
Guide to Holdings - Manuscript Collections - Manuscripts & Special Collections - The University of Nottingham Go to Business records: Records of Nottinghamshire businesses and employees' organisations.
Guildhall Library (London). Overview of its sources for social and economic history.
Hackney Archives Department (London). An overview of the collections, which include sources for social and labour history (local societies and clubs, trade unions), online catalogue.
Hull University Archives The labour history collections include materials related to Chartism, Christian Socialism, and many Trades Unions records. Online catalogue.
Kate Sharpley Library (London) Named in honour of Kate Sharpley, a First World War anarchist and anti-war activist, the Library was founded in South London in 1979 and reorganized in 1991. Its holdings include 10,000 English language books, pamphlets and periodicals on anarchism; a collection of posters, leaflets, manuscripts, letters, and internal records, including reports from the IWA (AIT/IAA), the Anarchist Federation of Britain (1945-1950), the Syndicalist Workers Federation (1950-1979), Cienfuegos Press, and ASP.
Labour History Archive and Study Centre (LHASC) The Labour History Archive and Study Centre (LHASC) is the main specialist repository for research into the political wing of the labour movement. It holds archives of working class organisations from the Chartists to New Labour, including the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Leeds University Library - Guide to Collections The Special Collections include the Leeds Russian Archive and the Quaker Archives Database.
Library and Museum of Freemasonry The repository for the archives of the United Grand Lodge of England and the Supreme Grand Chapter of England, their predecessor bodies, buildings and sites associated with Freemasonry, charitable bodies associated with Freemasonry, some individual Freemasons and some lodge and chapter records.
Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science Over 1m vols, 28,000 journals. Online catalog (Web). Guides to the manuscript and pamphlet collections.
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru - The National Library of Wales General information, online resources.
Marx Memorial Library (London). The Specialist Collections include materials on the Spanish Civil War, the US labour movement, the Bernal peace collection, early radical and chartist materials, the Daily Worker/Morning Star and the Unemployed Workers' Movement. Online catalogue, a selection of book reviews first published in the Marx Memorial Bulletin.
Modern Records Centre at the Library of the University of Warwick in Coventry. Records of the Trades Union Congress, the British Confederation of Industry and other union and company archives. Summary guide to the holdings.
Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading. Information on its collections, which include artefacts, books, archives, photographs, film and sound recordings, and are all related to the history of food, farming and country life. The Museum is also responsible for the The Rural History Database, an online bibliography of British rural history.
National Archives Maintains ARCHON, a directory of British archival repositories, and the National Register of Archives
National Co-operative Archive The former Co-operative Union Archive, which has now been merged with another Archive. At the Co-operative College in Manchester, UK.
National Library of Scotland Scotland's largest library and a UK library of deposit.
Political Archives: Commonwealth and Latin American Archives Project This website is the product of a project sponsored jointly by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (London) and the Institute for the Study of the Americas (London) aiming to improve access to and use of their extensive collections of political ephemera. It offers collection information, an online catalogue, and a selection of digitized posters and pamphlets.
Public Record Office The national archive of England, Wales and the United Kingdom.
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
Scottish Textile Heritage Online "This groundbreaking pilot project aims to provide a one-stop shop for anyone wanting information about the richness and diversity of Scottish Textile heritage collections. Users will be able to browse through a database of some 4,000 descriptions of archive and museum collections and objects with supporting images."
Sources for Labour History A Research Guide from the National Archives. See also the Ministry of Labour Records Research Guide.
South Wales Miners' Library at University College Swansea. General information.
Special collections in the University of Huddersfield Archives The G. H. Wood collection: manuscript wages material, monographs, pamphlets, government reports and periodicals. The subjects covered include economic and social history, education, health, housing and women's history. There is also a valuable collection of pamphlets published by feminist organisations in the early twentieth century as well as a substantial set of Fabian Society material.
The National Archives: The Catalogue: Research Guides: Sources for Labour History Domestic Records Information 125. These notes briefly describe the unpublished sources noted in the National Register of Archives (NRA), the principal relevant repositories with strong collections relating to the history of the labour movement, other useful links and works of reference.
TUC Library Collections at the London Metropolitan University
UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery Information on archives and resources.
University of Liverpool Library: Special Collections and Archives These include the Sports Archives, Social Work Archives, the papers of John and Katharine Bruce Glasier, the Gypsy Lore Society Archive, the Scott Macfie Gypsy Collection, the Rathbone family papers, the Josephine Butler papers, and the David Owen Archive.
University of Sussex Special Collections Indexes to the collections, among them the records of the Common Wealth party and the New Statesman, and related personal papers.
Working Class Movement Library (Salford). Overview of the collections (50,000 books, pamphlets etc), online catalog (Web).

Data Archives

ESDS Qualidata This specialist service of the ESDS led by the UK Data Archive (UKDA) at the University of Essex provides access and support for a range of social science qualitative datasets.
Histpop - The Online Historical Population Reports Website An online resource of almost 200,000 pages of all the published population reports created by the Registrars-General and its predecessors for England and Wales and for Scotland for the period 1801–1920.
Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex. Materials 1937-1949 and from 1981. Several search facilities.
Moving Here A British database of digitized photographs, maps, objects, documents and audio items from 30 local and national archives, museums and libraries which record migration experiences of the last 200 years.
Scottish Economic History Database 1550-1780 Crop yields, demographic data, price and wage series, weather statistics; at the International Institute of Social History.
Scottish Emigration Database The Database currently contains the records of over 21,000 passengers who embarked at Glasgow and Greenock for non-European ports between 1 January and 30 April 1923, and at other Scottish ports between 1890 and 1960. Based at the University of Aberdeen's AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies.
UK Data Archive (UKDA) A resource centre that acquires, disseminates, preserves, and promotes the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom.
UK National Digital Archive of Datasets at the University of London Computer Centre, in cooperation with the University of London Library and the Public Record Office. Archived digital data from UK government departments and agencies.

Research Institutions

Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution An interdisciplinary research centre based at University College London. Research is concerned with the modelling of human behavior in the social sciences.
Centre for Research into Freemasonry at the University of Sheffield. Access to the online version of Lane's Masonic Records of England and Wales, Draffen's Scottish Masonic Records, an Introductory Bibliography of English-Language Works and other resources.
Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements at the University of Glasgow. General information, journal.
International Centre for Labour Studies (Manchester). General information.
London School of Economics Extensive program information of this major social science research centre.

Museums

Black Country Living Museum (Dudley, West Midlands). Brief overview of the collections.
Dunaskin Open Air Museum (Doon Valley, Scotland), on the site of the Dalmellington Iron Works. General information.
Ironbridge Gorge Museum (Shropshire). General information on the museums and sites at this "birthplace of the industrial revolution".
Library and Museum of Freemasonry The repository for the archives of the United Grand Lodge of England and the Supreme Grand Chapter of England, their predecessor bodies, buildings and sites associated with Freemasonry, charitable bodies associated with Freemasonry, some individual Freemasons and some lodge and chapter records.
Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading. Information on its collections, which include artefacts, books, archives, photographs, film and sound recordings, and are all related to the history of food, farming and country life. The Museum is also responsible for the The Rural History Database, an online bibliography of British rural history.
Museum of Liverpool Life houses collections of regional provenance and national importance, including material relating to housing, public health, transport, employment, trade unionism, and recreation.
Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester The Museum's archive and library collection mainly relates to the industrial, scientific and social history of the Manchester region. The archive material include books, business records, films, letters, oral history recordings, personal records, photographs, textile sample books, written and printed papers. General information, with "stunning visuals and sound", if you have all the plug-ins.
National Coal Mining Museum (Wakefield, West Yorkshire). General information.
National Museum of Science and Industry consisting of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (Bradford), the National Railway Museum (York) and the Science Museum (London).
Owen - Robert Owen Museum Newtown, Powys, U.K. General information, a short online biography.
People's History Museum (formerly National Museum of Labour History, Manchester). Holdings include the records of the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain. The public galleries are housed at the Pump House.
Rochdale Pioneers Museum The museum of the co-operative movement.
Scottish Textile Heritage Online "This groundbreaking pilot project aims to provide a one-stop shop for anyone wanting information about the richness and diversity of Scottish Textile heritage collections. Users will be able to browse through a database of some 4,000 descriptions of archive and museum collections and objects with supporting images."
Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum (Dorchester). General information, highlights of the new exhibition on "the foundation of modern day trade unionism".

Associations and Societies

Anarchist Studies Network A Political Studies Association (UK), Specialist Group for the Study of Anarchism. General information, calls for papers, news, links.
BASEES Study Group on the Russian Revolution This study group of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies aims to help promote new approaches to the study of the Russian revolution between the 1880s and 1932. It has an annual international conference and a journal, Revolutionary Russia
British Universities Industrial Relations Association The UK association of academics in industrial relations and associated disciplines, at Keele University. Newsletter, links.
Family and Community Historical Research Society General information.
Labour Movements Group of the Political Studies Association. Conference proceedings, links.
Llafur: The Welsh People’s History Society Llafur's aims include bringing together those interested in the history of the working class and its organisations, unions, co-operative societies or political bodies.
London Socialist Historians Group The official blog of the LSHG
Manchester's Radical History The Manchester Radical History Collective's blog devoted to the city's radical and grassroots history.
North East Labour History Society Britain's oldest regional labour history society is dedicated to the study of working people's history in the region, particularly during the modern period. The website offers information about the Society and its annual journal North East History, a reading list and links to other sites.
North West Labour History Group General information, journal table of contents, some online articles.
Scottish Labour History Society Conferences, essays, links.
Social History Society General information, conferences.
Socialist History Society A group based in the UK concerned with the study of history from a socialist perspective, broadly defined. It publishes the journal Socialist History and a monograph series, Occasional Papers. It originated in 1946 as the Communist Party Historians' Group, but is now independent.
Society for Co-operative Studies
Society for the Social History of Medicine Journals tables of contents, conferences, seminars.
Society for the Study of Labour History Journal, conferences, links.

Special Topics

Anarchist Studies Network A Political Studies Association (UK), Specialist Group for the Study of Anarchism. General information, calls for papers, news, links.
Carlyle - The Carlyle Letters online The archive contains over 10,000 letters by Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Visitors can search the database or browse these documents by date, recipient, or subject. From Duke University Press.
Centre for Research into Freemasonry at the University of Sheffield. Access to the online version of Lane's Masonic Records of England and Wales, Draffen's Scottish Masonic Records, an Introductory Bibliography of English-Language Works and other resources.
Chartist Ancestors For family historians wanting to find their radical roots in the Chartist movement of the nineteenth century. The names listed here are drawn from newspapers and books of the time, from later histories and from other sources. The site also has a timeline and links to other Chartist resources. Maintained by Mark Crail.
Dictionary of Labour Biography General project information: background, aims and objectives; index of the DLB.
Fabian Society Online Archive Around 580 pamphlets are now available on the website of the London School School of Economics and Political Science. In addition, some of the earliest Fabian Society minute books are also available online.
Glasgow Digital Library Digital collections about the history of Glasgow and Scotland including resources on the 'Red Clydeside' period in Scotland's political history (1910-1932), ebooks on Glasgow's radical tradition, and the social, political and economic developments in Victorian Britain (1837-1901)
History of the Workhouse Website devoted to the history of the workhouse in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It contains lists of workhouses and Poor Law unions, maps, photographs, transcripts of documents, introductory articles on the history of the Poor Laws, histories of individual institutions, and other resources. Created by Peter Higginbotham.
I.A. Recordings (Telford, Shropshire). Dedicated to recording past and present industry processes on film and video. Overview of the productions, industrial archeology links
Kate Sharpley Library (London) Named in honour of Kate Sharpley, a First World War anarchist and anti-war activist, the Library was founded in South London in 1979 and reorganized in 1991. Its holdings include 10,000 English language books, pamphlets and periodicals on anarchism; a collection of posters, leaflets, manuscripts, letters, and internal records, including reports from the IWA (AIT/IAA), the Anarchist Federation of Britain (1945-1950), the Syndicalist Workers Federation (1950-1979), Cienfuegos Press, and ASP.
Labour Left Briefing Links Links of mainly UK labour and green organizations, academic sites, bookshops, radical media etc.
LabourNet UK Links to trade unions, campaign groups and other political organizations.
Library and Museum of Freemasonry The repository for the archives of the United Grand Lodge of England and the Supreme Grand Chapter of England, their predecessor bodies, buildings and sites associated with Freemasonry, charitable bodies associated with Freemasonry, some individual Freemasons and some lodge and chapter records.
Manchester's Radical History The Manchester Radical History Collective's blog devoted to the city's radical and grassroots history.
Marx Memorial Library (London). The Specialist Collections include materials on the Spanish Civil War, the US labour movement, the Bernal peace collection, early radical and chartist materials, the Daily Worker/Morning Star and the Unemployed Workers' Movement. Online catalogue, a selection of book reviews first published in the Marx Memorial Bulletin.
Moving Here A British database of digitized photographs, maps, objects, documents and audio items from 30 local and national archives, museums and libraries which record migration experiences of the last 200 years.
Owen - Robert Owen Museum Newtown, Powys, U.K. General information, a short online biography.
Owned by the Miners: Tower at the National Library of Wales: Roger Tiley's photographs of Tower Colliery, purchased by the miners in 1995.
Plymouth Labour History Website Online articles and some links.
Scots Abroad Databases bringing together materials relating to the life of Scots at home and abroad; in the collections of the National Library of Scotland.
Scottish Emigration Database The Database currently contains the records of over 21,000 passengers who embarked at Glasgow and Greenock for non-European ports between 1 January and 30 April 1923, and at other Scottish ports between 1890 and 1960. Based at the University of Aberdeen's AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies.
Scottish Labour History Collections This list contains summary details of all collections of significant size received to date by the Manuscripts Division of the National Library of Scotland in the field of Scottish labour and trade union history, including personal papers of individuals active in these movements.
Sources for Labour History A Research Guide from the National Archives. See also the Ministry of Labour Records Research Guide.
South Wales Miners' Library at University College Swansea. General information.
Southwell Union Workhouse (1834-1871) Documents from Southwell Union Workhouse, England: correspondence between the union and the central authorities concerning individual paupers and workhouse staff as well as source material to study poor relief, education, public health, local politics and labour history, such as trade unions, Chartism and friendly societies. This is a joint project by The National Archives in partnership with the National Trust.
Statistical Accounts of Scotland The two Statistical Accounts of Scotland, covering the 1790s and the 1830s, provide a rich record of a wide variety of topics: wealth, class and poverty; climate, agriculture, fishing and wildlife; population, schools, and the moral health of the people. A free service is available to all users with the basic features of searching, viewing and printing from the two Accounts.
Street Corner Society On the roots of democratic and labour organization in the early modern era. Includes material on Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, and others, mainly in Britain in the 1600s.
UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery Information on archives and resources.
Union - The Union Makes Us Strong: TUC History Online A history of the British trade union movement since the early 19th century, based on digitised images from the TUC Library Collections.
University of Liverpool Library: Special Collections and Archives These include the Sports Archives, Social Work Archives, the papers of John and Katharine Bruce Glasier, the Gypsy Lore Society Archive, the Scott Macfie Gypsy Collection, the Rathbone family papers, the Josephine Butler papers, and the David Owen Archive.
Ursula Stange's annotated bibliography of Chartism This bibliography was compiled in 1993 as part of the research for a Master's thesis on Ernest Jones and the Chartist Movement. Since Jones joined the movement only in 1844, the bibliography does not contain all the Chartism resources pertaining to the movement before that date.
Winning Equal Pay: the value of women's work A partnership initiative between London Metropolitan University and the Trades Union Congress to record the long campaign to achieve equal pay for women. This interactive website will show filmed interviews with women who fought for equal pay, digitised images and documents, plus contributions from historians and other experts.
Workers' War : Home Front Recalled This TUC History Online website holds an exhibition of hundreds of digitised images and documents, oral testimony from those who worked on the Home Front during the war and contributions from historians providing thematic perspectives on the period.

Journals

Anarchist Studies Journal page.
Cultural and Social History The Journal of the Social History Society (UK).
Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics Previously published as: Journal of Communist Studies until 1994.
Labour History Review Continues Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History.
Llafur: the Journal of Welsh People’s History Published annually; the journal is bilingual and welcomes submissions in either English or Welsh.
Marx Memorial Library Bulletin
North East History An annual publication of the North East Labour History Society (formerly the Bulletin of the North East Labour History Society)
North West Labour History Journal The journal of the North West Labour History Group.
Revolutionary History Revolutionary History was set up by Socialist Platform. Tables of contents of current and back issues, online articles.
Socialist History Journal of the Socialist History Society

Reference

American and British History Resources on the Internet at Rutgers University. Extensive list.
Scottish Economic History Database 1550-1780 Crop yields, demographic data, price and wage series, weather statistics; at the International Institute of Social History.
World Wide Web Virtual Library: History Scotland
World Wide Web Virtual Library: History of the United Kingdom

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Last updated 28 January 2014