Labour History

Labour history has its origins in the late 19th century, when it was predominantly written by activists such as the Webbs as an attempt to promote the trade union movement. As the subject established itself it tended to take an institutional and constitutional form, even in its Marxist varities.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a greater concentration on the social history of labour, prompted particularly by E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963), and marked the high point of the discipline's standing and popularity. It was challenged subsequently by those disputing both the homogeneity of the working class (from various perspectives including those of race and gender) and the primacy/validity of class analysis itself. More recently there have been attempts to bring a more comparative and internationalist perspective to bear on labour history.

Historians:
Briggs, Asa
Cole, George Douglas Howard
Hobsbawm, Eric J.
Joyce, Patrick
Pelling, Henry Mathison
Samuel, Raphael Elkan
Thompson, Edward Palmer
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice
Institutions:
Centre for the Study of Social History
History Workshop Journal
North East Labour History Society
North West Labour History Group
Past and Present
People's History Museum
Scottish Labour History Society
Society for the Study of Labour History
Society for the Study of Welsh History
Themes:
Economic history
History from below
Marxist history
Oral history
Social history