European Labour History Network
Labour and Empire Working Group
Working-class Anti-Imperialism and the Global Left: New Directions of Study
30 June, 2023
University of Bristol
Room G.H03, Arts Complex, 7 Woodland Road, BS8 1UJ,
Bristol, United Kingdom
9.00 Registration
9.15 Welcome
Panel 1 - Global Marxisms (9.30-10.50)
- Natalie Berhends (Harvard University): For Your Freedom and Ours: Diasporic Polish, Yiddish, and Ukrainian Anti-Imperial Socialism, 1870-1919
- Daria Dyakonova (International Institute, Geneva): “If you, working women, want to destroy slavery in colonial countries your place is in the ranks of the Communist International”: the International Communist Women’s Movement’s Anti-colonialism and Anti-imperialism in the 1920s
- Vanessa Corrado (independent scholar): De-institutionalizing politics: activists’ agency and activists’ work in a Marxist-Leninist movement of India (1967-1975)
10.50-11.10: Break
Panel 2 - Anti-colonialism and the African Left (11.10-12.30)
- Steven Parfitt (Independent scholar): White “Workers” on the South African Diamond Fields (1888-1893)
- Giulio Fugazzotto (University of Urbino), The ‘mission’ of Velio Spano in Egypt between anti-colonialism and antifascism (1935-1936)
- Fatima Chorfi (University Oran2, Mohamed Ben Ahmed, Algeria): The Role of the Trade Unions in the Decolonisation of Algeria
12.30-13.30: Lunch
Panel 3 – Projected Revolutions (13.30-14.50)
- Richard Cleminson (University of Leeds): Pan-Africanism, anarcho-syndicalism and the colonial question in Portugal (1910-1933)
- Joshua Newmark (University of Leeds): The Mexican Model: Spanish Anarchist Idealisation of Revolutionary Mexico, 1910-1939
- Fatma Çingi Kocadost (EHESS-Centre Maurice Halbwachs) and Camille Fauroux (Université Toulouse 2): Revolutionaries in Diaspora: Contributing to the anti-imperialist Struggle in Turkey and organising Migrant Workers in Europe
14.50-15.10: Break
Panel 4 - On the Global Waterfront (15.10-16.30)
- Peter Cole (Western Illinois University): Dockers, anti-imperialism, and left internationalism
- Justine Cousin (independent scholar): Lascar activism in Britain and international movements (1925-1944)
- Mae Miller-Likhethe (University of California at Berkeley): The International and the Waterfront: Revisiting Otto Huiswoud’s Political Work in Hamburg, Cape Town, and Antwerp
Wrap Up Session – The EHLN Labour and Empire Working Group: Current and Future Plans (16.30-17.30)
19.00: Dinner (location TBA)
We would like to thank the University of Bristol, Sorbonne Nouvelle and the Society for the Study of Labour History for the generous financial support.
For information, please get in touch with the conference organisers (Yann Béliard, Lorenzo Costaguta and Gareth Curless) at labourempire.elhn@gmail.com.