Rethinking Worlds of Labour:
Southern African labour history in international context.
A conference from Friday 28th to Monday 31st July 2006
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Organised by the History Workshop and the Sociology of Work Unit, at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Call for papers

ITH - International Conference of Labour and Social History
Chamber of Labour of Upper Austria

Labour Biographies and Prosopography
September 15 to 18, 2005
AK-Bildungshaus Jägermayrhof
Römerstr. 98a, A-4020 Linz

41st Linz Conference, organized by International Conference of Labour and Social History and Chamber of Labour of Upper Austria kindly supported by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Provincial Government of Upper Austria, the City of Linz, the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions and the Friedrich Ebert-Foundation Bonn.

Call for Papers: Child Labour’s Global Past (1500-2000)
International conference, Amsterdam, 15-17 November 2006

We live in an age when child labour is almost extinct in some parts of the world, and an enduring phenomenon in others. Depending on the definitions used, the estimated number of child labourers ranges from 180 to 250 million worldwide. Notwithstanding a gradual decline in some parts of the world, overall progress remains inadequate. The eradication of child labour seems to be an insurmountable problem.

The annual North West Labour History Journal (England) will be published this autumn. Please send details of any historical seminars, meetings, social, cultural and other events happening in autumn 2005 and in 2006 for inclusion as soon as possible to the editor Bob Hayes - email:

Heritage Open Days 2005

Please note that the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, England, will be taking part in the Heritage Open Days 2005.

The library is one of the most important collections in the country of the history of the trade union and labour movement from the late c18th to the present day. It was founded in the 1950s by Ruth and Edmund Frow in their own home and since 1987 has been housed in Salford. It is now a Charitable Trust.

Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, eds. The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003. viii + 346 pp. Notes, index. $79.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-275-97891-5; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 0-275-97892-3.

Reviewed by: Gary Roth, Provost's Office, Rutgers University at Newark.
Published by: H-ItAm (January, 2005)

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Louise Michel's death, the IISH presents a selection of documents of her life. As a communarde, determined revolutionary, and romantic writer, Louise Michel's revolutionary engagement originated in her opposition to Napoleon III during the Second Empire. In 1871, with the Paris Commune, her opposition to the bourgeois republic led by Adolphe Thiers became increasingly pronounced, and by 1880, her anarchist views clashed with the policies of the Third Republic.

From Carol Murphy, Library SIPTU College, Dublin,

Globalised cinema presents very few opportunities to working men and women to see films that portray the lives and struggles of those individuals who take on the rich and powerful so as to lift ordinary people out of poverty and oppression. Too often, cinema presents a fantasy world in which glamour and celebrity are elevated and in which the interests of the elite are served against the best interest of workers and the marginalised.

Hans-Ulrich Wehler Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte--Vierter Band: Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gruendung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914-1949. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2003. xxiv + 1173 pp. Index. EUR 59.90 (cloth), ISBN 3-406-32264-6.

Reviewed by: David F. Crew, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin.
Published by: H-German (June, 2005)

From Mrs Christine Woodland,