Published by the Society for the Study of Labour History in https://sslh.org.uk/2023/02/25/additions-to-labour-history-archive-coll…
This has been a bumper year for new additions to labour history archives around the country. Almost certainly the largest collection to find a place in the archives during 2022 were administrative, financial, legal and other records of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and its predecessors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that now occupy some 300 linear metres of shelf space, promising to open up exciting new avenues of research for labour historians.
The PDF document below includes an overview of new collections added which were reported by archives to the Society for the Study of Labour History’s Archive and Resources sub-committee (SSLH-ARC) and which may be of interest to labour historians. It has been compiled by the committee and is made available here as a starting point for researchers.
sslh-new-accessions-report-2022DOWNLOAD
In addition to the NUM archives, which can be found in the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, other significant collections notified to the SSLH-ARC include:
At the Labour History Archive and Study Centre
- The papers of Clare Short’s time as a Labour MP, Front Bench and Shadow Cabinet member 1980-2000.
At the Modern Records Centre
- Records relating to the Society for the Study of Labour History and labour history research collected by the labour historian John Halstead.
- Records of TGWU Women’s Officer Marie Paterson from the 1970s-1990s.
- Records of the British Trotskyist Denzil Dean Harber, 1909-1966.
- Records of the National Society of Metal Mechanics from the 1920s-1960s, mainly relating to the Nottingham area.
At the National Library of Scotland
- Material relating to Independent Labour Party activist Bob Smillie and his service and death in the Spanish Civil War.
- Papers from the 1970s-1990s collected by John Foster relating to the Scottish committees of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
At the National Library of Wales
- The Archive of the North Wales branch of the Workers’ Educational Association between 1925-1975.
- Diaries, notebooks, essays and correspondence, including bundles of letters to the conscientious objector Ithel Davies from his father whilst in prison during the First World War.
At the University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections
- Additions to the East Midlands Feminist Archive from the 1970s and 1980s.
- Materials relating to the 2022 nurses’ strike collected in Nottingham.
At the Working Class Movement Library
- Campaign material, journals and papers from Greater Manchester and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Find out more about the work of the SSLH-Archives and Resources Committee.