From a fragile piece of printed tissue, Martin Plaut uncovers the forgotten story of a massive demonstration on the eve of the First World War, protesting the brutal deportation from South Africa to Britain of nine trades union leaders who had confronted the government of Generals Smuts and Botha.
What can a mid-20th century monument to two women in Hackney tell us about women’s work and experience? Laura Gowing delves into the intertwined lives and friendship of Harriet Delph and Frances Garlick.
First published in 1894 in Justice, Walter Crane’s The Workers’ Maypole declares ‘the cause of labour is the hope of the world’. Powerful yet whimsical, The Workers Maypole brings together English folk tradition and the demands of the international labour movement.
Martin Plaut unearths a Radical Object: the badge struck to commemorate the Spanish flu pandemic that followed the First World War.
During the 1960s an anti-war pirate radio station, ‘Voice of Nuclear Disarmament’, broadcast covertly through television sets across Greater London. Charlie Morgan delves into compelling recordings of the anti-nuclear movement, which are now preserved at the British Library Sound Archive.
The oldest surviving book owned by English speakers was a book made in North Africa. Alison Hudson traces how these radical fragments reveal that immigrants and cultural exchange have always been fundamental to British economies, culture, and communities.
Hull’s mural depicting Lillian Bilocca, the ‘headscarf revolutionary’ who led a campaign to improve safety conditions on board North Sea trawlers in the 1960s.
