As repressive legislation to restrict protest is passed in India and Britain, how can we understand its historical roots and how can this inform activism today?
Why are displays of electric light an effective way to challenge inequality? Samson Lim explores the history of electrification in Thailand, and the way in which infrastructure itself became a site for both elite expressions of power and…
How should we understand the Green Deal in relation to the legacy of its predecessor, the New Deal? William Rees argues that much can be learnt from the environment of disorganisation, contradiction and compromise that led to FDR's economic…
In the latest from our 'Radical History after Brexit' series, Aoife O'Donoghue & Colin Murray explore Northern Ireland's Brexit dilemma, and consider referendums yet to come.
What does it mean to write a history of the lived experience of injustice and suffering in Trump's America? Jane Caplan examines a life caught in the interstices of Trump's Covid-19 strategy and his attacks on healthcare and public…
This virtual special issue of History Workshop Journal tells the histories of states in their interlocking national, international, local, and archival dimensions, and as political and legal contestations of sovereign power.
In July 1840 a convention of twenty-three delegates met at the Griffin Inn, Great Ancoats Street, Manchester. Elected by Chartist bodies from across Britain, their purpose was to put together a plan for reorganising the movement following a…
Perhaps we share the medieval fantasy that if only evil counsel were removed or more closely supervised, governance would be much improved, argues Jenni Nuttall as she sets the Dominic Cummings dispute in medieval context.
Matthew McCormack sets the UK government's response to Coronavirus in historic context, shedding some light on British responses to the Coronavirus pandemic, in contrast with the responses from other parts of the world.
Naman Habtom-Desta argues that while the Soviet Union, like all great powers, sought to enlarge their influence abroad, the narrative in the popular imagination surrounding the global role of the Kremlin is fundamentally flawed.
After the Supreme Court's game-changing verdict, Paul Seaward of the History of Parliament writes on prorogation: ‘one of the rusting and largely forgotten but still unexploded bombs buried deep in our constitutional arrangements'.
After the Conservative Party leadership election, and on the eve of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, David Hitchcock argues that the Prime Minister Boris Johnson's persona is animated by a picaresque politics that is closely allied…
A record of suffering: curator Janette Martin examines a report published shortly after the Peterloo Massacre which memorialises the injuries and identities of the victims.
Petitions are an ancient type of interaction between people and authority that continue to be central to British political culture in the twenty-first century. At the time of writing over 6 million names have been attached to an…
Charlotte Lydia Riley, John Callaghan, Michael Walker & Beth Foster-Ogg
As the UK Labour Party charts a new direction under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, activists and historians discuss the Left in government in the latest History Workshop Podcast.
With the defections of eleven MPs (at time of writing!) this week to form the new Independent Group, Emily Robinson reflects on the uses of history and identity in Labour politics.
Secretary of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign Bernard Regan gives an activist’s perspective on the history of the Cuban Revolution and explains why the Campaign continues to fight today.
The 'most notorious book in Russian history': Jennifer Keating on Alexander Radishchev's radical critique of autocracy, banned by Catherine the Great over a century before the Russian Revolution.
Debated in the 1647 Putney Debates, in the wake of the first English Civil War, the 'Agreement of the People' proposed radical democratic, legal and religious reforms; most significantly a written constitution between the people and their…
As the Catalan question becomes one of the most salient contemporary issues in Europe, Andrew Dowling argues that the call for independence is remarkably new, but can only be understood in the context of centuries of dispute between…
This August India celebrates 70 years of independence, but denotified and nomadic communities will commemorate their own anniversary: 65 years since the repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act, one of the British Empire's most draconian and…
