North East Labour History

Sigmund Pump Apprentices at a 2016 Reunion In this paper, I will discuss the Gateshead-based Sigmund Pumps Wartime Apprenticeship Scheme. Utilising archive materials and new oral history interviews with five wartime apprentices, I will examine the impact of the apprenticeship scheme on those involved. The Sigmund scheme was unique in that it was based on […]

From Sue King St Hilda's Pit Head has been restored by the Tyne and Wear Restoration Trust and is now used as a community centre, focussing on the arts. There is an exhibition there of paintings by local artists to commemorate the pit disaster when 51 men and boys were killed.  Both building and exhibition […]

The first edition of Shafted was published on the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike. So much has happened over the last decade: cabinet paper revelations on the government’s role in the strike; the establishment of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign; and a renewed interest in the Women Against Pit Closures pit camps set […]

Opened by Chi Onwurah MP Performance by Khadijah Ibrahim (Author & Poet)  Presentation by Edwina Forde & Dr Prevatt Goldstein  Includes refreshments – bookings at

Dear friend and colleagues, As many of you will know, Blind Willie Purvis was the earliest-known named vernacular songwriter in Newcastle, and he became an iconic figure among middle-class people by the 1820s, while Bobby Nunn was the earliest-known semi-professional songwriter for the town’s working-class people from 1829. I will be launching my Tyneside Song […]

In 1937 Orwell visited a coal mine in Lancashire and was exhausted by the time he had walked to the coal face. He marvelled at the endurance of the miners and wrote of how you could “easily drive a car right across the north of England: and never once remembered that hundreds of feet below... […]

From Smajo Beso of Newcastle’s Bosnian Community You are warmly invited to Newcastle’s St Nicholas Cathedral on Thursday 11 July at 6.30pm to remember the victims and survivors of the single largest atrocity mass killing on European soil since the Second World War. This year marks the 24th anniversary of the Bosnian genocide, in the town […]

The Church is situated between Breamish Street and City Road. The main entrance is on Breamish Street where there is on-street parking.  

This is the story of the Peterloo Massacre told through many of the ballads that were written at the time, please book at https://peterloo.eventbrite.co.uk There is also a guided walk on Newcastle's Campaign for the Vote, starting at Grey's Monument which you can join on Sunday at 2.30pm, £5 for adults, £3 for over 60s […]