North East Labour History

NELH Tuesday Meeting. John Stirling: On the edge? A 1960s Trade Unions Arts Festival in Newcastle
2025-07-01 19:00 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | Tyneside Irish Centre, 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SG, United Kingdom
It was 60 years ago in July 1965 that the Region’s trade unions planned and put on an Exhibition and Arts Festival. This talk will review just what was on offer and what the reaction was from local people and in the media. It will also reflect on the state of the unions at the time. But why would trade unions want to put on an arts festival anyway? What were they hoping to achieve? That’s open for discussion and, perhaps, contributions from anyone who has memories of the event!
John Stirling joined Northumbria University when it was a Polytechnic and has been involved in teaching trade unionists and writing about the movement ever since.

Redhills Miners' Hall: Mining the Memories Book Launch
2025-07-10 13:00 - 14:30 | The Miners’ Hall, Redhills, Durham, Flass Street, Durham City, DH1 4BE
From Kath Connolly
Education 4 Action are a group of volunteers working to celebrate our mining and union heritage. Amongst other things, we have provided tours of the Miners’ Hall at Redhills, organised meetings for major speakers in the week of the Big Meeting as well as developing our schools programme which has been successful in raising awareness of the need to work together in a democratic way to challenge injustice.

We are now publishing Mining The Memories, a collection of memories about what it was like to grow up in the mining communities of County Durham.
The book will be launched at the newly restored Redhills in Durham City on Thursday 10 July, 1.00 – 2.30pm and to book your place at our free launch please go to https://redhillsdurham.org/event/mining-the-memories-book-launch/ Special guests are Fiona Hill, Bill Elliott and the Rickleton School Choir.
If you can’t make that date we are having an evening event on Monday 7 July at 7.00pm in the People’s Bookshop, Prince Bishop’s Shopping Centre, Durham. To book your free place for this you should email me at kathleenhconnolly@hotmail.co.uk .
Please circulate to those who you think will be interested.
Best wishes
Kath and Education 4 Action

Joint NELH / Tyneside Irish Centre Talk. Chris Jones: 'The Spy who helped the Soviets win Stalingrad and Kursk'
2025-09-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Tyneside Irish Centre, 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SG, United Kingdom
Details to be added

North East Labour History Society, Annual General Meeting. Tyneside Irish Centre. Speaker: Dr. Sally Watson on Protest and participation in the redevelopment of Byker, 1968-1982.
2025-10-07 19:00 - 21:30 | Tyneside Irish Centre, 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SG, United Kingdom
Our AGM speaker will be Dr. Sally Watson on Protest and participation in the redevelopment of Byker, 1968-1982.
Byker has long divided opinion. It has been celebrated for its achievements, both architectural and social, and criticised as a failed experiment. This talk revisits Byker to reconsider some of the myths that have sprung up around its redevelopment. The neighbourhood was earmarked for demolition in 1963, with a new plan for Byker published in 1966.
Following a backlash to this proposal, Newcastle City Council appointed the architectural practice Ralph Erskine Arkitektkontor to oversee the redevelopment. They committed to retaining as many of the existing population as possible and to engaging tenants in decision-making about its future design. The talk will cover this period of protest, which generally receives less attention than the redevelopment itself. It will then go on to examine how tenants continued to campaign for housing rights alongside exerting their influence on the design of the new neighbourhood.
Finally, it considers what were the implications of redeveloping ‘Byker for Byker people’, as the rallying cry went, both for children who had no voice in this process and in terms of who could become a Byker tenant. It concludes by considering the legacy of the struggle over Byker.
Dr Sally Watson is a researcher in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on the relationship between changing ideas about children and the design and regulation of the urban environment since the mid 20th century. As part of her PhD research, she undertook the first extensive archival study based on the office archive of Ralph Erskine’s practice in Byker. She has also worked in museums and architectural archives in Newcastle, London and Edinburgh.

Northumbria University. Workshop: Change-making between the Local and the Global: A Conversation
2025-10-08 10:00 - 16:15 | Business Hub, Library, room 304E, Northumbria University, Sandyford Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8ST
From Daniel Laqua | Professor of Modern and Contemporary History | Department of Humanities | Northumbria University
On 8 October, we’re running a workshop at Northumbria University, entitled ‘Change-making between the Local and the Global: A Conversation’. It’s part of a wider project that my colleague Henry Miller and I are involved in. The aim of this event is to use some historical examples to facilitate conversations on the links between local and global activism. I’m conscious that many NELH members are not only interested in history but also often have personal experience of various forms of activism. With this in mind, would you be able to share the details with them?
Details, including a page to book a place on the workshop, are available here:
Change-making between the Local and the Global: A Conversation Tickets, Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite

NELH Tuesday Meeting, Tyneside Irish Centre. Mike Fraser will talk about The Geordie Appeaser - Viscount Runciman's Mission to Czechoslovakia in 1938
2025-11-18 19:00 - 21:00 | Tyneside Irish Centre, 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SG, United Kingdom
Runciman’s mission to Czechoslovakia was a key part of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Mike has not delivered this talk in about 12 years so why revisit it now? It initially occurred to him when he recognised that Putin spoke of the Russian speakers in Ukraine similarly to how Hitler spoke of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. The decision was confirmed when he heard the former head of the British military state that we are at the 1937 stage with Russia.
Mike will discuss how Runciman’s mission became a significant precursor of the Munich agreement with Hitler.

NELH Tuesday Meeting. The Closure of Sunderland's Shipyards: The Inside Story with Bob Clay and Martin Spence
2026-02-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Zoom
In December 1988 Sunderland’s shipyards closed despite a long and passionate campaign to save them, and 800 years of shipbuilding on the Wear came to an end. Yet this closure has always looked bizarre. Why were these sophisticated modern yards, representing millions of pounds of public investment, written off? Why did the Tory Government sideline a major shipowner keen to place an order which could have kept the yards open?
In this meeting Martin Spence will summarise his recent research into 1980s government papers which suggest answers to these questions. Bob Clay will comment on these findings in the light of his own experiences in the 1980s.
Bob Clay was Labour MP for Sunderland North from 1983 to 1992 and led the campaign to save the yards.
Martin Spence worked in ‘Days of Hope’ bookshop in Newcastle, and later for the media trade union BECTU, where he was Assistant General Secretary.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82998141605?pwd=[REDACTED]

Meeting ID: 829 9814 1605
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Chester le Street: Relaunch of the South Pelaw Miners Banner
2026-03-14 10:00 - 12:00 | Chester-Le-Street C of E Junior School, Hilda Park, South Pelaw,, Chester-le-Street
The South Pelaw Miners Banner needed a new home- where better than the local school where the children would grow up knowing of their proud mining heritage? A grant from Durham County Council’s Labour local Councillor Tracie Smith has paid for the restoration of the banner and its fine oak case .
This delicate silk banner was first unfurled on 23 July 1949 by Jack Lawson MP with portraits of AJ Cook and Peter Lee. On the reverse is the Hermitage, the grand house in Chester l e street acquired by the Durham Miners’ Welfare Committee for the rehabilitation of injured miners .

The restoration complete we are giving it a fine new launch on Saturday 14 March at 10 am in the Chester le Street CE Primary school hall.

Redhills Miners' Hall. Never Stop Learning: A Major North East Conference on Learning and Democracy
2026-04-17 10:00 - 15:30 | The Miners’ Hall, Redhills, Durham, Flass Street, Durham City, DH1 4BE
Whatever happened to Community Education or Life Long Learning?
Who controls Learning now?
How can adult education strengthen democracy?

NELH Tuesday Meeting. Lewis Mates will talk about the 1926 General Strike in the North East
2026-05-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Tyneside Irish Centre, 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SG, United Kingdom
Lewis is Associate Professor of Political Theory at Durham University and author of The Great Political Unrest: rank-and file movements and political change in the Durham coalfield

Newcastle University: The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research
2026-05-07 - 2026-05-09 | Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
The Newcastle University Labour & Society Research Group are organising a conference on ‘The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research’ at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Armstrong Building NE1 7RU on Thursday 7 and Friday 8 May and the programme and poster are attached.
Tickets will be available on Thursday 26 March at 9.00am (no charge) and can be booked at:
[DAY 1] https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/null/t-yzzmpzr
[DAY 2] https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/null/t-oeeazmk
Dr Joe Redmayne writes:
As the recent General Strikes in Greece, Italy, Belgium and Portugal exemplified, a general stoppage of labour by workers in all or most industries remains a powerful strategy of the working-class movement. This action has coincided with a global wave of blockades, port disruptions, strikes, and slowdowns, particularly at critical nodes like transport hubs and arms manufacturing sites of Israeli militarism.
While we intend this to be a scholarly conference, we also wish to make space for an active dialogue between people studying protest and industrial disputes in the past and practitioners of solidarity in the present. We are convinced that such mutual learning can generate insights that will enrich both scholarship and activism.
The aim is to bring together scholars, trade unionists, and interdisciplinary thinking to discuss the new areas of study of 1926. It brings together papers that focus on concrete histories of solidarity and the General Strike, whether at sites of coal extraction, transportation, distribution, and everywhere in-between.
We will also be organising a public roundtable discussion on Day 2 of the conference (8 May).

___________________________________________________________________________________________________
DRAFT PROGRAMME
The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research
Thursday 7 May and Friday 8 May 2026 School of History, Classics and Archaeology Armstrong Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU

DAY 1 PROGRAMME (7 May) DAY 1 papers: Armstrong Building, Ground Floor, room G.09
DAY 1 breaks/catering: Armstrong Building, Ground Floor, room G.07

09:00-09:30 – Morning tea/coffee – [ARMB.G.07]
09:30-09:45 – Welcome from organiser – [ARMB.G.09]
09:45-10:45 – Keynote 1 – [ARMB.G.09]
Chair: Dr Joe Redmayne
• Prof David Featherstone (University of Glasgow) – Locating ‘1926’: Transnational Articulations of Labour, Racialised Solidarities and ‘Coal Capitalism’.

10:45-11:00 – Morning tea/coffee Break – [ARMB.G.07]
11:00-12:30 – Panel 1: Mobility, resistance, and disrupting the circulation of capital – [ARMB.G.09]
Chair: Dr Sarah Campbell

Dr Quentin Outram (Leeds University and SSLH) – How did coal-powered economy survive a seven-month mining lockout? Britain in 1926
Dr Joe Redmayne (Newcastle University) – A maritime and transport perspective of the General Strike 1926: within and beyond the North East
Dr Fatima Chorfi (Université d’Oran 2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed, Algeria) – The British General Strike of 1926 and the Geographies of Resistance
Dr David Lyddon (Keele University) – Decision-making and tactics, funding, solidarity and sectionalism in the 1926 General Strike

12:30-13:15 – Lunch – [ARMB.G.07]
13:15-14:45 – Panel 2: Women’s activism and visual representations – [ARMB.G.09]
Chair: Prof Máire Cross

PGR Janet Hughes (University of East Anglia) – Labour Women: The General Strike and Lockout
Prof Matt Perry (Newcastle University) – From Middlesborough East to the World: Ellen Wilkinson’s 1926.
Dr Shirin Hirsch (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Dr David Swanson (University of Manchester) – Photographs of the 1926 General Strike

14:45-15:00 – Break – [ARMB.G.07]
15:00-15:45 – Making history, not reliving it: the national partnership to celebrate the centenary of the General Strike 1926 – [ARMB.G.09]
Chair: Prof Matt Perry

• Henry Fowler, General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) and GFTU Educational Trust

15:45-17:00 – Evening reception – [ARMB.G.07]
