How did women escape domestic abuse in late medieval London? Charlotte Berry explores how women navigated the social and economic barriers to leaving a violent marriage to find a safe place to live in a medieval city.
Newspaper advertisements for enslaved boys who escaped into early modern London reveal very little about the freedom seekers, and rather more about those who enslaved them. But what can we learn of Cuffee, who risked everything to escape in…
What can a gallery comments book tell us about the role radical photography can play in social change? Ruby Rees-Sheridan discusses the Half Moon Photography Workshop Comments Book as a radical object.
What does the heritage trail format offer to the communication of radical histories? Charlotte Tomlinson introduces the East End Women’s Museum's (EEWM) Brilliant Women of Whitechapel, Bow and Barking Heritage Trail, which explores…
Charlie Taverner reflects on how historical food walks can enrich radical history by opening new up trajectories and generating unexpected perspectives on the experience of the pre-industrial city.
Stuart Butler writes on performative walking along the Thames, tracing the life of Thomas Spence, a leading revolutionary in 18th century England, advocating for the complete common ownership of land.
Tensions about the rights of native and foreign-born workers in Britain, and attempts to deal with them, are not new but have been the subject of public debate for centuries. Even during the later Middle Ages, the influx of alien workers…
These are strange times in the politics of the police. In a companion piece to his History Workshop Journal article, Jonah Miller explores the historical background to debates over stop and search.
In the last instalment in our History Workshop World Cup series, John Hughson explores England's World Cup in the context of the "Swinging Sixties", and the untold stories of the women around the England team.
The Poster Workshop was the first of the radical screen-printing workshops in London, and its posters offer a mirror to the political preoccupations of the times.
In ‘Fallen Women,’ an exhibition held at the Foundling Museum, curators attempted, rather ambitiously, to explore this depiction of fallen women in period art.
John Rennie writes about the East London History website, whose brief is to cover the history of the East End of London, from when the Romans arrived to the present day
A short review of the life of A.M. Fernando, the first an Aboriginal Australian activist to present the Aboriginal cause directly to the European public in the 1920's
The 1911 Sidney Street siege in London marked a particular juncture in the history of British immigration, tying together Victorian concerns about the urban environment, along with modern fears surrounding immigration and the supposed…
Duncan Barrett, co-author of the book, 'The Sugar Girls', writes about the women who worked at Tate & Lyle’s two factories in Silvertown, London, in the years following the Second World War, and methodologies in oral history
Petition to save a remnant of the former Jewish Maternity Hospital (1911-40), the Arts & Crafts building at 22 & 24 Underwood Road in Tower Hamlets, as the last example of its kind in the country and a memorial to the pioneering…
The article gives a brief history of Kennington Common, South London, and its enclosure, before tracing some parallels between reasons for its enclosure and anti-Occupy rhetoric.
From time to time, every generation or so, rioting in London has challenged the forces of order and stretched them past breaking point. At times, too, London has seemed on the brink of civil war. This article discusses London's long…
Information and comment about events to mark the 75th anniversary in October 2011, of the Battle of Cable Street, an iconic moment in the battle against the fascists in 1930s Britain.
Reactions to news that history and other arts and humanities subjects are to be axed at the London Metropolitan University (formerly the University of North London and Polytechnic of North London), after having been taught there for over 50…
