How have harmful words been used to stigmatise those directly affected by Ireland's institutional history? This piece reflects on the power of language in relation to Irish mother and baby homes.
Long before the modern disabled people's movement, people with impairments were claiming disability as a social and political identity. David Turner reflects on the development of disabled people's activism in Victorian Britain.
Asbestos can still be found in tens of thousands of public buildings, including housing, schools and hospitals, across the UK. Tom White explores the nationwide call to 'raise the dust' in the anti-asbestos movement.
How might a verbose Victorian Parliamentary Report provide a source of radical rural Scottish history? Andy Drummond explores the unlikely story of the 1884 Napier Report.
Across the world people are raising their voices in support of a Universal Basic Income. Toru Yamamori uncovers the forgotten feminist history behind this demand.
How can the lives of those historically labelled as vagrants be humanised? Nick Crowson explores creative and archival methods for moving past a fixed point of prosecution, and towards visibility across time and place.
How did housing activism support the fight against fascism and anti-semitism in the late 1930s? Sarah Glynn investigates a wave of rent strikes in London's East End and beyond
'Care Experienced' people are often denied agency and advocacy in the present. By uncovering histories of care and centring their voices, Kate Gibson writes, we can understand inequalities in the past and challenge them in the future.
Despite emancipationist rhetoric, asylum abolition was a cost-cutting exercise that has left us with a coercive and carceral system of care. Barbara Taylor on the new edition of Peter Barham's 'Closing the Asylum'.
Amidst the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic it seems that virtual conferences are here to stay. In the first half of this post, PhD student Ed DeVane reflects on the experience of ‘doing’ an online event. The second half of this…
What opportunities does COVID-19 present for ending homelessness? David Christie argues that the achievements of New Labour’s Rough Sleepers Unit can provide a starting point for progressive policy building in the wake of the pandemic.
Epidemics are "moments of fluidity when parts of existing societies are laid bare as not fit for purpose". Looking at the history of the Black Death, Jane Whittle asks whether our current crisis could lead to new solutions to entrenched…
Commemoration of the Battle of George Square in 1919 has interested diverse groups of researchers, activists and institutions. Respect for tradition meets the desire to create a ‘usable past’ fit for the second decade of the 21st…
Housing protests in Sixties Ireland framed activism within narratives of domestic political commemoration, and within broader social movements of the decade. What lessons can modern protest groups learn about the power of political…
Birmingham's once-vibrant suburb of Selly Oak provides a clear cut case study from very close to home of contemporary capitalism shattering a community in pursuit of profit.
An oral history of the Centreprise co-operative has captured the feelings, emotions, experiences and dilemmas of the people who created this social experiment
Edward Higgs discusses the problem of identifying the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, and the ways immigrants and citizens are made known to the state.
It is fruitful to explore the longer histories of debates that have come to define today’s NHS, and recurrent themes of ‘crisis’, says Andrew Seaton [Updated with a response from Mathew Thomson]
The historian Barbara Taylor talks about the opportunity the 2015 UK general election campaign offers for a more informed debate about mental health provision.
Silvia Croydon on the lessons UK politicians would do well to heed from Japan, where tough financial times have placed a growing burden of care on prisons
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…
Amid talk of a 'Big Society', Pat Thane explores the history of voluntary organizations and the shifting boundaries between state and society. She argues that government rhetoric masks a real shrinking of the voluntary sector.
