The Society takes an interest in every aspect of human history from the earliest social formations to modern society, its culture and political activities. We encourage anyone with an interest in our history to join us and participate in our activities. The Society is particularly interested in the struggles of labour, women, progressive and peace movements throughout the world, as well as the movements and achievements of working class communities, colonial peoples, black people, and other oppressed groups seeking social justice, human dignity and liberation.
During the 1890s, British women for the first time began to leave their family homes to seek work, accommodation, and financial and sexual freedom. Read on ...
An on-line talk to mark the anniversary of the publication of History and Class Consciousness
Speaker Andrew Feenberg
The initial reception of Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness was almost entirely negative. Non-Marxists didn’t like his Marxism and Marxist disliked his borrowings from contemporary social science and philosophy. From 1923, when the book was first published, until the 1960s when a new generation of readers discovered it, History and Class Consciousness largely disappeared from both history and consciousness. Read on ...
Hugh Brody and Merilyn Moos discuss how the experiences of imperialism and of exile from Nazism generate and rely on silences in both personal and political realms.
Hugh Brody’s books include Living Arctic, Maps And Dreams,The Other Side of Eden and Landscapes of Silence; his films include Nineteen Nineteen, England’s Henry Moore and Tracks Across Sand.
The Communist Parties of Great Britain and Australia until May 1943 were dutiful members of the Comintern, however, when this body was disbanded by Stalin, both Parties were notably excluded from the newly established Cominform in late 1947. Deemed to be on the periphery of international communism, this newly found ‘independence’ prompted a turn towards Communist Parties developing their own ‘roads’ to socialism, and by extension unofficial organising hubs or spheres of influence. Read on ...
We are saddened to learn of the death of Professor Willie Thompson, President of the Socialist History Society, and author of numerous books on socialist history. A full appreciation will follow in due course. We send our deepest sympathies to his family and all his loved ones. Willie made an enormous contribution to the SHS and our work, including editing our journal for many years. Read on ...