History & policy database

Trade Union and Employment Forum

This new forum aims to bring together academics, business groups, policy makers and the public interested in how understandings of historical trade relations can inform current policy debates. In so doing, it builds on History & Policy’s existing collaboration with the AHRC Imagining Markets network. Forthcoming events include policy workshops and public seminars focused on the connections between Britain’s historical trade relations and contemporary trade challenges such as the EU referendum. In collaboration with the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter, the forum will also publish opinion articles and policy papers on how economic history can inform international trade discussions of topical interest.

  • How Europe Won Over the British Left

    H&P's Trade Union Forum chair John Edmonds spoke to Claire Bowes for BBC Witness about early Euroscepticism on the left and the impact of EC President Jacques Delors' speech to the Trade Union Congress in September 1988. 

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  • The Future of Trade Unions

    Dave Ward, General Secretary of the Communication Worker’s Union, Dr. Alastair Reid, Life Fellow, Girton College, Cambridge & author of United We Stand: A History of Britain's Trade Unions and Siobhan Endean, National Officer for Equalities at Unite the Union discussed the future of Trade Unions on 3 September at UNITE headquarters.

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  • Trade Unions and the European Union

    Ahead of the UK’s referendum on continued membership of the European Union, the Trade Union Forum held an event to explore the roles that Trade Unions have had in shaping the public debate on EU policies, reflect upon the roles the Unions played in the 1975 referendum, and offer suggestions for Trade Union engagement in…

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  • The Oxford School of Industrial Relations: the 1965 Donovan Commission and some historical lessons

    On Saturday 24 October 2015 around 70 Industrial Relations academics, Historians, Trade Unionists and Managers gathered for a day conference at Nuffield College, Oxford to reflect on 50 years of Industrial Relations academic research and public policy.

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  • Reflections on the The Miners Strike 30 Years On

Trade Union and Employment Forum Links

About Us

H&P is based at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London.

We are the only project in the UK providing access to an international network of more than 500 historians with a broad range of expertise. H&P offers a range of resources for historians, policy makers and journalists.

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