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.

  • Whatever happened to collective bargaining?

    Roger Jeary and Jim Moher report on the Trade Union Forum’s 28 March 2015 meeting, which fetaured Tony Burke of UNITE, Ray Ellis of CWU and Professor Melanie Simms of Leicester University. 

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  • Unions and the Great War

    H&P's Trade Union Forum explored the unions during the First World War at its 15 November 2014 meeting. Professor Jerry White, of Birkbeck, University of London, spoke about London's trade unions, and Dr Deborah Thom, of Robinson College, Cambridge, talked about women, socialism, unionism and protest.

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  • The Miners’ Strike, 30 Years On conference

    A report by Roger Jeary of this public conference is now available. Bringing together union leaders, strike participants, historians, legal scholars and journalists, the event offered fascinating and at times charged insights into an industrial dispute that changed the landscape of trade unionism in Britain.

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  • The unions and political parties reconsidered

    At a special session on this theme Dr Jim Moher, former National Legal Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, drew together the threads of the previous four sessions and led off further discussion to open up new perspectives on policy, at what turned out to be a very opportune time as regards wider public discussions…

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  • The Communist Party and the trade unions

    Professor Kevin Morgan of the University of Manchester gave a historical account of contrasting phases in the CP's activities, and a number of regular participants in Forum meetings then made short contributions on their own experiences.

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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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