Research
Research Interest 1
I am interested in British labour history generally, and specifically in the following areas: the social and labour history of British mining communities; the history of industrial relations since 1945; and communism and the British labour movement.
For ten years I was an editor of the Labour History Review, the journal of the Society for the Study of Labour History, and I continue to serve on the Society's Executive Committee and on the journal's Editorial Advisory Board. I am interested in receiving proposals for post-graduate research degrees from suitably qualified graduates in the general areas of British mining and labour history, and in particular:
(1) The comparative social history of mining communities in any British coalfield or mining trade unionism in Britain in any period from the 18th century to the present.
(2) Local and regional studies of the Communist Party and the Labour Party or trade union and other the labour movement organisations in the twentieth century.
(3) Individual or collective labour biographies
The University library holds microfilms of the archives of the Independent Labour Party as well as the papers of the socialist pioneer, John Bruce Glasier, about whom no authoritative biography has yet been written. The archives of the Labour and Communist Parties are housed not far from Liverpool in the National Museum of Labour History, Manchester, while other useful records are held in the Working-Class Movement Library, Salford.
Research grants
The Russian Connection: British Communism and the Kremlin.
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
March 2002 - June 2002
Communism and the British Labour Movement: a Prosopographical Analysis.
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
January 1999 - June 2001
Research collaborations
Professor Kevin Morgan/Professor John McIlroy
The University of Manchester
Co-award holder on major ESRC-funded project (£206k) on 'Communism and the British Labour Movement: A Prospographical Analysis', which ran from 1999 to 2001