Bulletin Board
Donate excess labour movement books and journals to Hunter Workers Library
Hunter Workers (formerly known as Newcastle Trades Hall Council) is seeking donations of books and journals of labour movement relevance for the new Hunter Workers’ Library, specifically:
- local/Australian labour history, including biographies and histories of individuals and unions
- Australian political theory and history, especially ALP and other labour-focused parties
- Australian feminist history and theory
- CPA and other Australian left political history and theory, including biographies and autobiographies
- literature on the Australian Peace and Nuclear Disarmament Movement
- labour-themed fiction or fiction by prominent labour activist/CPA authors
- Newcastle-specific material on any of the above topics
- Material relating to Newcastle and the Hunter
The library has an extensive collection of Marx and Engels, but as many of these are very old and in poor condition, donations of any in good condition would be very welcome. They would also be ecstatic to receive any donations of ephemera (badges, posters, flyers, etc) related to these topics.
If you have books to offer, please contact Samantha Dagg, the Librarian, at library@hunterworkers.com.au or on 0431 225599. (Sam is at the Library on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.) It would be most useful if you could send Sam a list of what you can offer, so as to avoid too much duplication.
If you or someone you know is able to deliver the books to Hunter Workers, that would be great. Otherwise, Sam will coordinate collection of the boxes of books. Please note that this is unlikely to be immediate; the scheme will rely on the kindness of Newcastle people visiting Sydney who can fit the books in their cars, or people driving up from Sydney who are prepared to carry them. (So don’t leave it to the last minute before you move house or whatever to contact Sam about books you can offer!)
And if you know someone who’s driving to Newcastle and would be happy to help out, please let Sam know.
Conferences and Symposia:
The ASSLH’s 18th Biennial Conference will be held at the Research School of Social Sciences Building (Building #146, Ellery Crescent), ANU, Canberra, on 23-25 November 2023. The conference theme is (Re)Sources: Historical Inquiry and Labour History Archives and it will focus onthe significance of archives and libraries to the study of history. Papers might address a range of subjects, including:
- Competing voices in the archives
- Activist archives
- Resourcing, technology and access to archives
- Collecting the Contemporary: benefits and limitations of digital archives
- The built and living environment and their part in labour history
- Union and business archives
- Small organisations and community record keeping
- Historical collections and emerging trends in inquiry
- The odds, ends, and ephemerals of Labour History
- Exploring the past through communities, collections, exhibitions, and local stories
For further information about the Conference go to https://www.labourhistory.org.au/asslh-2023-conference/
Learning from the Past: Academic Association of Historians in Australian and New Zealand Business Schools (AAHANZBS) 14th Annual Conference, 30 November – 1 December 2023. The Women’s College, The University of Sydney, Australia.
A detailed Call for Papers is available at – https://www.sydney.edu.au/business/our-research/research-groups/business-and-labour-history-group/aahanzbs-annual-conference.html. Abstracts for refereeing should be providedto Greg Patmore at greg.patmore@sydney.edu.au by Friday 7 July 2023
The Inaugural Ray Markey Plenary speaker will be Professor Bradon Ellem, University of Sydney.
Registration: The registration charge for two days, which includes morning tea, afternoon tea and lunch, will be AU $190 (Full) and AU $150 (Concessional). There is an additional charge if you wish to attend the conference dinner. All postgraduate research students who have their abstracts accepted will have free registration (does not include conference dinner). Full registration details will follow at http://sydney.edu.au/business/research/blhg
Online Resources
New ASSLH national e-magazine: If you haven’t already done so, do check out the society’s exciting new e-magazine, Radical Currents, at https://www.labourhistory.org.au/radical-currents/no-1-autumn-2022/
Labour History Looking Ahead After 60 Years: recordingsof the talks in this series are now available on the ASSLH website: https://www.labourhistory.org.au/seminar-series-labour-history-looking-ahead-after-sixty-years/ . Talks are:
The Past and Future of Labour History (22 March 2022)Sean Scalmer (University of Melbourne) on “Politics and Context: Labour History’s Pasts, Labour History’s Futures” and Liam Byrne (Australian Council of Trade Unions) on “Telling Union Stories: Movement History Today and in the Future.”
Oral History/History from the Margins (11 April 2022)Cybèle Locke (University of Victoria, Wellington) on “Oral History and Intersectional Approaches to Labour History in Aotearoa New Zealand” and Michael Pearson (Australian Catholic University, Sydney) on “Looking at Motor Mechanics and Issues of Class and Gender Formation in 20th Century Australia”.
Legacies of British Slavery and Labour History (16May 2022)Professor Jane Lydon and Dr Jeremy Martens, both from the University of Western Australia, both spoke on the topic of “The Legacies of British Slavery and Labour History”.
New Research in Women’s Labour History (22 August 2022)Hannah Viney (Monash University) on women’s prison labour in Victoria and how it changed at the turn of the twentieth century with the influence of the women’s movement and Freya Willis (Oxford University) on how, in the 1970s, women challenged gender hierarchies within the Australian meat industry and the Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union, and forged new modes of leadership.
New Approaches: Prison Labour in Global Empire (19 September 2022)Vivien Miller (Professor of American History, University of Nottingham) on differing approaches to prison labour and prison workers and Jared Davidson (author and archivist, Wellington, NZ) on prison labour in the making of New Zealand’s Pacific.
Methods and Approaches in Labour History (24 October 2022)Tamsin O’Connor on military labour and material objects and Fiona Kinsey (Museum of Victoria) & Emma Robertson (La Trobe) on visual sources and photographic archives.
Australian Midwifery History website: In December 2021 the Australian College of Midwives launched a new website https://australianmidwiferyhistory.org.au/. The website focuses on the history of midwifery in Australia as well as that of the Australian College of Midwives and may be of interest to anyone researching the history of midwifery and childbirth in Australia.
Exhibitions
150th anniversary of the Maritime Union of Australia: If you missed last year’s excellent exhibitions celebrating the 150th anniversary at the MUA offices in Sydney and at Hunter Workers in Newcastle, you can still catch the guided tour of the Sydney exhibition by MUA veterans on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67U7YanH8yk.
These veteran maritime workers speak of the struggle and politics behind the memorabilia displayed at the MUA 150th Anniversary exhibition. Hear the stories of struggle and sacrifice made by generations of workers over the union’s long and proud history.