Dear Colleagues,

All being well you have an event planned for tomorrow.

If you need to see what events are taking place across the UK – perhaps you can join one if you have nothing planned in your workplace – please follow this…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

Just a brief post to give a plug for a fascinating new book (published by Rowman and Littlefield) by
Simon Springer, Marcelo Lopes de Souza, and Richard J. White. You can order a copy…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

Earlier this year the biography of Darcus Howe (activist, writer and broadcaster) Renegade: The Life & Times of Darcus Howe was re-published by Bloomsbury. Details are here:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/renegade-9781408886212/

S…Read more…

Dear Colleagues, Today marks the one-year anniversary of the tragic, early death of former Ruskin College Principal, Chris Wilkes. Chris was an inspirational leader in many genuine, authentic ways. He was deeply committed to Ruskin’s ethos of…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

In previous posts I have written of the close association between Ruskin College, the South African liberation movement, and also those books that had a great influence on me during my time as a student at the College.

With this in m…Read more…

Dear Colleague,

I am very pleased to say that Malika Achour has agreed to speak at Ruskin College.

Malika is a trade union activist from Tunisia and long-standing member of the UGTT. The event on 20th Feb will provide colleagues with an opportunity t…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

Many thanks to Jamie Woodcock for agreeing to visit Ruskin to discuss his new book, Working the Phones.

One review helpfully states:

Crikey, talk about “the classical Marxist notion of alienation”. Which is exactly what Jamie Woodcock does in this grim account of the modern-day…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

Next week my colleague Fenella Porter and I will be speaking at a collaborative event with researchers from the universities of Leeds and Bradford. We have come together around a project that has sought to explore the implications for…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

There has been so much to write/post about over the period leading up to the end of 2016, and as we head into the new year.

On the domestic front the good news is around trade union growth, both in the form of density, but also (as …Read more…

Colleagues,

Just a brief post to start the new year (another to follow asap) and which follows nicely on the heels of my last post for 2016 – which announced an increase in TU membership – with a plug for the History Acts series of workshops, and the …Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

My last post of the year comes on the back of an increase in trade union membership which, although identified formally earlier in the year, has been spurred on by the waves of industrial action across rail, post and air travel.

As …Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

A strange title indeed for one of my last posts of 2017, but this is the title of the first chapter of The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England 1640-1650 by John Rees. Recently published by Verso this is…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to say Happy Birthday to one of the best sources of insight and journalism on the state of organised labour (and politics more broadly) in the US. In These Times has reached the grand old age of 40, and is already provin…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

As life has been particularly frantic over the past few weeks I’ve had no chance to write a blog post – despite there being much to write about.

So, just a quick post to give a plug for a new activist resource (including a fantastic …Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

Just a short post to thank Brian Richardson for visiting Ruskin College on 13th Oct to deliver a blistering session, as part of Black History Month, on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the context of police, racism and …Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

Later this year I will be running an evening course at Ruskin – one of the ‘digital evenings’ that form part of the exciting range of Courses for Interest: http://tinyurl.com/jlnwgln (sign up for a
session – you’ll love it!)

Ha…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

In a post on 6th July I reported on the outcomes of a splendid few days spent with many fine trade unionists from around the world at the annual Global Labour Institute Summer School. As I mentioned in that article the summer school is pitched in an explicitly political…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

As you’ll know I have been toiling on my doctoral thesis, the focus of which is the MA programme I run at Ruskin and its focus on the way in which trade unionists learn. Although I felt I had a handle on this, the research and reading…Read more…

Dear Colleagues,

I am very proud to re-produce below an article which has just been published by New International magazine.

This article has been written by Kath Holder, a current student of the MA in international labour and trade union studies (IL…Read more…