Charley Hall 1914-2009

One of the north east’s best known veteran socialist activists died in August a few weeks a short of his 95th birthday. It is now too late to include an appreciation of Charley’s long life in the 2009 North East History Journal but we will do so in the 2010 volume. Meanwhile a notice will appear on this web site as soon as it is completed.

Typing needed

North East History Journals (Bulletins) number 1-23 were typed on stencils. This makes scanning and re-formatting difficult. We need to copy type some of this material for the new web-site. Would anyone be willing to undertake any of this? contact@nelh.org

We encourage the contribution of articles from all those interested in the history of the working class in north west England. Our contributors include labour movement activists, ‘academic’, ‘amateur’ and local historians, library and museum professionals and retired people.

We welcome contributions on the broad topic of labour and social history including all aspects of the life of the ‘common people’. We are particularly keen to receive contributions from so-called ‘amateur historians’ and those whose research or recollections might not otherwise be published. Perhaps you are unearthing the life of an ancestor who was a women’s suffrage campaigner or early trade unionist. Maybe you have personal recollections of work in an industry, or of life in a community, that no longer exists. The geographical range of the Journal is from the Scottish borders to North Yorkshire and from Tyne to Solway, and also includes articles relating to, or written by, emigrés from the region. The deadline for the submission of articles is the end of April each year. If you would like an informal discussion about your subject please contact the editor by email: contact@nelh.org

First Tuesday: regular discussions at The Irish Centre (opposite St James Metro) at 7pm on the first Tuesday of every month, August excepted.

All tickets for the Pitman Painters at the Theatre Royal on 2^nd October are taken but if anyone wants to be on the reserve list (in case someone is unable to attend) please let me know by emailing contact@nelh.org.

Meeting subjects for 2010 being considered are the ILP and Rural work in Northumberland. Any further suggestions welcomed.

David Douglass was a pitman for 40 years in the coalfields of the Tyne and in South Yorkshire. This book, the second in his trilogy, is a political and social history told by a direct participant in the events and not from some distant hill of academic neutrality. It has deep and insightful cameos of pit work and the recent history of the Miners Union.

Stardust and Coaldust, deals with the period from the end of the 60s to the coming to power of Thatcher. In this 15 year period, dramatic events in the world revolution course around the globe. Dave Douglass transports us back to a time conventional histories have tried to forget or bury or rewrite.

New from

Published May 1, 2009

Title: The Wheel’s Still in Spin

Author: David John Douglass

ISBN-13:

978-1-873976-36-4

Pages 480

Size: 129mm x 196mm

Publisher: ChristieBooks

Published: 1 May, 2009

Binding: Paperback

Price: £12.95

Market: Memoir

Distribution:

99WallisRoad,LondonE95LN

Tel:08454589911Fax:08454589912

email:orders@centralbooks.comwww.centralbooks.com

ChristieBooks

PO Box 35, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 1ZS

Tel: 07818416851

email: christie@btclick.com

Christie

Books

The decade and a half between the end of the ‘60s and the rise of Margaret Thatcher witnessed a massive and global revolutionary

upsurge. In part, this was symbolised by the almost impossibly heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people against the naked Imperialism of the USA. Off the shore of the mass empire of capital little defiant Cuba sat within spitting distance. Nationalis struggles and class struggles rocked the world, liberation and resistance movements joined with the blowing winds of change.

Within the belly of the US beast, the civil rights movement and the armed wings of class and racial justice were emerging tochallenge the status quo in their own backyard. In Europe the urban guerrilla lived not in the evergreen but among the concrete jungles of downtown cities and finance capitals, as the Red Army Fraction, the Red Brigades , First of May and the Angry Brigade pockets of armed red resistance began to bring the rebellion home. In Ireland, the Provisional IRA was beginning its long war against the British state, winning increasing authority among the oppressed occupied population of Ulster. In Scotland, in Wales, even in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland, armed teams prepared for the coming decisive clash which would seek to smash the United Kingdom state. In Britain, the biggest industrial challenge since the 20s was afoot as unions and wildcats unleashed the greatest number of strike days since the General Strike. Within the unions and despite the unions the rank and file sought to stamp its control on work and unions and communities. The National Union of Mineworkers which someone was to call the ‘shocktroops of the TUC’ presided over the rise of the flying picket, and mass ‘secondary’ action, which would take a government by the balls. For a time it looked like the labour movement would take the whole system by the throat. Dockers,building workers , struck and fought toe to toe against scabs and police. Rent strikes ,occupations, work-ins, and mass demonstrations posed old ideologies and old common wealth solutions of co-operation and solidarity. All of these movements, tendencies and ideologies overlapped, inter-bred, and formed a loose but comprehensive movement. The Wheel was surely in spin, and there was no telling whom it was naming. This volume told through the perspective of one its working class revolutionary activists, explains the history as viewed from the ground and a number of those turning points and crossroads. David Douglass, a long time coal miner, union activist and revolutionary joins up the dots, along with some telling insights into the hidden world of underground labour in its harsh and gritty reality. Throughout the whole story the air of sexual freedoms, which broke free of constraints in the previous decade survive and prosper. This is a time, when the world was up for grabs, the earth resounded to the world revolutionary impulse. The genii were free from the bottle, and the music was up loud. From where we all stand now, that distant period seems dim and becomes dimmer with every new law and every new brick successive governments have placed on the wall. Soon, they hope, no-one will remember how close we came, to finishing with the whole scumbag system of greed , priviledge and power.

Don’t speak too soon for the wheels still in spinand theres no telling who that its naming for the loosers now will be later to winand the times they are a changing.

OUT SEPTEMBER!

North East History 40 which includes articles on the Parsons’ factory occupation of 1972 [very topical!], rural labour in Northumberland, local government [Dave Byrne takes no hostages], electoral politics in the late 19th Century north east [the Irish dimension] and the second part of Rene’s Chaplin’s fascinating memoir.
New subscribers can order by emailing journal@nelh.org