History and Today

It's week 11 of my 2nd year undergraduate history module, 'Peace, Power & Prosperity: British Society, 1789-1914'. (1) This week's lecture and seminar were on 19th century trade unions and labour history. http://www.unionhistory.info/timeline/Tl_Display.php?Where=Dc1Title+contains+%27Copenhagen+Fields+Demonstration%27+ What made this week's session interesting, and perhaps important, because the UCU have called a marking boycott. This has completely riled the students. There has been an awful campaign on twitter #markmywork. and it appears that the student union from my university seems to be leading the campaign. For a good summary of the campaign and a justification of the strike, read this academic's response: http://plashingvole.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/mark-my-work.html But the history of trade unions can be very hard to teach today. Teaching labour history to undergraduates, most of whom are aged 19-20, is made difficult because most student...

This weekend I did two seemingly unrelated things, which I will attempt to relate here! Helped with a public history workshop on the 1817 March of the Blanketeers at the Manchester Histories Festival; Went to see 'Breadcrumb Trail' , a documentary about Slint by Lance Bangs (who took a Q & A session afterwards), at the ICA.  How do I connect them strangely in my head? Well, I've been thinking a lot recently about Raymond Williams's notion of 'militant particularisms'.  (Bear with me!) Williams, studying 20th century class politics in Cowley motor works, identified a ‘place-bound politics arising out of the experience of class solidarities and gender relations’ formed in particular places. David Harvey understood this to mean a dichotomy between the local-particular-specific place and the national/international-general-abstract space. That is, place-bound political groups cannot achieve their goals (and indeed class consciousness) until they s...