Frederick Engels and Mary and Lizzy Burns

Sisters Mary and Lizzy Burns were two Manchester Irish women who became the lovers of socialist writer Frederick Engels and played a significant role in his life. After a brief visit as teenager, Frederick Engels came to Manchester in December 1842, aged 22, to work in the family firm Ermen & Engels. Engels had been [...]

Read Full Post »

Ellen Wilkinson – trade unionist, feminist, socialist

Ellen Wilkinson was born in Manchester in 1891 and was an active trade unionist, feminist and Socialist. She was a councillor in Manchester and later MP for Middlesbrough and then Jarrow. She was Minister for Education in the 1945 Labour government but died suddenly in February 1947. Ellen Wilkinson was born on 18 October 1891 [...]

Read Full Post »

Anarchists on Ardwick Green, 1893

In the early 1890s, anarchist organisers in Manchester held regular public open-air meetings at a number of sites across the city. By the second half of 1893, particularly after complaints by a local vicar, the police became involved. The earliest mention of the open-air meetings held by the Manchester Anarchist Communist Group is a date [...]

Read Full Post »

Fascism and anti-fascism in 1930s Manchester

The following article on Fascist leader Oswald Mosley’s humiliation by anti-fascists at Belle Vue is reproduced by kind permission of Manchester University’s Centre for Jewish Studies, and is by Michael Wolf of the anti-fascist periodical Searchlight. The introduction to the article is based on an article by Yaakov Wise, also on the CJS website. One [...]

Read Full Post »

Alfred Barton: 19th century anarchism and the early 20th century Labour Party

In the 1890s, anarchism was seen by governments around the Western world as a threat as significant as Communism, and Manchester was one of the first cities in Britain where local anarchists clashed with the authorities. One of the young men involved was Alfred Barton, who later went on to an active career in left-wing [...]

Read Full Post »

The Irish in Manchester and the Civil Rights Movement in the North of Ireland, 1963-1974

The emergence of the Civil Rights movement in the North of Ireland led to solidarity organisations being established in Britain, seeking through meetings, marches and strikes to highlight what was happening. The government used the prevention of Terrorism Act, passed in November 1974, to clamp down hard on campaigners. The Emergence of the Civil Rights [...]

Read Full Post »

The General Strike in Manchester, May 1926

The General Strike was the most significant British labour dispute of the twentieth century. It was a massive solidarity action called by the Trades Union Congress in support of the miners, who were striking against cuts in pay and longer hours. It began on 3 May 1926 and was called off on 12 May by [...]

Read Full Post »

Sam Wild and Bessie Berry – the Spanish Civil War, Communism and Feminisn

Sam Wild, born in Ardwick, was one of the Manchester men who fought in the Spanish Civil War, eventually becoming the commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigade. Bessie Berry, his wife, was a pioneering women activist in British Communist circles.

Read Full Post »