workers of all lands unite?' 7th march 2015

Workers of all lands unite? - 7th March 2015

1

WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE?

WORKING-CLASS NATIONALISM AND

INTERNATIONALISM UNTIL 1945

PROGRAMME

OF EVENTS

7TH MARCH 2015

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

www.facebook.com/workersofalllandsunite?

@wuniteconf2015

workersuniteconference2015.wordpress.com

[email protected]


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CONTENTS

INFORMATION FOR DELEGATES .......................................................................................... 3

WIFI ACCESS ......................................................................................................................... 3

GETTING TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM ........................................................ 3

PARKING ............................................................................................................................... 4

CONFERENCE LOCATION .................................................................................................. 5

PROGRAMME ............................................................................................................................ 6

ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES ............................................................................................ 9

KEYNOTE AND ROUNDTABLE SPEAKERS ........................................................................ 9

PANEL 1: NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM IN THE 1930S .......................... 11

PANEL 2: PERSONAL STORIES ........................................................................................ 11

PANEL 3: NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM .................................................................... 11

PANEL 4: INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS AND FEDERATIONS ................................... 12

PANEL 5: SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE THE GREAT WAR ..................................... 12

PANEL 6: RACE, CLASS, NATION AND EMPIRE ........................................................... 13

NOTES .................................................................................................................................... 14

LINKS ..................................................................................................................................... 15

The Organising Committee wishes to acknowledge the support of the:

Economic History Society

University of Nottingham Department of History

University of Nottingham School of American and Canadian Studies


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INFORMATION FOR DELEGATES

WIFI ACCESS

To connect to the 'UoN-guest' network:

1. Make sure the wireless network adaptor is activated on your device

2. If you are in range, your device should automatically connect to the UoN-guest

network. If not, find ‘UoN-guest’ in the list of wireless connections available

and select this network. If it is not listed you are not within range of the hotspot.

Please move the device until you are in range

3. Open your web browser, then browse to any website that is not associated with

The University of Nottingham

4. A certificate message may be displayed by your browser. If this is the case then

click to accept the certificate as prompted by the browser

5. The UoN-guest wireless login page will appear

6. Enter your email address

7. Select, I accept the terms and conditions of this service , to confirm you have

read the terms and conditions on this page

8. A small pop-up window will appear. This is for you to use later to logout

9. Your device is now connected to UoN-guest and can browse internet sites using

http (port 80) or https (port 443) protocols

GETTING TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

The conference will be held in Highfield House at the University of Nottingham's

University Park campus.

Address:

The University of Nottingham

University Park

Nottingham

NG7 2RD

Driving:

When driving to University Park Campus via satellite navigation please use the

postcode: NG7 2QL.

From M1 motorway:

Leave the M1 motorway at Junction 25 to join the A52 to Nottingham. Follow the

A52 for approximately 4 miles, at the Toby Carvery roundabout turn right onto the

A6464, turn left at the next roundabout to enter the University's West Entrance.


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From East Midlands Airport:

From East Midlands Airport you can take the Trent Barton Indigo service directly

to the campus or the Skylink bus to Nottingham. Buses leave from outside the

Airport Arrivals hall.

You can also walk to the taxi rank on the terminal forecourt and take a direct taxi

to the University. The cost of a single/one way journey is approximately £20.

Via train and bus

Regular services operate between Nottingham and London St Pancras (from 1

hours 45 mins), Birmingham (1 hour 15 mins), Leeds (2 hours), Manchester (2

hours), or Sheffield (1 hour).

The University Park campus, where the conference will be held, is 2 miles from the

Nottingham Train station, about a 40 min walk or a short bus ride. To take a bus,

walk to Broadmarsh bus station and get either the i4 (every ten minutes) or the 21

(every hour) bus. These buses will drop you off outside the University Park

campus, from where you will need to use the map on page 4 to navigate your way

to Highfield House.

PARKING

Parking on campus is free on weekends, but please remember to park in a legally

marked bay.


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CONFERENCE LOCATION

The conference will be held in Highfield House (circled in orange).


6

PROGRAMME

All talks and discussions will take place in Highfield House.

8:45-9.15 Registration

9.15-9.30 Conference opening from organisers

9.30-10.45 Keynote address by Dan Gallin with Q&A

10.45-11.00 Break

11.00-12.15

Panel 1: Nationalism and Internationalism in the 1930s

Kerrie Holloway, Queen Mary University

'Constructing Solidarity: Aid Spain Committees, Local Citizenship and

Internationalism in the late 1930s'

Dr. David Convery, National University of Ireland, Galway

'Internationalism or Paternalism? The relationship between communists in

Britain and Ireland, 1931-1941'

Dr. Natalia Rocha Lawton, Coventry University

'Intersectionality, hegemony and the power relationships surrounding

privatisation'

11.00-12.15

Panel 2: Personal Stories

Susan Garrard, University of St Andrews

'“Welcome Garibaldi!”: A female working-class poet’s engagement with

British Nationalism and the Italian Risorgimento'

Christina Till, University of Hamburg

'Jiang Kanghu and the European Left'

Sani Montclair vanderSpek, University of Oxford

'Colonial Practices and Daily Life in Family Photographs from the

Netherlands Indies, 1907-1938'

12.15 -1.15 Lunch


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1.15-2.30

Panel 3: Nationalism and Socialism Ivan Jeličić, University of Trieste 'The (im)possible socialist movement in Fiume' Kostas Paloukis, University of Crete 'The views of archeiomarxists about the Greek revolution and the Greek nation' Merilyn Moos, independent researcher and author 'Now is the time to recognise the grass-roots opposition to the Nazis pre-1933: the case of Siegfried Moos'

1.15-2.30

Panel 4: International Networks and Federations Morris Brodie, Queen's University Belfast 'The Atlantic Anarchist Movement in the 1930s' Aurélien Zaragori, Université Lyon 'Acting internationally: the consolidation of International Federation of Christian Trade Unions through its participation in the International Labour Organization' Yiannis Kokosalakis, University of Edinburgh 'Proletarian Internationalism as Revolutionary Patriotism: Political Instruction in the Soviet Baltic Fleet, 1926-1941'

2.30-3.45

Panel 5: Social Democracy Before the Great War Ken Cheng, University College London 'Revolutionary popularization and the re-imagining of worker internationalism: German Social Democracy and French revolutionary syndicalism, 1890-1914' Dr. Christian Dietrich, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt 'Colonialism, Class Struggle and Jewish Proletariat: Positions on Labour Zionism in the Colonialism Discussion of the German Social Democracy' Dr. Jakub Beneš, University of Birmingham 'Nationalism as the Fulfilment of Internationalism in Czech Social Democracy 1890-1914'


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2.30-3.45

Panel 6: Race, Class, Nation and Empire Dr. Nikos Potamianos, teacher in secondary education 'National preference demands and labor market: the case of Greek workers in the 1910s' Musab Younis, University of Oxford ''A nation within a nation': black nationalism in the United States, 1919-1939' Dr. Brian Casey, University College Dublin The construction of political consciousness amongst the lower classes in the west of Ireland, 1876-1879

3.45-4.00 Break

4.00-5.45

'How efficient are contemporary labour unions and associations at

protecting local and immigrant workers in their national contexts,

while at the same time favouring the organization of transnational

structures that defend workers’ interests on a global scale?'

Dan Gallin, Chair of the Global Labour Institute

Dr. Allison Drew, University of York

Dr. Christopher Phelps, University of Nottingham

Dr. Chris Wrigley, University of Nottingham

5.45- Conference close, followed by wine reception and (optional) dinner


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ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES

KEYNOTE AND ROUNDTABLE SPEAKERS

Dan Gallin, Chair of the Global Labour Institute (Geneva)

Dan Gallin’s career as a socialist and union activist spans more than six decades.

Son of an exiled Romanian diplomat, he was recruited to “Third Camp” Socialism

(Socialist Youth League/International Socialist League) as a college student at the

University of Kansas in the early 1950s. Forced to leave the USA for his political

activities in 1953, he rejoined his family in Switzerland where he became a Swiss

citizen and a member of the Swiss Socialist Party. Opting to work in the

international workers’ movement rather than the socialist political movement, he

joined the staff of the International Union of Food Workers (IUF), which he

served as General Secretary from 1968 to 1997.

Currently, he is Chair of the Global Labour Institute (GLI), a labour service

organization which he co-founded in 1997 with a secretariat in Geneva and

affiliates in New York, Moscow, and Manchester. He has become a mentor to a

new generation of trade union activists through his work with the GLI and his

advocacy of the inclusion of informal sector and domestic workers and their

unions as critical parts of the labour movement.

Gallin has also written widely on the history and future of the international trade

union movement. His most recent work, Solidarity, was released in May 2014, and is

a collection of nineteen essays, in which he writes on a broad range of issues

including the Algerian revolution, the French Left, Victor Serge, Scandinavian

social democracy, the international labour movement, domestic work and the

informal sector.

Dr. Allison Drew, Professor of Politics, University of York

Allison Drew is interested in twentieth-century and contemporary Africa,

particularly the dynamics between African states and social movements and

struggles over development. Her research examines the anti-colonial struggle in

Algeria and the movement for democracy in South Africa, especially the changing

relationships between socialism, nationalism and states and the interactions

between national and international movements. Her most recent book is We are

no Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria (MUP, 2014), and she has

published four books concerning socialism and the national liberation struggle in

South Africa.


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Dr. Christopher Phelps, Associate Professor of American History, University

of Nottingham

Christopher Phelps is a historian of modern American political and intellectual life.

Born near Washington, D.C., he has taught at universities in five countries: Britain,

the United States, Poland, Hungary, and Canada. He is author of Young Sidney Hook

(Cornell), a biography of the early years of that New York intellectual, and editor

of Max Shachtman’s Race and Revolution (Verso) and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

(Bedford/St. Martin’s). His articles have appeared in The Journal of American History,

The Journal of American Studies, Labor, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, and other

scholarly journals as well as such popular outlets as The Nation, The Financial Times,

Times Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, CNN.com, and Salon.

Dr. Chris Wrigley, Emeritus Professor of Modern British History, University

of Nottingham

Chris Wrigley served as President of the Historical Association between 1996 and

1999, Vice President of the Royal Historical Society between 1997 and 2001, Chair

of the Society for the Study of Labour History between 1997 and 2001, and on the

Council of the Economic History Society between 1983 and 2008. Chris received

an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia in 1998, served as editor

of The Historian from 1993-8, has served for twenty years on the editorial board of

History Today, and founded Ashgate’s Labour History series of books and was editor

for the first 19 books. He has published extensively on various aspects of British

and European history in the 19th and 20th centuries, ranging from labour topics to

biographies of Winston Churchill and AJP Taylor.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history/people/chris.wrigley

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history/people/chris.wrigley


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PANEL 1: NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM IN THE 1930S (11.00-12.15)

Kerrie Holloway is a 2nd-year PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of

London. Kerrie's thesis looks at the intersection of politics and humanitarianism

and is tentatively entitled 'Britain's Political Humanitarians: The National Joint

Committee for Spanish Relief and the Spanish Refugees of 1939'.

Dr. David Convery is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the

Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class, NUI Galway. David

researches the history of British and Irish labour and radical movements, and

the Spanish Civil War.

Dr. Natalia Rocha Lawton first degree was in history. She did her PhD at

Warwick University in Sociology of work. She is a Lecturer in HRM at Coventry

University and her research interests are in equality, diversity and international

employment relations with a particular focus on Latin America.

PANEL 2: PERSONAL STORIES (11.00-12.15)

Susan Garrard is a doctoral student at the University of St Andrews researching

self-representation strategies of female working-class poets in the last half of the

nineteenth-century. Susan is interested in working-class formation and literature,

nineteenth-century typologies of women, and mid-Victorian culture.

Christina Till completed her M. A. at the University of Hamburg in the

Departments of Sinology, History, and Political Sciences. Christina's main

research interests are in the areas of Chinese modern history, ideology and

politics in East Asia, and intercultural exchange.

Sani Montclair vanderSpek, M.Sc. Candidate at the University of Oxford

PANEL 3: NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM (1.15-2.30)

Ivan Jeličić obtained a Bachelor's and Master's degree in History at the

University of Trieste. Ivan is currently a PhD student at the University of Trieste

and University of Udine on the joint PhD program History of Societies,

Institutions and Thought, from Medieval to Contemporary History.

Kostas Paloukis is a PhD Candidate at the University of Crete who is

interested in history of communist organizations in Greece, especially on the

history of Trotskyist currencies and archeiomarxism. Kostas is also interested in


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the history of the labour movement in the interwar period, the transition from

artisan guild syndicalism in modern factory trade unionism, issues on cultural life

of workers in the interwar period, the interwar movement of war disabled and

the evolution of the left and communist perspective on national identity.

Merilyn Moos is a retired lecturer. She has recently had three books published:

the biography of her father ‘Beaten but not defeated’, her novel: ‘The Language

of Silence’, and, just out, ‘Breaking the Silence. Voices of the British children of

refugees from Nazism’. The concern of all the books is the impact of Nazism

and the resistance to it.

PANEL 4: INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS AND FEDERATIONS (1.15-2.30)

Morris Brodie is a first year PhD student at Queen's University Belfast,

studying the international Anarchist movement's response to the Spanish Civil

War. His wider research interests include twentieth-century labour and left-wing

history, with a particular emphasis on revolutionary periods.

Aurélien Zaragori is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Lyon. His

research focuses on the relationship between the International Labour

Organization and Christian milieus, including Christian trade unions, from 1919

to the end of the 1960s.

Yiannis Kokosalakis, PhD Candidate at the University of Edinburgh

PANEL 5: SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE THE GREAT WAR (2.30-3.45)

Ken Cheng is a fourth-year PhD student at the Centre for European Studies at

the UCL. Ken's research focuses on German Marxism and French syndicalism

during the pre-1914 period, and attempts to link these revolutionary tendencies

with elements of “modernist” culture such as crowd sociology and Dadaist art.

Dr. Christian Dietrich's key activities include empirical and theoretical

research on anti-Semitism. In addition, he worked for several years on Jewish

Defence Associations. He turned that topic into the subject of his dissertation,

which he wrote in the Walther Rathenau graduate school at the Moses

Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies. In his PhD thesis, he

highlighted the early years of the "Central Association of German Citizens of

Jewish Faith." Dr. Dietrich's current research interest is the history of Labor

Zionism in Germany, Austria and Poland.


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Dr. Jakub Beneš is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of History and

Cultures at the University of Birmingham. Jakub's research interests are in the

history of modern east central Europe, particularly in nationalism, social

movements, and the effects of the First World War.

PANEL 6: RACE, CLASS, NATION AND EMPIRE (2.30-3.45)

Dr. Nikos Potamianos holds a doctorate in modern and contemporary history

from the University of Crete. His thesis focused on the lower middle class of

Athens (shopkeepers and master artisans) between 1880 and 1925. His current

research focuses on social history in its broadest sense (including politics and

culture).

Musab Younis is a PhD student at the University of Oxford in the Department

of Politics and International Relations. Musab's work focuses on anti-colonial

movements, African political history, state formation and historical sociology.

Dr. Brian Casey teaches in the School of History and Archives at University

College Dublin. His research interests focuses upon the Irish land question, the

land war and the dynamics of social radicalism in provincial Ireland.


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NOTES


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LINKS

The Economic History Society exists to support research and teaching in

economic and social history, broadly defined. It does this through publications,

including the Economic History Review and a range of textbooks and study packs,

through conferences and workshops, through the finance of research fellowships

and research grants, and through bursaries and prizes for younger scholars. The

Society also acts as a pressure group working to influence government policy in the

interests of history.

http://www.ehs.org.uk/

The Department of American & Canadian Studies at the University of

Nottingham has a thriving undergraduate and postgraduate programme, and a

teaching and research culture of the highest quality. The department was the

highest ranked American Studies department in the country for research power

and research impact in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), a national

assessment of British universities' research. They were also in the top seven for

research intensity of all Area Studies units in the country. 94% of their research

activity was recognized as work of international standing and 100% of our research

was assessed as world-leading or internationally excellent in terms of its impact.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/american

The Department of History at the University of Nottingham is a lively

research community committed to scholarship of international quality. Its

outstanding reputation for innovation in teaching has put it in the top fifteen of

the UK's 91 history departments according to the complete University Guide,

2012. The 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) evaluated ninety-eight

percent of the Department of History’s submitted research publications as worthy

of international recognition in terms of originality, significance and rigour. A

remarkable one third of these were assessed as world-leading in quality.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history

The Shrewsbury 24 campaign is seeking to overturn the unjust prosecution of 24

building workers who were charged following the first ever national building

workers strike in 1972. They picketed building sites in Shrewsbury during the

dispute and were prosecuted in Shrewsbury Crown Court in 1973. They became


16

known as the “Shrewsbury 24”. The campaign is supported by many national trade

unions, local branches and trades councils as well as by individuals and welcomes

further affiliations and support.

http://www.shrewsbury24campaign.org.uk/

Since 1960, Labour History Review has explored the working lives and politics

of 'ordinary' people. It has played a key role in redefining social and political

history. The journal's emphasis is on British labour history, though comparative

and international studies are not neglected. The editors welcome contributions

which dig deeper within the traditional subject matter of labour history, but they

are also keen to expand the parameters of the subject and the range of approaches

taken to it. They are particularly interested in articles which engage with issues of

gender and ethnicity or race, as well as class.

http://www.sslh.org.uk/lhr_intro

Historical Studies in Industrial Relations was established in 1996 by the Centre

for Industrial Relations, Keele University, to provide an outlet for, and to stimulate

an interest in, historical work in the field of industrial relations and the history of

industrial relations thought. Content broadly covers the employment relationship

and economic, social and political factors surrounding it – such as labour markets,

union and employer policies and organization, the law, and gender and ethnicity.

Articles with an explicit political dimension, particularly recognising divisions

within the working class and within workers’ organizations, will be encouraged, as

will historical work on labour law.

http://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk (search for 'Historical Studies in

Industrial Relations')

workers of all lands unite?' 7th march 2015

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