Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick

Poster headed ‘Fighting fit in the factory’, advertising a booklet of the same name. The main image is of a young man looking sternly towards the viewer, one hand is holding a massive spanner, the other is rolling up one shirt sleeve.

Poster headed ‘Fighting fit in the factory’, advertising a booklet of the same name. The main image is of a young woman in a headscarf, pulling back the lever of a large machine with one hand.

Fighting Fit In The Factory

Home Front health at the forefront in these striking #WW2 posters, featuring engineering workers striking heroic poses #histmed

The wartime ephemera was preserved in the archives of the British Employers' Confederation (mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/BEC/...)

Struggles, Strikes, Solidarity Discover the challenges faced by women workers and the extraordinary efforts, often against the odds, to create an all-women trade union.

Struggles, Strikes, Solidarity 5 Mar: Join @cathyhunt.bsky.social for a fascinating talk that examines the challenges faced by women workers and the extraordinary efforts to organise them into an all-women trade union, led by the charismatic Mary Macarthur @womenshistnet.bsky.social

National Union of Mineworkers' poster: NATIONAL UNION OF MINEWORKERS THE COAL BOARDS SCHEME WOULD RESULT IN MORE BLOOD ON BRITAIN’S COAL IT WOULD MEAN MORE DEATHS MORE SERIOUS INJURIES MORE PNEUMOCONIOSIS SUPPORT YOUR UNION VOTE NO TO THE COAL BOARDS SCHEME

Leaflet for the Draeger Self-Rescue Apparatus, sold by Richard Jacobson, London. It includes an image of a man demonstrating the mine safety equipment.

Front cover of 1985 National Coal Board pamphlet 'Down a modern coal mine', including images of mining technology and miners.

Front cover of programme for National Colliery Music Festival, held on 1 May 1948. It includes an image of a statue of a miner, with a silhouette of colliery buildings in the background.

Industrial health and welfare

The first documents in our new digitised collection are online!

It includes sources from the National Union of Mineworkers' archive relating to workplace dangers and campaigns to improve safety & welfare at work. More to come...

wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/coll...

Labour History Review essay prize 2026 Entries are invited for the Labour History Review postgraduate essay prize for 2026. The deadline for entries is 30 June 2026, and details are set out below. Download the entry form (Word document)…

Entries are invited for the Labour History Review postgraduate essay prize. The deadline for entries is 30 June 2026
(Please share widely)
sslh.org.uk/2026/02/19/l...

Looking forward to welcoming the successful candidate!

Excellent opportunity to work with the Release archives at the MRC and look in detail at the history of drugs, counter-culture and campaign groups in the British system

Part of a page from the 15 September 1917 edition of The Postman's Gazette. The top of the page is headlined 'Missing' and includes three photographs of soldiers - Private F.G. Lawrence, Private T. Crawford and Sergeant H.J. Lee - reported missing in the third year of the First World War.

Fragments of First World War lives

Trade union journals often carried photos & reports of comrades in arms - the serving, the rewarded, the missing, wounded & dead

The hope for news shines through in the profiles of the missing

Browse the Postmen's Gazette & more at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

🚨 New Bluesky account 🎉

Dr Dee, Shakespeare & the oldest public library in the UK - we've been enjoying reading @chethamslibrary.bsky.social's blogs on Dr Dee & Shakespeare & looking forward to exploring more from their collections!

Looking for more history/library content? Well worth a follow!

The strike at Bliss’s Tweed Mill. Miss Varley and the pickets frying pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. https://mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/WOU/2/1/9

Julia Varley, expert flipper of pancakes, was also a suffragette and trade unionist.

She was active in the National Federation of Women Workers and the Workers' Union, serving as chief women's officer of the TGWU from 1929 to 1936. #ShroveTuesday #PancakeDay

Match-box makers photographed working from home in c.1906. The photo shows a woman and girl assembling matchboxes with cut pieces of card and assembled boxes on a table in front of them. They are sitting in front of a fireplace and next to a bed which has piles of flatpack boxes, a basket and rugs on it. The bedroom includes patterned wallpaper, pictures on the wall and a large decoration in a glass dome on top of the mantlepiece.

Match-box makers, c.1906

In 1906 'sweated' (poorly paid) homeworkers were put on public display as part of a 6 week exhibition organised by the Daily News

The exhibition handbook included photos of workers (mostly women) in their usual domestic working conditions
warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

We'll be there!

Looking forward to sharing some of our work with the National Union of Mineworkers archives at #HAP26 and catching up with other projects which have communities at the core!

Urban Catastrophes with Dr Pierre Purseigle

I talked urban history, history of war, and critical disaster studies on the great Warwick History Hour podcast; another excellent project run by our fantastic students.
Give it a listen and subscribe! 🗃️
👇👇👇

open.spotify.com/episode/7kB8...

First page of summary or transcript of BBC radio news broadcast at 1pm on 4 May 1926. WIRELESS MESSAGE. Since the 1st Day Bulletin, a number of requests had been received both by telegraph and telephone to the effect that the bulletin should be more clearly delivered. The B.B.C. have every desire that the public should receive the news as clearly and distinctly as possible. Everything may be reproduced except that news issued copyright by the agencies. Summary of the Civil Commissioners all over the Country: Food supplies normal. Men are being recruited at all the principal centres. In some parts of the country mails were stranded when train services were stopped and were taken up and completed by road. Reuter Central News. The Trades Union Congress General Council were in session. The General Council assembles at Eccleston Square this morning. They were joined by the three Miners' officials, Mr. Richardson, Mr. A.J. Cook and Mr. Herbert Smith, and at 11 a.m. by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. Arthur Henderson. Great privacy was observed about the proceedings of the Council, the outer door was closed and press men were not allowed inside. Messages from all parts of the country indicate that the stoppage is practically complete. People who possess no means of locomotion walk to work. London was absolutely congested with traffic this morning in spite of there being no trams or buses. Milk food control shows the following information: There is every reason to believe that it will be possible to maintain a satisfactory supply of milk to all hospitals, schools, restaurants, etc and private consumers. In view of the necessity of arranging transport by road the price of milk will be increased by 6d per gallon wholesale, and 2d per quart retail. The Metropolitan Railway announce that they have run an intermediate service on certain of their lines. ...

... during the General Strike, the Trades Union Congress monitored BBC news bulletins, producing typescript summaries.

You can explore the media landscape during the General Strike through the radio summaries, published bulletins & more at
cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/coll...

#WorldRadioDay

Section from page 3 of Trades Union Congress newspaper 'The Daily Herald', published on 4 May 1926, the first day of the General Strike in Britain. It includes the headline 'Beware Of Wireless! The Government Controls It', with articles about the final negotiations between the trade unions and government, 'press hold-up' as the printers went on strike, examples of 'the Stuff That is Called News by Whitehall', and instructions on using oscillation to 'impair' the BBC radio signal.

'Beware of Wireless!'... 'Fear of Oscillation'...

The 1926 General Strike triggered debates over misinformation and media control. On the first day, TUC newspaper The Daily Herald warned against government control of media and suggested ways of interfering with the radio signal...

#WorldRadioDay

🚨 New Bluesky archive account 🚨

Welcome to Chicago's @digitalnewberry.bsky.social !

Some excellent online resources through their digital collections (particularly recommend the vintage postcard sender - combining cats, bicycles and women's rights!)

Discover everything that the common European data space for cultural heritage has to offer - from rich data to a thriving community and a wide range of tools, products and events.

Explore the data space: www.dataspace-culturalheritage.eu

Seems a fair response!

Death masks seem surprisingly common in archives, though currently a gap in our collections.

Colour print of a Japanese pen and ink drawing, showing a Japanese woman, entitled 'A Beauty Reading a Letter', by Kitagawa Utamaro. [c1792]

Colour print of a Japanese pen and ink drawing, showing two Japanese women and a boy in a garden. Undated.

Colour print of a Japanese pen and ink drawing, showing two Samurai[?] tending a bonsai tree. Undated.

What's the most random thing you've seen in an archive?

These images from the Shipping Federation can be found between other miscellaneous drawings and illustrations, including maps of the Thames and plans for offices.

Find out more through our catalogue at mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/TSF/...

Cropped part of page from the 1896 book 'Sportfolio', featuring a photo of London-based ice skater E.M. Syers, adopting a sporting pose on fake ice in a photographer's studio. He is dressed entirely in dark clothing with the exception of a round fabric hat. His waxed moustache is set off nicely by the medals dangling from his shirt.

Edgar Syers, shown here with waxed 'tache, fancy hat and medals, was famous not only in his own right but as a coach and partner (in life & on ice) of Madge Cave, the outstanding female skater of her time in the early 20th century.

More on Madge and Edgar at www.olympics.com/en/news/look...

Page from the 1896 book 'Sportfolio', featuring Stratford (London) ice skater F. Hiam, adopting a sporting pose on fake ice in a photographer's studio. He is dressed, not particularly warmly, in breeches and a linen shirt, and has a fine moustache.

Page from the 1896 book 'Sportfolio', featuring London-based ice skater E.M. Syers, adopting a sporting pose on fake ice in a photographer's studio. He is dressed entirely in dark clothing with the exception of a round fabric hat. His waxed moustache is set off nicely by the medals dangling from his shirt.

As ever, when sport is underway, we turn to the expertise of Sportfolio for that peak period in the 1890s when moustaches and sporting endeavour combined

London skaters Hiam & Syers struck a pose in 1896, "despite...our climate" & the routine absence of snow

mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/CTC/...

That's good to know. The digitised material is only ever a fraction of the collections as a whole, but we'll keep adding 'new' archives on there so that hopefully anyone who is interested can access it.

We've been enjoying seeing some of the ways in which @rememberlop.bsky.social overlaps with our collections!

The National Union of Mineworkers archive covers the Jersey jaunt, including three files kept by Arthur Scargill, then Yorkshire Area President ( mrc-describe.epexio.com/search/all:r... )

Glad you're finding it useful - always interesting to find out how people are using the records for their research!

Front cover of the April 1976 edition of Gladrag, magazine of the Birmingham Gay Liberation Front. It includes a drawing of a Nazi concentration camp, showing gay men in camp uniform behind barbed wire. Document reference: 727/4/7/2.

Page from the April 1976 edition of Gladrag, magazine of the Birmingham Gay Liberation Front (GLF). It sets out the aims of the GLF movement, including examples of oppression, and sections on 'coming out', sexism, changing society, the GLF, and meetings and activities. The opening paragraph states that "In a society which does not tolerate people who fail to fit into its ideas of what is 'normal', life is made particularly difficult for gay people - homosexual women and men, transvestites and trans-sexuals." Document reference: 727/4/7/2.

A chain of memory - 2026-1976-1945

50 years ago 'Gladrag', magazine of Birmingham Gay Liberation Front, looked at 'Gays and Fascism'. The last of the Nazi concentration camps had been liberated 31 years earlier.

The aims & context of Gay Lib - for the L, G & T - were set out inside.

#LGBTplusHM

We're looking to capture experiences of what it means to be queer in the UK today! To do that we're collecting day diaries for 12th February. It doesn't matter what you get up to, or how you record it, we'd love to have it!🧵 (1/4) #LGBTplusHM #lgbthm26

Welcome to Bluesky! - if you're looking for other archives / libraries to catch up with, there's quite a few listed at bsky.app/profile/mrcw... (if you click on the tab for 'People') - some good #HistMed accounts here now!

Another new archive account on Bluesky! 🎉

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has some fantastic archive / library collections - looking to finding out more through @lshtm-laors.bsky.social ...

Front page of 'News for Citizens', news sheet published by the Young Women's Christian Association in March 1943. It is a special edition on the Beveridge Report and includes a cartoon showing some of the different categories of people affected by the proposed welfare reforms (wage earners, self-employed, the 'housewife', 'the man of means', the schoolboy and grandfather). The rest of the page provides information about the background to the report and the proposals. From the archives of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), document reference MSS.243/1/9/3/2.

"The first time that the housewife has been considered as a person contributing to the community"

In 1943 the YWCA assessed how the proposals of the Beveridge Report would affect women - in paid and unpaid work.

More sources on Beveridge & the British welfare state at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

Leaflet issued during the May 1926 General Strike in support of the government: The General Strike. MESSAGE FROM THE PRIME MINISTER. Constitutional Government is being attacked. Let all good Citizens whose livelihood and labour have thus been put in peril bear with fortitude and patience the hardships with which they have been so suddenly confronted. Stand behind the Government, who are doing their part, confident that you will co-operate in the measures they have undertaken to preserve the liberties and privileges of the people of these Islands. The laws of England are the people’s birthright. The laws are in your keeping. You have made Parliament their guardian. The General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin. STANLEY BALDWIN.

Front page of the Daily Graphic, 13 May 1926. It includes photographs of strike breaking activities, including medical students and soldiers moving goods.

The Leeds Citizen, a special strike bulletin published on behalf of the local strike committee. This edition dates from 8 May 1926 and includes the Trades Union Congress' statement that the General Strike was an industrial dispute (rather than a revolutionary challenge to the constitution), information about the local situation, and a report on debates in the House of Commons.

Leaflet issued by the Trades Union Congress during the May 1926 General Strike: TRADES UNION CONGRESS CONSTITUTION NOT CHALLENGED The General Council of the Trades Union Congress does NOT challenge Constitution. It is not seeking to substitute unconstitutional government. Nor is it desirous of undermining our Parliamentary institutions. AN INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE The sole aim of the Council is to secure for the miners a decent standard of life. The Council is engaged in an Industrial dispute. THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS. THE ONLY ISSUE In any settlement, the only issue to be decided will be an industrial issue, not political, not constitutional. Printed and Published by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, 33 Eccleston Square, London, S.W

As the General Strike centenary gets closer, we've been boosting our digitised content!

560 original documents have now been digitised & are free to access, including strike bulletins, radio transcripts, union communications & more... #GeneralStrike100

cdm21047.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/coll...

Save the date! Join us for an online archival workshop with @gpadmoreinstitute.bsky.social and @irrnews.bsky.social to explore the materials and histories of Black activist publishing in the UK from the 1970s: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archival-w...