Alfie Steer

Cover image of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) Diary, December 21-30, 1972. A purple and green poster-style image featuring text and a leafy plant design.

New online: The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) collection is now available on LSE Digital Library! We’ve digitised and published the GLF Diaries and the GLF newspaper Come Together. Further series from the archives will be added as digitisation continues.
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digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/...

Nice surprise to see my article on Capenhurst Women’s Peace Camp is out today - have a read if interested in space, the weirdness of the Wirral, local feminisms and anti-nuclear activism in Merseyside, and global solidarity movements in the 1980s academic.oup.com/tcbh/article...

Will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the peace movement, the unlikely flourishing of regional feminisms in the 1980s, the radical history of Merseyside, and of course the WEIRD WIRRAL !

Superb article by @racheljcollett.bsky.social in @mbhjournal.bsky.social, recovering the Capenhurst Women's Peace Camp. Fascinating case study of 1980s anti-nuclear feminism on the Wirral peninsula, and the surprising connections to the Namibian freedom struggle.
academic.oup.com/tcbh/article...

Fun fact: Danny Kruger had to resign as the Tory candidate for Sedgefield in 2005 after saying the Tories were planning to introduce 'a period of creative destruction in the public services'.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_poli...

With all the debate about
@mainstreamlabour.bsky.social
and the kind of soft+hard left unity that may be necessary to change the Labour Party's current trajectory, it would be remiss of me to not share my article on the last time something like this happened:

Martin Carthy’s “Transform Me Then Into A Fish” is shortlisted for the Mercury Prize 2025 In a pleasantly surprising turn of events, the Mercury Prize has included folk legend Martin Carthy’s latest album, “Transform Me Then Into A Fish,” on its 2025 shortlist, making the 84-year-old music...

Huge congratulations to Martin Carthy for being nominated for the Mercury Music Prize!

@comesingitplain.bsky.social
@klofmag.com
klofmag.com/2025/09/mart...

A half-length black and white photographic portrait of Alan Clark. He is sitting with his hands clasped on top of a table. He is wearing a dark suit jacket and waistcoat with a dark tie and white shirt. He has medium length side swept dark hair and is clean shaven. He is sitting in front of a set of six tall thin diamond gridded windows.

Died #OTD 1999, Alan Clark, political diarist and Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton, 1974-92 and Kensington and Chelsea, 1997-99. He was once described by Norman Lamont as 'the most politically incorrect, outspoken, iconoclastic and reckless politician of our times.'

Don’t sugarcoat this: Starmer’s government is weak and may perish. Here are my five steps to recovery | John McDonnell After so many avoidable mistakes, of course people are angry. But with the far right looming, we need action not despair, says MP and former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell

Excellent article in Guardian from John McDonnell MP
Don’t sugarcoat this: Starmer’s government is weak and may perish. Here are my five steps to recovery
John McDonnell
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I attended my first Morris dancer AGM and let me just say a bitter CLP meeting is NOTHING in comparison.

I am going to be speaking at this year’s NACBS on this amazing panel with colleagues and comrades @racheljcollett.bsky.social, @fmarshallpayne.bsky.social and Daniel Frost. Hope to see some of u there or for a pint afterwards 🍻

I am going to be speaking at this year’s NACBS on this amazing panel with colleagues and comrades @racheljcollett.bsky.social, @fmarshallpayne.bsky.social and Daniel Frost. Hope to see some of u there or for a pint afterwards 🍻

Excellent piece! Time for a new Corrupt Practices Bill to counter the danger of plutocratic wealth - often from the US - corrupting British politics.

Final cover proof!

Pre-order the hardback edition for your institutional library now: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526179593/

#OTD 1963 Tony Benn was re-elected as an MP. But why had he been removed in the first place? Here’s Alfie with the story! #HistParl #OTD #history #historytok #parliament #historytiktok #westminster #e... TikTok video by History of Parliament

Last year @alfiesteer.bsky.social looked at Benn's campaign for the right to renounce his peerage and the events of the subsequent elections.

Watch the video via our TikTok channel:
www.tiktok.com/@histparl/vi...

Britain can’t go on like this. The normalisation of extreme racism via social media & the UK gov cosplaying the far right has brought us to a very dangerous place - perhaps the most dangerous since the 1950s

One of the major far right critics of Churchill was David Irving, who in the 1980s used Churchill's record to favourably contrast with Hitler. His 1987 book 'Churchill's War' was an example for this, before his fully explicit Holocaust denial from the late 1980s onwards.

#OTD 1819, the Peterloo Massacre took place, when a peaceful protest calling for parliamentary reform turned into tragedy. Find out more in this video: www.tiktok.com/@histparl/vi... (1/7)

Death of a Ladies Man is his masterpiece idc what the haters say “Memories” is one of the greatest songs of all time

Born #OTD 1930, Arthur Latham, Labour MP for Paddington from 1969 to 1979.

As @alfiesteer.bsky.social recently explored in an article for #HistParl, much of Latham's career intersected with the rise of the Labour left in the 1970s: historyofparliament.com/2024/08/14/a...

Socialist Feminist Lynne Segal of Beyond the Fragments fame is the latest guest on the Labour Left Podcast. To see the full episode go to YouTube, Audible, SubStack or your favourite podcast site and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.
Links in replies 1/2

To read all of Dr Martin Spychal's series on the life and political career of Lord Ronald Gower, please follow the link below:
historyofparliament.com/tag/ronald-g...

The 'beautiful boy’ of the Commons: Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916) and sexual identity in Parliament at the time of the Second Reform Act - The History of Parliament In the third of his article series on Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916), Dr Martin Spychal explores Gower’s parliamentary reputation as the 'beautiful boy’ of the

In Parliament, Gower quickly got the nickname 'the beautiful boy', suggesting a level of innuendo and gossip around his sexuality. Within such an environment, it is probably not surprising that Gower soon decided politics was not for him. historyofparliament.com/2025/08/11/r... [3/4]

Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916): the social life of a queer MP at the time of the Second Reform Act - The History of Parliament In the second article in his series on Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916), Dr Martin Spychal explores Gower’s London social life during his first year in

Gower's detailed private diary provides a unique insight into his social life, which mixed London's conventional aristocratic calendar with the capital’s queer nightlife. historyofparliament.com/2025/08/11/r... [2/4]

Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916): the life of a queer MP at the time of the Second Reform Act - The History of Parliament Dr Martin Spychal introduces his series of articles on Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916), who was elected as MP for Sutherland in 1867. This is the first of five

This month marks the birth of Lord Ronald Gower, MP for Sutherland 1867-74 & a prominent figure in British LGBTQ+ history. To mark this we are reposting a series of articles by ‪@martinspychal.bsky.social exploring Gower’s parliamentary career. historyofparliament.com/2025/08/11/l... 🧵 [1/4]

I also spoke at a 2022 symposium on it which you can watch here

www.new.ox.ac.uk/righteous-an...

Shameless self promotion but I was part of a research project on Michael and Ann Dummett’s anti racism which you can read in this book.

www.new.ox.ac.uk/righteous-an...

If anyone I acc interested DM me

Also this banger

Anyone want to read a rubbish thesis chapter I wrote on left wing policy development from late 1980s? Features these geezers.