Working with the past: Making history of struggle part of the struggle

This chapter explores the collection and utilisation of source materials in Britain over the last seventy years for historical study for and by a range of political activists broadly associated with political parties, industrial organisations and social movements of the left and the working class. Drawing upon traditions of auto-didactism, independent working-class education and related critiques, this chapter examines the absences and misrepresentations of working-class life and the development of social and economic relations within most authorised heritage discourses, and endeavours such as the Marx Memorial Library and Schools, the Working-Class Movement Library, the National Museum of Labour History and the South Wales Mining Library. In discussing these initiatives, particular emphasis is given to their programmes of (democratic) history production and publication, exhibition and education programmes and how they were designed to connect with and make a contribution to contemporary struggles, building class and other solidarities and providing those engaging with their activities with the tools to better achieve their aims of social, economic and political transformations. The final section draws some connections, continuities and ruptures of some contemporary social movement engagement with the production and use of history with regard to their contemporary activism