FAQs
A guide to researching working-class history
Background
The 20th century saw radical changes in socioeconomic boundaries and workers’ rights in Britain and beyond. Evidence of this social change can be found in archives of modern political history – including Churchill Archives Centre.
With less time for leisure activities and fewer resources at their disposal, it is often more difficult finding records of working-class lives than lives of the middle classes or social elites, even as literacy and education rates sharply improved in the modern era. This does not mean that working-class history is entirely absent from the archives. However, researchers should be aware that historical documents pertaining to working-class experiences are often framed from an institutional or philanthropic perspective.
Some of the individuals discussed in this guide would not have considered themselves “working class” (e.g. Churchill or William Bull) but their work brought them into contact with people from other social classes, and traces remain in their archives.
The collections listed below are a starting point for approaching our archives with class identities in mind. Catalogue pages for each collection (e.g. ‘Archive of Winston Churchill’) and item (e.g. ‘CHAR 2/36/54’) are linked.
Socialist organiser Ben Tillett addressing the crowd on Tower Hill during the London Dock Strike of 1912. Photograph from the Papers of Ernest Bevin [BEVN II 10/1]
At 3000 boxes and 800,000 pages, Sir Winston Churchill’s personal papers contain a wealth of information about politics and society during his long active period in government (1901-1959).
There are some particularly relevant items from his time at the Board of Trade between 1908 and 1910. As a member of Asquith’s Liberal government, Churchill contributed to several key pieces of workers’ rights legislation.
End of the Poor Law
Documents related to the abolition of the 1834 Poor Law, the infamous legislation which established the Victorian workhouse. A National Committee was established in 1909 to investigate and eventually abolish the Poor Law. It was declared a “failure”, as 2 million people were still in need of poor relief each year (statistic from CHAR 2/36/56).
- CHAR 2/36/56: ‘The new charter of the poor’, including demographic information about the poorest sector of Britain in the early 1900s. [1909]
- CHAR 2/36/54: ‘The care of the children’: Report on the lives of children in workhouses across England, Scotland, and Wales in the early 1900s. [1909]
- CHAR 11/27/A-B: ‘Boy Labour’: Reports on poor relief and work placements of low-income school-leavers in England. [1908-1909]
A “living wage”
Documents related to the Trade Boards Act 1909, the first English legislation to introduce a minimum wage for certain industries. Churchill introduced the Bill to parliament in 1908 as a Liberal MP.
- CHAR 11/16: Draft copies of the Bill, alongside a pamphlet advocating for minimum wage published by the Women’s Industrial Council. [1908]
- CHAR 9/21: Transcript of Churchill’s speech to parliament condemning “sweated labour” and advocating for a “living wage”. [28 April 1909]
1909 Housing Bill
- CHAR 21/9: Notes on the 1909 Housing Bill introduced to Parliament to improve working-class housing, following Rowntree’s reports on poverty in York. [1909]
Mark Abrams was a pioneer in market research and opinion polling. His work popularised statistical surveys as a method of gauging public opinion on a wide scale.
Class was one of Abrams’ (many) areas of research. His papers explore how increased social mobility in the 1950s and 1960s destabilised pre-war class boundaries, and how this impacted people’s lives.
Abrams frequently investigated which class people felt they belonged to, and which factors contributed to those feelings – was it their job, level of education, or the newspaper they bought?
Class in the mid-20th century
- ABMS 5/6: Seven folders of working papers about class, including statistical surveys, transcripts of interviews, and newspaper clippings. [1952-1959]
- ABMS 5/4: Material related to Abrams’ BBC radio series ‘Social Class in Britain Today’. [1957]
- ABMS 3/78: ‘A Pilot Enquiry into some Aspects of Working-Class Life in London’, from interview data. [1957]
- ABMS 6/1/8: ‘The Teenage Consumer’: pamphlet analysing teenage spending habits. One issue compares the spending habits of middle- vs. working-class teenagers. [1959]
- ABMS 2/4/14: Results of a survey on the relationship between white, working-class communities and ethnic and racial minority groups. Examining the intersection of class and racism. [1964]
- ABMS 6/2/15: ‘New Roots of Working Class Conservatism’: Draft article in response to Harold Macmillan’s success in the 1959 General Election. [1959-1960]
- ABMS 2/4/9: Findings of a survey on working-class conservatism by W. G. Runciman. [1962]
- ABMS 6/2/1: ‘The Housing of the Working Class, London’: Findings of a large-scale survey conducted by the Gas Light and Coke Company. [1937]
- ABMS 5/30/1: Mixed files on “politics and public opinion”. Including some relevant essays and lectures: ‘Working Class Prosperity’ in file 1; ‘Social Class and British Politics’ and ‘Changing Class Patterns’ in file 4. [1950s-1960s]
A full research guide for Abrams’ papers can be found here: https://archives.chu.cam.ac.uk/collections/research-guides/abms/.
Michael Young was a sociologist, activist, and politician. He was active in the Labour Party Research Department during the 1945 general election campaign, and afterwards in Clement Attlee’s post-war government.
In 1953, he co-founded the Institute for Community Studies with Peter Willmott. The Institute became a vehicle for social study and reform based in Bethnal Green, London.
Young and Willmott drew on their research at the Institute while writing Family and Kinship in East London (1957), an influential sociological study of urban, post-war family life. Much of their primary data is held at the Churchill Archives Centre.
Sociological surveys
- YUNG 1/5/1: Raw data from sociological surveys on residents of Bethnal Green and Debden. Case studies of residents’ lifestyles were built through interviews and statistical research. [1950s]
Articles & essays
- YUNG 2/1/1: ‘For Richer For Poorer’: Young’s last report to the Labour Party, analysing the needs of British families in the 1950s. Includes discussion of the “always thorny subject of class”. [1952]
- YUNG 3/2/1: Drafts and notes for a series of sociology lectures that Young gave at the University of Cambridge on the topic ‘Equality and Social Class’, subtitled ‘The Philosopher and the Bricklayer’. [1961]
- YUNG 2/1/6: Articles on various social issues, including studies of mutual aid and self-help in working-class communities. [1980s]
Archive of Peter and Phyllis Willmott
Peter and Phyllis Willmott were sociologists at the Institute for Community Studies in Bethnal Green. Peter cofounded the Institute with Michael Young, and co-authored Family and Kinship in East London. Both Peter and Phyllis spent much of their lives researching society and providing social care.
Childhood & family life
- WLMT 3/1/1 – 3/1/3: ‘Growing Up in a London Village’. Manuscript of memoir in which Phyllis (born 1922) describes her childhood growing up in a working-class London family, and the lives of her family members. [1979]
- WLMT 3/5: Phyllis’ observations of culture and family life in east London (Bethnal Green) while she lived there. [1954-1955]
Ernest Bevin was a politician and trade union leader who served as Minister of Labour and National Service during the Second World War, then Foreign Secretary between 1945 and 1951.
Second World War
The position of Minister of Labour was expanded to include National Service in 1940, giving Bevin a significant role in coordinating Britain’s workforce. His speeches are a window into the wartime coalition government’s view of the working-class contribution to the war effort, including strategies for keeping up morale among conscripts.
- BEVN II 1: Drafts and transcripts of Bevin’s wartime speeches. [1942-1946]
Trade unions
Bevin led the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) (at one point that largest union in the world) in the 1920s, during an era of activity which saw the establishment of new labour rights.
- BEVN II 7: Wide range of material from Bevin’s time in trade unions, including minutes from meetings, articles, pamphlets, reports, and letters. [1889-1952]
The TGWU archive is held at the University of Warwick: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/research_guides/tgwu
Michael Ashburner was a biologist and expert in genetics who was a research fellow at Churchill College. Ashburner collected much material related to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), especially pamphlets and leaflets.
This collection is not fully catalogued. Please email regarding access.
Socialism in the ’60s
- Box 7 contains issues of the magazines ‘New Left Review’, ‘Solidarity: For Workers’ Power’ (magazine of influential socialist organisation Solidarity), and ‘Anarchy’. Article topics include workers’ control of industry; the Cuban Revolution; class action and protests occurring across the UK and overseas; and the history of social protest. [1960s]
- Box 16 contains publications about trade unionism, Marxism, and socialist medical care, mixed in with material about peace campaigning, Vietnam, race relations, religion, and other topics. [1960s]
Archive of Michael and Mary Stewart
Michael Stewart (Lord Stewart of Fulham) and Mary Stewart (Baroness Stewart of Alvechurch) were both politically active in Labour circles in the second half of the 20th century. They were a rare example of a life peer couple who held titles in their own right.
Rent & housing
- STWT 9/3/1: Documents related to the Rent Act 1957. Particularly how it might impact Shoreditch, Finsbury, and Fulham. [1957]
- STWT 9/3/4: Documents about the development of Greater London, and the need for hundreds of thousands of new houses because of shifting economic patterns and the Baby Boom. [1959-1962]
Social issues & inequalities
Mary’s part of the collection is particularly useful for studying social history with class in mind. In addition to her political activism, Mary Stewart had a long career in social reform, both in theory (as a professor of psychology and sociology) and practice (as a social worker and adult educator).
- STWT 19/5: A variety of documents. Topics include: Comparisons of education standards at grammar vs. secondary modern schools; an analysis of the youth justice system in East London in the 1960s; reports on people’s abilities to access free healthcare across the UK in the 1970s and 80s. [1948-1984]
- STWT 21/1: Newspaper clippings and articles published by Mary Stewart (similar topics to above). [1934-1978]
- STWT 19/2/7: Lecture notes for a sociology course taught by Mary in the 1950s and 60s, including lessons about class and “social clan”. Note that these are handwritten and can be difficult to decipher. [1952-1964]
Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party between 1983 and 1992. At 872 boxes, Kinnock’s papers are one of our largest collections. They are a rich source of information about politics in the 1980s.
Welfare State
- KNNK 11/2: 35 files related to social security and the British Welfare State, including reports and articles about financial hardship and antipoverty measures. Some files focus specifically on pensioners and disabled people. [1983-1992]
1984-85 Miners’ Strike
- KNNK 15/2: 49 files on the 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike. Including press releases, speeches and statements, correspondence, transcripts of conversations from negotiations, reports, pamphlets, surveys, and press cuttings. [1974-1990]
Income inequality
- KNNK 2/2/23: Papers from ‘Economic Equality’ public review group. These papers discuss income distribution among different demographics in Britain, and the ‘Pathways out of Poverty’ scheme. [1988-1989]
Minimum wage
The National Minimum Wage Act was finally passed in 1998, after decades of discussion.
- KNNK 6/1/38: Documents related to the proposed introduction of minimum wage in the early 1990s, and media coverage at the time. [1990-1991]
John Burns Hynd was a Scottish politician who was active in the mid-20th century, holding the seat of Sheffield Attercliffe for the Labour Party, 1940-1970. He was an influential figure in post-war Anglo-German relations.
Before going into politics, Hynd worked as a railway clerk, and he maintained a lifelong involvement in transport unions, especially in Scotland and Northern England.
Transport unions
- HYND 1: Items relating to Hynd’s trade union activity, including cartoons, leaflets, election ballots, and correspondence. [1952-1970]
- The documents in HYND 1/4 particularly show how Hynd believed that railway workers could influence British politics on a grand scale.
William Bull was a Conservative politician and solicitor who was active from the 1880s to the 1930s. He is particularly known for supporting women’s suffrage, and being friends with well-known suffragists.
Bull’s involvement in philanthropist causes meant he was involved in schemes that aided poorer communities.
Victorian “ragged schools”
- BULL 1/7: In Bull’s teenage diary, he documents his voluntary work at Bethnal Green’s “Ragged School”, which provided free education to poor London children. [1881]
Legal costs for the poor
- BULL 8/6: Report of the Law Society’s “Poor Persons Procedure”, which provided legal aid for those unable to meet the costs of going to court. [1925]
The pamphlet highlights the issues that low-income people encountered trying to navigate the British legal system, a full 20 years before the implementation of state-funded legal aid in 1945.
Archive of Stair Carnegie Agnew
Stair Carnegie Agnew was a Scottish lawyer and public official. He worked as a company lawyer in Russia between 1897 and 1911.
Russian Revolution
- AGNW 2/1: Short essay by Agnew entitled ‘Is the Russian peasant discontented? And if he is, what does he want?’, speculating on the mood of the average Russian person on the eve of the Revolution. [Approx. 1905-1908]
General Strike of 1926
Triggered by wage disputes in the mining industry, the General Strike of May 1926 is one of the most famous events in modern British labour history. Although the strikers ultimately failed to achieve their goals, the General Strike is remembered as an ambitious attempt at improving working conditions.
Media coverage
- Newspapers reported the events of the strike as they unfolded, reflecting opinion and commentary at the time. Articles are preserved in a range of collections: CHAR 2/148; CHAR 2/149; HTRY 13/3; NBKR 1/3 and WCHL 6/10. [1926]
Research guide created by Nicole Allen, Archives Assistant, 2025. Researchers wishing to access this material should email [email protected]