The Sheffield-based co-operative resource centre, Principle 5, has published the sixth title in its series of pamphlets unearthing forgotten writings, writers and radical groups from the South Yorkshire city and its surroundings.
Co-operators, Radicals, Workers brings together some of the “highlights” from the bulletin of the Holberry Society for the Study of Sheffield Labour History, which formed in 1978 to examine and publicise “history from below”, and “rediscover the radicals who had fought for democracy and workers’ rights from the 18th century to the present day”.
Named after Samuel Holberry, a Sheffield-based Chartist leader of the 19th century, the society brought members of the Labour Party together with Communists, International Socialists and socialist feminists from Big Flame, in “a collaborative venture to examine and reclaim Sheffield’s radical working-class history”.
Eight editions of the group’s bulletin were published between 1978 and 1984, and the new pamphlet reprints five articles – covering Sheffield’s ‘Peterloo’ in 1795, local co-operative schemes of the early 19th century, unemployment in the 1880s, and an industrial dispute in the 1890s.
Alongside the bulletin, the Society enjoyed what founder member John Baxter calls “some real achievements” – getting streets renamed, renovating a bust of Holberry, which now sits in Weston Park, and ensuring his name lives on via the Holberry Cascades water feature in the city’s Peace Gardens.
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Co-operators, Radicals, Workers: Essays from the Holberry Society for the Study of Sheffield Labour History is available for £5 from Principle 5, Yorkshire Co-operative Resource Centre, Aizlewood’s Mill, Nursery Street, Sheffield S3 8GG.
It is the sixth in Principle 5’s series of re-publications. The first four P5 pamphlets are available here.
More about the fifth, Universal Basic Income by Edward Carpenter, is here.
