This time next week, volunteers will be at The Wiener Holocaust Library - the world's oldest Holocaust studies library and research centre - to record your family's stories and objects relating to WW2, the Nazi era and the Holocaust.

We hope to see you there.

Info: theirfinesthour.english.ox.ac.uk/event/wiener-h…

The Putney Debates began in St. Mary’s Church, Putney #OnThisDay 1647. The debates were a series of discussions among members of the New Model Army - including Oliver Cromwell and several Levellers - concerning a new constitution for Britain.

#OnThisDay 1936: the Jarrow Crusade begins. 200 men from Jarrow set out on a 300-mile journey to Parliament to request the re-establishment of industry in the town following the closure of its main employer, Palmer’s shipyard, which had left 10,000 people out of work.

“The Bible is the advocate of the oppressed, the protector of the weak, the friend of the slave, the charter of his freedom, and his irrevocable title to the character and rights of humanity.”

Robert Halley, Congregationalist minister and abolitionist, was born #OnThisDay 1796.

The Mines and Collieries Act, which prohibited females and children below the age of ten from working underground in mines, became law #OnThisDay 1842. Before the Act, women and children worked underground for 11 or 12 hours a day for lower wages than men.

#OnThisDay 1838: An estimated 200,000 people attended the Great Midland Demonstration in Birmingham in favour of the People’s Charter. It was one of a series of large-scale meetings across Britain that launched the Chartist movement.

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major English Romantic poets, was born #OnThisDay 1792.

Flora Drummond, a suffragette who was imprisoned 9 times for her activism, was born in Manchester #OnThisDay 1878. Drummond was nicknamed ‘The General’ for her habit of wearing military style uniforms while leading suffragette rallies, marches and demonstrations.

J. B. Priestley, Mary Gawthorpe, John Wycliffe, Joseph Priestley, Harold Wilson...who’s your favourite #Yorkshire radical?

#Yorkshire Day

New Walthamstow Football Club away kit inspired by William Morris. Morris was born in Walthamstow in 1834.

It’s sold out already.

The Independent Labour Party, an influential socialist organisation and co-founder of the Labour Party, disaffiliated from Labour #OTD 1932. Nye Bevan described the disaffiliation as a decision to remain “pure, but impotent.” In just 3 years the ILP lost 75% of its members.

“The people are the fountain of all power, honour, trust and distinction.”

John Thelwall, radical journalist and writer, was born in Covent Garden, London #OnThisDay 1764. Thelwall supported the ideals of the French Revolution and sought similar political reforms in Britain.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Thomas Paine, 1795.

#OnThisDay 1858: Lionel de Rothschild, banker and philanthropist, became the first practising Jew to sit as an MP in the House of Commons. Rothschild took his seat just 3 days after the Jews Relief Act, which removed previous barriers to Jews entering Parliament, took effect.

Did your parents, grandparents or other relatives pass down any stories relating to the 1945 general election? If so, theirfinesthour.org would love to hear them! 👇

“[Our] ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain - free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.”

Labour manifesto, 1945.

“We form ourselves into a Society for the melioration of the unhappy children of Africa...”

Lucy Townsend, founder of the first Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, was born in Birmingham #OnThisDay 1781. Townsend’s organisation became the model for similar organisations in the USA.

Ira Aldridge, actor and playwright, was born in New York #OnThisDay 1807. Faced with persistent racial discrimination in the US, Aldridge emigrated in 1824 to England, where he became the UK’s first black Shakespearean actor. He was later appointed manager of Coventry Theatre.

Jessica Mitford, author, died in California #OnThisDay 1996. Unlike her sisters Unity and Diana, both of whom joined the British Union of Fascists, Jessica was an adherent of communism who was involved in several U.S. civil rights campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s.

Skirmishes broke out in London #OnThisDay 1866 after supporters of the Reform League clashed with police outside Hyde Park. Protestors had hoped to meet to demonstrate their support for manhood suffrage, but the park’s gates were closed after the meeting was declared illegal.