Book launch for Notoriously Militant: the Story of a Union Branch by Sheila Cohen

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Time: 6.00pm - 8.00pm
Venue: Room JG1003, John Galsworthy building, Penrhyn Road campus, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE
Price: free
Speaker(s): Sheila Cohen and Fidelma Murphy

A discussion of the new book Notoriously Militant: the Story of a Union Branch (2013, Merlin Press) by Sheila Cohen, with the author and Fidelma Murphy, a fellow of the Political Economy Research Group at Kingston University.

"In 1946, after a series of stormy strikes and a mass occupation at Ford's plant in Dagenham, Essex, thousands of workers came together in a new branch of the Transport and General Workers Union.  By the early 1980s, dedicated workplace activism saw the branch come into its own through its active support of working-class causes, from equal opportunities to the stunningly effective boycott of parts from South Africa. Notoriously Militant, a popular history taking as its title a tabloid journalist's verdict on the branch at Ford's Dagenham plant – recently depicted in the 2010 film Made in Dagenham – is a primer on the confrontation between worker militancy and the rigours of "Fordism".

Sheila Cohen is a senior research at the Work & Employment Research Unit at the University of Hertfordshire, and author of Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power, and How to Get it Back (2006).

This event is co-sponsored by the Political Economy Research Group, the Politics Department, UCU-Kingston, and Merlin Press.  Refreshments will be provided, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.

For further information about this event:

Contact: Amanda Latimer
Email: a.latimer@kingston.ac.uk