Exhibitions and Projects

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The Marx Memorial Library’s Printworkers’ Collection was created in 2009 when the GPMU Sector donated a large amount of material comprising books, photographs, pictures, banners, reports, pamphlets and artefacts.  It is a vivid representation of the history of workers’ struggles in the printing and paper industry.

As we approach international anti-imperialism week and Black history month the Marx Memorial Library reflects upon the brutal colonial legacy of the British empire with a new online exhibition.

These Hammersmith Aid Spain banners in the below image gallery, dating from 1937-8, were created in response to the civil war in Spain (1936-9). All but two are unattributed, but we believe they were authored by members of the Artists International Association, an informal group of anti-fascist artists founded in 1933.

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was one of the most eminent scientists of the twentieth century whose research had a ground-breaking impact across the medical humanities, from x-ray crystallography research, to the impact of war on human life. He was a passionate socialist and visionary of the beneficial role of science in society and a driving force in world-wide peace campaigning.

The aerial bombardment of Spanish towns by German and Italian planes during the Spanish Civil War prompted the co-ordination of an unprecedented mass-evacuation of refugee children. 4,000 arrived in Britain in 1937. Deprived of support from the British government, the children were cared for in ‘colonies’ across the UK supported entirely by volunteers in the local community. 

In 2017 the Russian Revolution Centenary Committee brought together labour movement, heritage and cultural organisations with the aim of informing debate about the Revolution’s continuing relevance to politics and society today.

This project would not have been possible without a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the support and accommodation of Marx Memorial Library (MML).

Sputnik

The First World War accentuated the divisions between the left and right in the labour movement. The militancy of labour's rank and file continued unabated, whilst the exigencies of war gave labour's leaders the chance to become fully enmeshed within the State itself. The gulf between the two widened to such an extent that it was difficult for both to co-exist within the same organisations.

Socialist opposition to ww1

The Marx Memorial Library holds a unique set of contemporary newspapers documenting this story and shedding new light on social and political attitudes and broader debate about workers' rights, trade unions, crime and punishment.

Tolpuddle Martyrs