The Scottish Labour History Society was founded in 1961 as the Scottish Committee of the Society for the Study of Labour History, and formally constituted under its present title in 1966.
Scottish Labour History is the journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, published annually in volume sequence from 1998, and previously, as the Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, in numbered format from 1969. The Journal was published bi-annually in 1970, 1972 and 1981.
Successive editors have included some of the most distinguished historians and writers in the field of Scottish labour history:
- 1969-1974 W Hamish Fraser (Nos. 1-8)
- 1975-1987 Ian S Wood (Nos. 9-22)
- 1988 Editorial Collective (No. 23)
- 1989-1993 Eleanor Gordon (Nos. 24-28)
- 1994-1998 Arthur McIvor (Nos. 29-32 & Vol. 33)
- 1999-2007 Robert Duncan (Vols. 34-42)
- 2008-2014 Gregor Gall (Vols. 43-49)
- 2015- Gregor Gall & Jim Phillips (Vols. 50-)
The Cumulative Index lists contributors with articles published, each with number, year and pagination of publication respectively. Journal Categories lists the growing range of subjects covered by the articles and allows another means of searching for relevant material. (See below for submitting a contribution for the Journal.)
Full journals are available and can be found [i] via the Journal Index or [ii] via the Cumulative Index by searching for the editor of the particular journal. They can then be read on screen or downloaded. If accessing via the Journal Index, the full journal file is the first in the list of entries for the particular year.
In late 2019, we added digital copies of the eleven issues of Scottish Labour History Review (1987-1998) to the site, both as blogs and in the articles section, where they are listed with the Journal files of the year in which they were published, though they were published quite separately from the Journal. The subjects of the main articles within the Reviews are included in the overall Cumulative Index and so can be searched for, along with the Journal articles.
Submitting an Article or Review
The Society welcomes contributions to Scottish Labour History on all aspects of labour history – Scottish, British, international and comparative.
In general, contributions fall into the following five categories (though other formats will be considered):
Articles
Book reviews
Review Essays
Documents (with commentary)
News, views, comments
To save time and money and ensure uniformity in style, we ask contributors to ensure they conform to the house style.
Failure to do so may result in contributions being returned.
Articles should be not more than 8,000 words in length, including endnotes.
Review essays should not normally exceed 3,000 words, including endnotes.
Documents (with commentary) will be treated on their own merits.
Book reviews should not normally exceed 1,000 words. Precise allowances will be conceded according to the book/s being reviewed. Endnotes making reference to works other than the one being reviewed should use the style noted below, whilst page references to the book should appear in the main body of the review in brackets.
Book titles heading reviews should include all the following information and be set out thus:
W. Knox (editor), Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918-39: A Biographical Dictionary, Mainstream, Edinburgh, 1984, pp304, h/b £20.00 (Please note paperback price where applicable.) Endnotes should be numbered consecutively, using the following conventions:
Books: S. Boston, Women Workers and the Trade Union Movement, London, 1980, pp60-61
Articles: C. Webster, ‘Healthy or Hungry Thirties?’, History Workshop 13 (Spring 1982), p112
Second and subsequent citations should appear as an abbreviated form of the title, for e.g. Boston, Women Workers, p52; and Webster, ‘Healthy or Hungry Thirties?’, p120
End your contribution with your name and institutional affiliation/department (if any).
Quotations should appear in the text in single quotation marks (‘…’). In reviews this should be followed with a page reference in brackets, e.g. ‘… (p45)’, and in articles, commentaries and review essays, with an endnote number.
For dates, use day, month, year; for decades, use 1920s; for centuries, spell out (e.g. nineteenth century); for numbers up to and including ten, use words (e.g. eight years); above ten, use numbers (e.g 54 per cent).
For spellings and style issues, please refer to The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
Contributions can be submitted electronically or in hard copy. For articles and book reviews, please contact either Gregor Gall (gregor.gall@glasgow.ac.uk) or Jim Phillips (james.phillips@glasgow.ac.uk)
We thank you in advance for conforming to these conventions.