Contact

 
 

The Trade Union History Project was founded in 1987 by a number of concerned historians and trade unionists to both encourage and promote trade union history and to attempt to save trade union archives, or persuade unions to collate and save their own archives in the face of the threats to downsize or amalgamate them or close them down altogether. The main aims of the organisation were:

 

  1. •Foster and record the history of the union movement and participate in its preservation.

  2. •Help establish a permanent file and video archive of the history of unions and their participants.

  3. •Promote the production of the history of the trade union movement through print, oral and visual material.

  4. •Work with other people and organisations interested in   recording and maintaining permanent records.

  5. •Promote training programmes for unionists and other interested people to team how to research and record the history of the union movement.


The first project was a documentary film based on the working life of Jock Barnes and his role within the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union between 1946 and 1951. The result was “Shattered Dreams” a documentary focusing specifically on the 1951 waterfront lockout, and was released in 1991 as the TUHP’s first major production. This documentary has since become an iconic record of the lockout and events that caused it.


By the end of 1988  the TUHP had run a seminar on recording oral history and subsidised its first book — The Luicifer, a book on the 1932 tramway industrial dispute in Christchurch, written by local bus driver Dave Welch.


In 1990 the government again provided substantial funding towards the production of an illustrated history of working people and the labour movement in New Zealand.

Chairperson: 

chair@lhp.org.nz


Secretary:  secretary@lhp.org.nz


Treasurer:

treasurer@lhp.org.nz


Newsletter:

newsletter@lhp.org.nz


Webmaster:  web@lhp.org.nz


Mail Address: 

PO Box 27425

Marion Square

Wellington 6141

New Zealand



Current Events


Past Events


Publications


 

A short history of the LHP

The resulting book, “New Zealand Working People 1890—1990” was published by Dunmore Press later that year. The same year the TUHP organised and ran an international conference, Culture and the Labour Movement (later anthologised in book form), as well as recreating, through the streets of Wellington, the first Labour Day parade of October 1890, along with an art exhibition and film festival. The success of all these ventures was a high point for the organisation.


By 1991 there was a new National government in power. It abandoned state support for the TUHP and passed devastating anti-union legislation in the Employment Contracts Act, which ironically put more pressure on the TUHP to assist unions suffering under this decree. In 1992-93 the organisation funded the production of a pamphlet, “Trade Union Archives: a guide to preservation” which was distributed to every union in the country.


Through the 1990s the TUHP continued to organise annual labour/trade union history seminars, editing speeches from a number of them for publication, commissioning and subsidising book publications, awarding scholarships for postgraduate students (known from 1995 as the Bert Roth Fellowships), funding oral histories, helping to fund video production and assist with the transferring of film to video, and producing a regular newsletter.


The TUHP has also accomplished a miscellany of other feats. In 1991 it helped fund the production of a 1951 waterfront lockout calendar. In 1993 it was involved in the installation of a memorial to Samuel Parnell, founder of the eight-hour working day, in the Bolton Street Cemetery Chapel. Over the years the TUHP has also been involved in an Access Radio programmes and the creation of a Labour History Walk in Wellington. It contributed to a 1995 Labour Day concert in Wellington, the production of the promotional CD Choir, Choir, Pants on Fire, and the restoration of the Westport Miners’ Union banner.


In February 1997, the TUHP voted to commit much of its remaining funding to undertake a major oral history project carrying out extensive interviews with 30 retired and working male trade unionists, and ten prominent women trade unionists for an archive, currently held at the National Library.


Having lost the substantial government patronage of the early 1990s the TUHP today essentially acts as a broker, locating finance for specific projects it then organises or supports. This has caused committee members to suggest that the TUHP join with other parties to approach government to try to secure seeding money for a new labour history trust for the purpose of encouraging and promoting labour history scholarship and research. At the 2008 TUHP AGM the managing committee passed a motion changing the name of the organisation to the Labour History Project, as well as ratifying a re-written constitution in order to register the organisation under the Charities Act and Incorporated Society Act.


The TUHP, and the Labour History Project, is run entirely by volunteers. Since its founding the TUHP has run an impressive number of conferences and seminars, organised a number of exhibitions, provided a number of research scholarships and research grants, financed video and film productions, funded oral history projects, published books under its own name and subsidised the publication of many more, and helped fund and organise a miscellany of other events pertaining to labour and trade union history.