Labor or labour history is a broad field of study concerned with the development of the labor movement and the working class. The central concerns of labor historians include the development of labor unions, strikes, lockouts and protest movements, industrial relations, and the progress of working class and socialist political parties, as well as the social and cultural development of working people. Labor historians may also concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity and other factors besides class. The labor movement (or labour movement) is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and political governments. ... The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers... The field of labor relations looks at the relationship between management and workers, particularly groups of workers represented by a labor union. ... The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ...

Labor history developed in tandem with the growth of a self-conscious working-class political movement in many Western countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Whilst early labor historians were drawn to protest movements such as Luddism and Chartism, the focus of labor history was often on institutions: chiefly the labor unions and political parties. Exponents of this institutional approach included Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The work of the Webbs, and other pioneers of the discipline, was marked by optimism about the capacity of the labor movement to effect fundamental social change and a tendency to see its development as a process of steady, inevitable and unstoppable progress. As two contemporary labor historians have noted, early work in the field was 'designed to service and celebrate the Labour movement.' (M. Savage and . A. Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1840-1940, p. 1). The Luddites were a group of English workers in the early 1800s who protested – often by destroying machines – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they felt threatened their jobs. ... Chartism is also an alternative term for technical analysis A movement for social and political reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, Chartism gains its name from the Peoples Charter of 1838, which set out the main aims of the movement. ... Categories: UK Labour Party politicians | British MPs | Peers | Secretaries of State for the Colonies (UK) | 1859 births | 1947 deaths | People stubs ... Beatrice Webb Martha Beatrice Potter Webb (January 2, 1858 - April 30, 1943) (also called Beatrice Webb) was a British socialist, economist and reformer, usually referred to in the same breath as her husband, Sidney Webb. ...

In the 1950s and 1960s, labor history was redefined and expanded in focus by a number of historians, amongst whom the most prominent and influential figures were E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. Thompson and Hobsbawm were both Marxists and were critical of the existing labor movement. They were concerned to approach history from below and to explore the agency and activity of working people at the workplace, in protest movements and in social and cultural activities. Thompson's seminal study The Making of the English Working Class was particularly influential in setting a new agenda for labor historians and locating the importance of the study of labor for social history in general. Also in the 1950s and 1960s, historians began to give serious attention to groups who had previously been largely neglected, such as women and non-caucasian ethnic groups. Some historians situated their studies of gender and race within a class analysis: for example, C. L. R. James, a Marxsist who wrote about the struggles of blacks in the Haitian Revolution. Others questioned whether class was a more important social category than gender or race and pointed to racism, patriarchy and other examples of division and oppression within the working class. // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the the baby boom from returning GIs who... The 1960s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... Edward Palmer Thompson (February 3, 1924 - August 28, 1993), was a British historian, socialist and peace campaigner. ... Eric Hobsbawm (born June 9, 1917) is a British historian and author, once the leading theoretician of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain. ... The Making of the English Working Class is an influential work of English social history, written by E. P. Thompson a notable a New Left historian; it was published in 1963 (revised 1968) by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and later republished at Pelican, becoming an early Open University Set Book. ... Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was a journalist, and a prominent socialist theorist and writer. ... Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... The Haitian Revolution was the first successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere and established Haiti as a free, black republic, the first of its kind. ...

Labor history remains centered on two fundamental sets of interest: institutional histories of workers' organisations, and the "history from below" approach of the Marxist historians.

Despite the influence of the Marxists, many labor historians rejected the revolutionary implications implicit in the work of Thompson, Hobsbawm et al. In the 1980s, the importance of class itself, as an historical social relationship and explanatory concept, began to be widely challenged. Some notable labor historians turned from Marxism to embrace a postmodernist approach, emphasising the importance of language and questioning whether classes could be so considered if they did not use a 'language of class'. Other historians emphasised the weaknesses and moderation of the historic labor movement, arguing that social development had been characterised more by accommodation, acceptance of the social order and cross-class collaboration than by conflict and dramatic change. Social class describes the relationships between people in hierarchical societies or cultures. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...