Exhibitions

'A poor thing, but our own': the Webbs and the Labour Party

The catalogue of the papers of the famous socialist couple Sidney and Beatrice Webb is now available online via the Archives catalogue. The papers - known as the Passfield archive as Sidney was created Lord Passfield in 1929 - are all available to view at LSE Archives.

The exhibition, 'A poor thing, but our own': the Webbs and the Labour Party, has been created to celebrate this news, and to highlight some of the documents in the collection.

The exhibition illustrates the links between the Webbs and the Labour Party, particularly from 1918 to 1931. During these years Sidney helped draft Labour's constitution, including 'Clause 4'; he was Labour MP for Seaham, 1922-29; and, he served in the first two Labour governments, 1924 and 1929-31. In the 1930s the couple distanced themselves from the Labour Party and concentrated on writing, speaking and broadcasting.

One Hundred Years of Labour History

The Archives at LSE has joined with other libraries and archives in the Society for the Study of Labour History to mark the centenary of the parliamentary Labour Party with an online exhibition of images relating to the development of parliamentary socialism: One hundred years of Labour.

The 1906 general election saw the arrival of 29 MPs elected with the support of the Labour Representation Committee. These met as the Parliamentary Labour Party for the first time on Monday, 12th February.

The LSE exhibition includes a letter from Emmeline Pankhurst to Keir Hardie about campaigning in Merthyr Tydfil, Sidney Webb photographed during the 1931 political crisis and Barbara Castle's campaigning literature from the 1945 General Election.

Other contributions come from the Bishopsgate Institute, Huddersfield University, Hull University Library, National Co-operative Archive People's History Museum, the TUC Library, the Women's Library and the Working Class Movement Library.

Beginnings: The History of Education in Bloomsbury and Westminster

As part of the 2005 national Archive Awareness Campaign, a new website was launched, Beginnings: The History of Higher Education in Bloomsbury and Westminster. The site includes a virtual exhibition on LSE's first 30 years using documents and images from LSE Archives. Items featured include an architect's drawing of the School's first building in the Houghton Street area, a painting of the coat of arms and a staff-student group photo from 1924.

The LSE collections page on the Beginnings website also highlights treasures from other archive and rare books collections held by LSE Archives, all chosen along the Archive Awareness Campaign theme of 'beginnings'. These include a woodcut image of a public beheading in the run-up to the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, James Mills' minutes of the first meeting of the Political Economy Club in 1821, and a letter marking the start of a friendship between two men in Edwardian England.

The site is a collaborative venture hosted by the Institute of Education and includes pages on a number of institutions in the central London area, including King's College London, University College London, Senate House Library, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the School of Oriental and African Studies.

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