The historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, the ongoing global financial and economic crisis, and the challenges to the hegemony of neoliberalism make this moment a most opportune time to reflect on how the Left and labor movements have responded to previous upheavals and restructurings that both opened opportunities and closed them. In this issue, ILWCH editor Michael Hanagan brings together a rich and varied set of articles dealing with the broad theme of “Rethinking the Left in Victory and Defeat.” Chronologically, the articles span the period from the late eighteenth century to the present. Thematically, they analyze issues as diverse as overconsumption, Labour's foreign policy in interwar Britain, the rise and decline of unionism in advanced industrial societies, working class women's activism before and during the triumph of Thatcherism, class, nationalism and the anti-Zionist Left in Israel/Palestine, and the Brazilian Left under Lula. Geographically the articles cover Brazil, Israel/Palestine, Britain, France, and the United States. The thematic section concludes with a review essay by John French, “Crafting an International Legal Regime for Worker Rights: Assessing the Literature since the 1999 Seattle WTO Protests.” These articles and the review essay provide rich food for thought about how to question constructively the fundamental assumptions, strategies and tactics, and gendered character of earlier left and labor policies and how to develop post neoliberal paradigms for the challenging period in which we live.
In this issue we begin a new section entitled “Reflections.” It features more personal essays on the state of labor history. The inaugural essay is by Marcel van der Linden, Research Director of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, chair of editorial board of the International Review of Social History, Associate Editor of ILWCH, and a key figure in bringing labor historians from across the globe together. In “Globally Speaking,” he reflects on new paradigms and networks among labor historians in the global South. The issue also contains a review essay by Brian Kelly, “Emancipations and Reversals,” dealing with recent works on labor and race in the United States, a theme of ongoing interest to the journal. Conference reports on Transnational Labor, Transnational Methods and on the Berkshire Women's History Conference discuss the place of labor in global history and the history of women.
On September 24, 2009, ILWCH and the Rutgers Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department will cosponsor a workshop on “Global Labor Standards as Human Rights: The Past, Present and Future of the International Labor Organization.” This event will commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the ILO and the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It reflects ILWCH's interest in exploring the relationship of international organizations and human rights discourse to labor.
Forthcoming issues will address the global and thematically diverse interests of the journal. Issue 76, edited by Tom Klubock and Paulo Fontes, will feature articles and reports on public history and labor history in India, Brazil, the United States, Sweden, Denmark, the Caribbean, Australia, and the UK, as well as an interview with filmmaker John Sayles. Future issues will include essays from the ILO workshop at Rutgers, the recent “Labouring Feminism” conference in Sweden, and a Classics Revisited feature reconsidering the work of Frank Tannenbaum.
ILWCH is now more widely available electronically. The journal is part of the Cambridge University Press electronic package of journals, which has a large and expanding base of institutional subscribers worldwide. Cambridge University Press has completed the digital archiving of ILWCH, the journal will soon be available on JSTOR and ProQuest as well. While retaining its signature hard-copy edition, ILWCH has joined the world of virtual publishing.
