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Tom Scriven

@pigsmeat.bsky.social
206 followers 350 following 7 posts

Historian of C19th politics, Chartism, socialism, Radicalism. Currently working on working-class Radical ideas about chattel slavery and wages-slavery. Bye-Fellow at Homerton College Cambridge.

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Reposted by Tom Scriven
Tom Scriven @pigsmeat.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Burnham at the UN repeating the Cotton Famine myth that mill workers boycotted southern cotton. They didn't - they worked whatever cotton was available. Instead they refused to join the (aristocrat led) pro-Confederate agitation and campaigned for a Union victory with total and immediate abolition.
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Tom Scriven @pigsmeat.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Burnham at the UN repeating the Cotton Famine myth that mill workers boycotted southern cotton. They didn't - they worked whatever cotton was available. Instead they refused to join the (aristocrat led) pro-Confederate agitation and campaigned for a Union victory with total and immediate abolition.
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I would love to ask a prominent BBC journalist to give me an example of an illegitimate concern. Is seems to me that it has become a question not of fact, logic, or ethics but of volume. If a big enough proportion of a village was anxious about Bigfoot or Chemtrails, BBC would cover it in a way...
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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
On 9 September 1934, tens of thousands people turned out to protest against Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in Hyde Park, described as ‘a great blow to fascism’. It concluded a summer of anti-fascism that year which challenged the violence of the BUF. hatfulofhistory.com/2018/09/09/f...
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Chris Terry-Enescu @cjterry.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Truly wild to have lived through moral panics about teenagers wearing hoodies and Muslim women wearing the head dress to now experience 'but is a large group of organised far right activists in balaclavas really that scary'
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Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 16/08/2026
#OtD 16 Aug 1842 during a Chartist general strike for universal male suffrage, troops fired on a march in Stoke-on-Trent, killing 19-year-old shoemaker Josiah Heapy and injuring others. 146 were jailed and 54 transported to Australia stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8756...
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Conall @luigii.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Great (grim) thread
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Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
'Hey for the New Jerusalem! The Millenium! And peace and eternal beatitude be unto the soul of Thomas Paine.' (Thomas Holcroft, 1791.) Thanks @gclaeyshistory.bsky.social et al. for all their painstaking work, & congratulations on the timely publication of this landmark scholarly edition.
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Tom Scriven @pigsmeat.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Also working-class autodidacts didn't just read alone - they read in groups, set up libraries and reading rooms, and battled for Mechanics' Institutes (many long ago merged into unis) to teach music, history, and politics. They built the public adult education infrastructure that's being destroyed
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Podcasting is Praxis @praxiscast.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Guardian headline, oct 2024:

Labour to commit almost £22bn to fund carbon capture and storage projects

Investment will fund two CCS clusters – but environmental campaigners have criticised plans
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Tom Scriven @pigsmeat.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Sending this pic to every boomer in my contact list
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Tom Scriven @pigsmeat.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I'm looking for some extra work this summer so if anyone has anything - e.g. remote research (especially London archives or Cambridge area), transcription, editing, proofing, etc, or knows of anyone looking, then feel free to let me know!
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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
It seems a good day to remind people that in the UK 3 times as many people work in Indian restaurants or for McDonalds as in the whole coal and steel industry. 5 times as many are academic staff at universities. If Labour does not understand its electorate, there is no way to appeal to it.
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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Anybody who opposes or even scrutinises British defence spending - which, after all, gave us the Tank That Deafens People, the Innovative Self-Jamming Gun, and HMS White Elephant - is clearly a nefarious agent of the Kremlin.
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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Nice reminder to what remains of the Starmer project that there might be an easier way of "winning over Reform voters" that doesn't entail bragging about robbing refugees of their personal possessions in militarised detention centres.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 16/05/2026
British Palestinians feel ‘gaslit’ and unable to speak out, says leading activist
theguardian.com
British Palestinians feel ‘gaslit’ and unable to speak out, says leading activist
Ahead of Nakba march, Sara Husseini says many feel they are being treated as suspects rather than victims of mass suffering British Palestinians feel unable to speak openly about Israel’s war on Gaza, the director of the British Palestinian Committee has said, amid what campaigners believe is a growing climate of hostility around Palestinian identity and activism in the UK. Some were afraid to wear Palestinian symbols at work or display Arabic jewellery and keffiyehs in public, Sara Husseini said. Continue reading...
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M a r c u s 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
The BBC’s description of people who choose to attend a Tommy Robinson march. “Peacefully expressing their interpretation of British identity”
The first Unite the Kingdom event staged by Yaxley-Lennon last September drew at least 100,000 to London. While many of those attending saw it as an opportunity to peacefully express their interpretation of British identity, there were a series of clashes with the police and anti-Muslim hate speech incidents.
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NJ @nojusticemtg.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
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Ben Phillips @benphillips76.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Sharing, without comment, British newspapers’ depictions of the only Jewish person currently leading a UK political party . Times. Mail. Telegraph. Sun.
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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Yesterday in Hastings, in the wake of antisemitic attacks in Golders Green, I faced Nazi salutes. Today the Prime Minister uses his office to attack the only Jewish party leader to score political points.
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Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
In a *new* post, I have pulled together the latest data on historians in UK universities and PhDs granted. The results are ... not great. Staff numbers have been mostly shrinking since 2019. PhDs have been roughly flat. 1/3. 🗃️ More info here: manyheadedmonster.com/2026/04/23/h...
A chart showing the numbers of staff employed and students granted PhDs in History in UK universities, showing a rise in staff from 2014 to 2019, then a decline to 3,560 in 2024/25. The number of PhDs granted has bounced around, but was at 650 in 2024/25.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
'Universities across the UK have reported more than 1,000 job losses in the first four months of this year, with the actual number likely to be far higher as institutions continue to roll out cost-saving initiatives.' 1/4
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