Alfie Steer

Oral History Project Manager & Public Engagment Assistant

asteer@histparl.ac.uk

Current Research/Role

I first joined the history in 2024 as a part-time Public Engagement Assistant, and since 2025 I have also taken on the role of managing the History’s Oral History Project. I am also currently finishing a doctorate at the University of Oxford, specialising in the history of the Labour left from the end of the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike to 2015 and was previously a tutor in politics and modern British history at University College, St Catherine’s College and Wycliffe Hall. 

I have written online articles for the History of Parliament on modern and contemporary British political history, ranging from the history of the Socialist Campaign Group to the Labour Party’s adoption of All-Women Shortlists and the history of the right-wing faction within the Conservative Party called the Monday Club. More recently I have also written more focused articles on the political careers of left-wing Labour MP Arthur Latham, and Cynog Dafis, the Plaid Cymru MP who could credibly claim to have been Britain’s first ‘Green’ MP. 

Research Interests

My research interests are mostly radical left-wing politics and social movements in Britain at the end of the Twentieth Century, and the beginning of the Twenty-First, such as left-wing factions within the Labour Party, and the ‘new’ protest movements that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. I have written an article on left-wing activist opposition to New Labour for Contemporary British History and a book chapter on Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party for a forthcoming edited volume with Manchester University Press. I have also taken part in research projects including an edited volume on the anti-racist activism of Michael and Ann Dummett, and a conference celebrating 45 years since the publication of the feminist text Beyond the Fragments.

Publications

Chapters in Books

‘Finally Moving On? The Socialist Labour Party and the Search for an Electoral Alternative to New Labour’, in E. Smith and D. Frost (eds.), In Solidarity, Under Suspicion: The British Far Left since 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2025) 

‘The Anti-Racist Activism of Michael and Ann Dummett’, in Righteous Anger: Celebrating the Anti-Racist Activism of Michael and Ann Dummett (Oxford: New College Library & Archives, 2021)

Journal Articles

‘“Keep the Party Labour”: The Grassroots Alliance and Activist Opposition to New Labour, 1994-2007’, Contemporary British History 37 (2023), pp.216-237

Review Articles

‘On Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, and Natalie Thomlinson’s “Telling Stories About Post-war Britain: Popular Individualism and the ‘Crisis’ of the 1970s” (2017)’, Modern British History 35 (2024), pp.102-105

Book Reviews

‘Neil Kinnock: Saving the Labour Party? Edited by Kevin Hickson’, Journal of British Studies 62 (2024) pp.1097-1100

‘Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979 by Laura Carter’,  History 108 (2023), pp.167-170 

‘Rethinking Labour’s Past edited by Nathan Yeowell’, Twentieth Century British History 33 (2022), pp.471-473

‘English Radicalism in the Twentieth Century: A Distinctive Politics? by Richard Taylor’, Twentieth Century British History 33 (2022), pp.308-310‘The Modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979-97 by Christopher Massey’, English Historical Review 136 (2021), pp.1695-1697

Specialisms: Contemporary British History, Oral History, Radical History, History of the Labour Party, History of Socialism in Britain, History of the Far Left.