Contemporary History
This collection of articles highlights the ongoing research of the Contemporary History section, drawing upon interviews from our Oral History Project to explore various events, themes and issues in British political history since the Second World War.
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Parliament and the Suez Crisis
Sixty years ago this week the Suez Crisis was in full swing and parliament was in uproar. Here we discuss…
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The parties and Europe 2: Conservatives and Maastricht
Earlier this week we delved in to our oral history archive to discover the divisions within the Labour Party over…
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The Parties and Europe 1: Labour and the 1975 Referendum
The European Referendum campaign is now in full swing, creating heated political debate and causing some unusual alliances. In British…
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Memories of Thatcher’s fall
25 years ago this week the Conservative Party were in the process of electing a new leader after Margaret Thatcher,…
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Labour leadership elections through the years
The Labour party’s leadership contest comes to a close this week, with the winner announced at a special conference on…
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1945 Election: A political awakening
Seventy years ago yesterday the results of the 1945 General Election were declared. Although the poll had been held on…
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How does it feel to be a new MP?
This week at Westminster MPs elected for the first time will still be finding their feet. With such a large…
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MPs’ memories of candidate selection
Today’s blogpost is from one of our Oral History Project interviewers, Emme Ledgerwood, who has used our archive to explore…
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Exeter elections in the 1990s: Witness Seminar
On 27 October we held our first ‘witness seminar’ at the Devon Heritage Centre as part of From the Grassroots:…