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Left Pamphlet Collection

 Collection
Reference code: LEF2

Scope and Contents

A collection of printed pamphlets relating to left-wing politics mainly of the twentieth century. A great deal of such material exists from many sources but, as such publications are necessarily ephemeral in nature, and often produced in order to address a particular issue of the moment without any thought of their potential historical value (many are undated), they are frequently scarce, and holding them in the form of a special collection is a means of ensuring their preservation. The collection is ad hoc, and is not intended to be comprehensive.

The collection includes material issued from many different sources, both collective and individual, of widely divergent viewpoints and covering an extensive variety of topics. Political organisations represented here are of both the ‘extreme’ or authoritarian Left – for example, Communist Parties of Great Britain and elsewhere, the Soviet Union and the satellite regimes of Eastern Europe which frequently issued ‘official’ versions of events, and organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists, and Militant – and the democratic Left, represented by, for example, the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and the Common Wealth Party. There are in addition publications by individuals, by trades unions, and also occasionally official government documents such as those published by HMSO on relevant topics.

For further details of this collection please see the listings in the external documents section below.

Dates

  • Creation: 1893 - 1996

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Available to all researchers, by appointment

Copyright

According to individual publication

Biographical / Historical

At the end of the twentieth century, which was a period of unprecedented conflict and political and economic change around the globe, it can be seen that (as with Fascism) while the more extreme totalitarian Socialist theories based on Marxist ideology have largely failed in practice, despite for many decades posing a revolutionary threat to Western liberal democracy, many of the reforms advocated by democratic Socialism have been to a degree achieved. For many decades this outcome was by no means assured, and the process by which it came about is a matter of historical significance which ephemeral publications can help to illustrate.

Extent

1300 Item(s)

Language of Materials

English

Arrangement

Numerical, and a section catalogued using the Dewey Decimal Classification system (DDC)

Custodial History

Individual pamphlets have been gather together from existing Library stock, and by purchase.

Description rules
International Standard for Archival Description - General
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the Special Collections and Archives Repository

Contact:
Western Bank Library
University of Sheffield
Western Bank
Sheffield South Yorkshire S10 2TN United Kingdom
+44 (0) 114 222 7299