Our Volunteers Team.
LabourhistoryLancs (LHL) volunteers are exactly what it says on the tin: Historians and students who are enthusiastic about labour history and who have a distinct pride about that history, especially when it takes place in our red rose county. Not surprisingly, the county that was the rock bed of the industrial revolution has provided history with a plethora of stories, events and individuals that most counties in the country can only look on in awe. LHL volunteers range from university academics, to local historians to students, and LHL volunteers like to be involved in reporting, discussing and sometimes even making history! No volunteers are expected to provide anything more than their opinions and their input, when and if they have the motivation or time. Importantly, our shared general goal is to have fun with history and report on the many diversified outlets of labour history and its people in Lancashire.
Embedded in Lancashire, the pages of LHL report on all types of events, insitutions, historians, students and places of historical interest so as to support and promote labour history in the county. Gone are the days when historians were locked up in ivory towers and wore tweed suits. Modern LHL volunteers are as diversified as the very history of Lancashire itself and we welcome all-comers. Our only criteria being to have fun, be well-mannered and respectful and like all good historians, we try to interpret events with a discerning eye and a honest opinion.
If you are interested in labour history or just Lancashire history in general, then do not hesitate to drop us a line and tell us your story, or contact us to simply ask for a bit of advice. Our tuition service is available to all people of all ages and if we can help we will and if we cannot, we will put you on to somebody who will. As my old mum used to say, ‘if yer don’t ask tha’ll find nowt out’. How true.
A great BIG thanks to all LHL volunteers who have offered their support from the ‘get-go’. You are truly super people! Long may our team continue to grow. ‘Good luck in tha trawlin’
Peter John Fyles
Peter John Fyles
Peter John Fyles was born in Burnley, Lancashire in January 1963. After A-Levels Peter went to Manchester Metropolitan University and studied 19th Century Working Class Movements. A few years later, after working in Israel and travelling around the world, Peter returned to education and completed A Master’s Degree at Sheffield University
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reading Labour Party history and completing a thesis on the 1926 Miners Lock Out. From 2002-2005 Peter worked as a Headmaster at one of Sweden’s leading Free schools in Stockholm and published two books about his beloved home town of Burnley. From 2005-2014, he was the CEO for Scandinavia’s largest Free school group with 23 schools, 1,400 staff and 16,000 students.
Great thanks to our volunteer historian Gustav Falk
Gustav Falk was born in Malmö, Sweden in December 2004. He started studying at the vocational school of Universitetsholmen Gymnasium in 2020, wanting to become a plumber. He has always had a keen interest in history, especially military history and political history.
After marriage and raising a family, she worked as a school librarian before setting up her own freelance business as a family and local history researcher and writer.
In addition, Lois is a volunteer at Bolton History
Centre and the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Recent projects have included Bolton in
World War I, the involvement of women from the
Bolton area in women’s suffrage and local
government and the Women’s Peace Crusade 1917-1918
in Manchester and East Lancashire.
Lois holds an Advanced Diploma in Local History from Oxford University and a Certificate in Family History from the University of Central Lancashire. She is a member of the Society of Genealogists, as well as a
number of local and family history groups.
She can be contacted at: loisedean@icloud.com
Lois Dean
Lois Dean was born in Bolton and has lived in the North West all her life.
She trained in journalism and worked for the Bolton Evening News group of papers before joining the (then) North West Regional Health Authority and later Mersey RHA, as a public relations officer.
Allan D. Born
Born in 1948 in Halifax Hospital, an early beneficiary of the new National Health Service. Led a charmed life. Nurtured on free orange juice from the clinic and a gill of milk every day at school, had regular inspections from the 'nit nurse', free dental care, free glasses.
Got a grant to go to Leeds Library School, even got unemployment benefit during the hols. Graduated when there were plenty of jobs. Got one at Blackburn with council flat provided, £4 a week,including rates, when I was earning 10 times that.
Libraries were fluorishing. Every Monday afternoon we'd have a meeting to discuss new books and decide what to buy. Library open till 8.00 every night and 6.00 on Saturday, with time and a half pay. Car user allowances, subsistence allowances for meals, unsocial hours payment for time worked after 7.00.
If you had an interview, all expenses were paid and if successful, you got removal costs. Took it all for granted of course. Didn't realise it was going.
Got a decent pension though, living in Bolton and still writing local history stuff.
Rex Watson was born in Burnley in 1944. After school there he studied
mathematics at Imperial College, and made a career as a lecturer. (Equations
solved for a small fee…). He now lives near Cambridge.
His interest in family history started in his late teens, when his older sister
undertook an evening class on the subject at Nelson and Colne College, run by
Wilfred Spencer, the well known historian of Colne. Rex’s grandfather, about
whom he has written, was a devoted socialist and trade union secretary in
Burnley. Living to 1963 his history perhaps kick started the interest in the
family history, 75% of which lay in Lancashire.
For Rex, the family history widened into local and social history of the county,
particularly of course NE Lancs. He has written a good number of family history
articles, for Lancs and Lincs, and also some pieces for the Burnley Historical
Society. Other publications include histories of a couple of Baptist churches in
NE Lancs, and on 19 th century Mormon activity in south Lancs. All these derived
from the history of his own family, and he would encourage family historians
generally to expand their horizons in this way : putting flesh on the bones.
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