Welcome to the website of the Labour History Project. The struggles of working people have a long and significant history in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Labour History Project is dedicated to researching, recording, preserving and promoting this working-class history.
We publish the LHP Bulletin three times a year, award the annual Bert Roth Award for labour history and organise seminars and conferences, including the biennial Rona Bailey Memorial lecture.
Our website is a record of our work; you can find about us as an organisation, how to join, and more about our work. You can find back issues of the bulletin, videos of lectures, and read about the great works of labour history being created in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Bulletin
- Labour History Project Bulletin 93, April 2025The April 2025 issue contains articles on the death of Norman Kirk, the abolition of Indian Indenture in Fiji, the solution to low wages as well as an extract from Jon Henning’s new book on nineteenth century New Zealand Labour History.
Bert Roth Award
- Power to Win and To Free the World win Bert Roth Award 2025The Bert Roth Award for Labour History, named for the late historian Herbert Roth, is presented annually by the Labour History Project. It is awarded to the work that best depicts the history of work and resistance in New Zealand published in the previous calendar year. We take a broad perspective on the definition of… Read More »Power to Win and To Free the World win Bert Roth Award 2025
Rona Bailey Lecture
- 2019 Rona Bailey lecture: Dean Parker – Two Tickets to BarbarismIn the 2019 Rona Bailey lecture, held at the National Library of New Zealand, Dean Parker talked about growing up in Napier, what he learnt in London from Trotskyists and Irish republicans, joining the Socialist Unity Party back in New Zealand, the formation of the NZ Writers’ Guild and its affiliation to the Federation of… Read More »2019 Rona Bailey lecture: Dean Parker – Two Tickets to Barbarism