Steven Parfitt

Steven Parfitt is a University and College Union member and Teaching Fellow at Loughborough University, and has written extensively on British and American social history, including a recent book, Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland, published with Liverpool University Press. He has also written for Jacobin, Labor Notes, OpenDemocracy UK, TheConversation.com and In These Times.

The real cancel culture

There’s definitely a space where free speech has been curtailed. It’s called the workplace.

By Steven Parfitt

/ 20 Sep 2020

Labour history shows us where workers “took back control” without building walls

Current debates on automation, precarity, identity and internationalism would do well to better observe the lessons of labour history.

By Steven Parfitt

/ 9 Nov 2018

The future of trade unions

Unless democracy is reinstated as the movement’s guiding principle, organized labor will fail in any form.

By Steven Parfitt

/ 10 Jun 2018

The US teachers strike in historical perspective

Previous waves of unrest offer clues to the possible regeneration of the American labor movement.

By Steven Parfitt

/ 1 May 2018

Whatever the USS vote, can we maintain inter-generational unity and restore our universities?

The unprecedented university strike has highlighted deeper issues about how casualisation and commercialisation damages the experience of all staff and students. What now?

By Steven Parfitt

/ 13 Apr 2018