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Labour Historians As Labour Intellectuals: Generations And Crises, Terry Irving, Sean Scalmer

Terry Irving

Over the last nine decades Australian labour historians have been engaged in a massive, ongoing, fractious, collective intellectual project. This chapter argues that labour historians should understand their role historically, as labour intellectuals, and sketches three generational moments in the history of labour history intellectuals. We conclude that labour history is a popular, collective, democratic, regional, and political form of history-writing.