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Patrick Joyce has long been predicting the demise of labour history ("Marx moves over to make room for new lot of rebels", THES , October 12), but we're still here.

Admittedly in the age of new Labour, labour history is unfashionable and is often found under other names, but the good news - if the papers I receive as convenor of the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research Studies in London are anything to go by - is that the subject has shed its anglocentrism. Studies of labour, often comparative, in various countries are routinely presented at research seminars.

A crossover with social movement theory sometimes ensures anarchism gets a look-in. After all, anarchists are part of the labour movement too, even though it may pain Tony Blair to think about it.

Keith Flett
Tottenham, London