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Raphael Samuel a Portrait of a People’S Historian

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Raphael Samuel a Portrait of a People’S Historian THE HISTORIES OF RAPHAEL SAMUEL A PORTRAIT OF A PEOPLE’S HISTORIAN THE HISTORIES OF RAPHAEL SAMUEL A PORTRAIT OF A PEOPLE’S HISTORIAN SOPHIE SCOTT-BROWN Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Scott-Brown, Sophie, author. Title: The histories of Raphael Samuel : a portrait of a people’s historian / Sophie Scott-Brown. ISBN: 9781760460365 (paperback) 9781760460372 (ebook) Series: ANU lives series in biography. Subjects: Samuel, Raphael. Historians--Great Britain--Biography. Marxian historiography. Historical materialism. Social history. Dewey Number: 907.202 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. The ANU.Lives Series in Biography is an initiative of the National Centre of Biography at The Australian National University, ncb.anu.edu.au. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Portrait of Raphael Samuel by Lucinda Douglas- Menzies. This edition © 2017 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgements . vii Abbreviations . ix Introduction . 1 1 . The Ingrained Activist: Communism as a Way of Life, the Communist Party Historians’ Group and Oxford Student Politics . 17 2 . Reinventing the Organiser: Anti‑authoritarianism, Activist Politics and the First New Left . 55 3 . The Workshop Historian: Ruskin College and the Early Years of the History Workshop . 95 4 . The Secret Life of Headington Quarry: People’s History in the Field . 131 5 . The Socialist Historian? . 163 6 . Stranger Memories of Who We Really Are: History, the Nation and the Historian . 201 Afterword: The Historian’s Work in Progress . 231 Select Bibliography . 235 Acknowledgements Like many before me, I was heading somewhere else entirely when I was waylaid, detained and generally derailed by Raphael Samuel. I found myself intrigued by the paradoxical nature and provocative writing of this unusual historian. Curious to know more about how he developed his imaginative approach to history, I set out to research his life and thought. This proved to be a difficult journey that could not have been done without a tremendous amount of help and support from a large number of people. I would like to thank Sally Alexander, Jonathan Clark, Paul Connell, Anna Davin, Dave Douglass, David Goodway, Alun Howkins, Ken Jones, Hilda Kean, Ian Manborde, Paul Martin, Gareth Stedman Jones, Carolyn Steedman and Barbara Taylor, who all very kindly shared their memories of Raphael, patiently fielding vague, occasionally clumsy and sometimes repetitive questions. I am also grateful to Stefan Dickers, the archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute, London, for his continual help and cheerful encouragement with the project, to Alison Light for her kind interest and valuable insights, and to Brian Harrison for allowing me to use the transcripts of his own interviews with Raphael. This project was facilitated by an international scholarship from The Australian National University (ANU) and was conducted with the support of ANU School of History. Marnie Hughes-Warrington was instrumental early on in helping to identify key themes. Lawrence Goldman gave me support and encouragement during his visit to ANU in 2012 and again on my visit to Oxford in 2014. Karen Fox provided sympathetic and patient mentorship. Melanie Nolan offered unflagging and generous support, energetic interest and rigorous critique. It has been a privilege to work with her. vii THE HISTORIES OF RAPHAEL SAMUEL I would also like to acknowledge Alastair MacLachlan for discussing, at length, different aspects of the project with me, Tom MacLachlan for timely technological wizardry and Geoff Hunt for his sharp eyes and discerning guidance. Part of my research was carried out as a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. I am grateful to Hermione Lee for her comments on an earlier draft of the project. My thanks also to Hilda Kean and the anonymous readers of the completed manuscript for their thought-provoking comments, which have proved invaluable. Love and thanks are due to Lesley, Steven and Tom Scott-Brown. And to Matt who shared in every trial, trouble and footnote. In memory of Geoffrey Bolton, another Balliol boy, historian and biographer, whose gentle guidance was much valued. viii Abbreviations BUF British Union of Fascists CCCS Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CPHG Communist Party Historians’ Group HW History Workshop HWJ History Workshop Journal ICS Institute of Community Studies KAS King Alfred School LBC Left Book Club NLR New Left Review NR The New Reasoner P&P Past and Present RSA Raphael Samuel Archive SDP Social Democratic Party SH Social History TW Theatre Workshop ULR Universities and Left Review WEA Workers’ Educational Association ix Introduction A man of paradox? For the British historian Raphael Samuel (1934–1996), the making of history was inextricably linked with politics. Best known as the moving force behind the History Workshop (HW) and as a founder editor of the History Workshop Journal (HWJ), Samuel’s self-identified objective was the democratisation of history-making. Yet accounts of him and reactions to his approach to history are characterised by paradox: a born organiser renowned for the chaotic nature of his activities; a trained historian who attacked professional history-making; a lifelong socialist whose relationship to the wider left was often strained; a thinker celebrated for originality and condemned for conceptual confusion. His long-term legacy is no less conflicted. Dismissed by some as a relatively obscure figure, for others he has assumed almost mythical properties as a far-sighted ‘prophet’ with a vision ahead of his times. Taking these incongruities as a point of departure, this book illuminates Samuel as a neglected but important thinker and asks what, if any, significance he has for modern historiography. Born into an extended Jewish family in London, Samuel, in his youth, was a devoted Communist Party activist. Like many others, he left the party in 1956; becoming a key figure in the first British New Left movement (1956–62) and later an adult education tutor at the trade union–affiliated Ruskin College. Here, he became the key organiser and, for some, the living personification of the HW’s moral, political and methodological agenda.1 Later, he was instrumental in the creation 1 David Feldman and Jon Lawrence, ‘Introduction: Structures and Transformations in British Historiography’, in Feldman and Lawrence, eds, Structures and Transformations in Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 11. 1 THE HISTORIES OF RAPHAEL SAMUEL of the HWJ. Towards the end of his life, he was a prominent voice in the British history wars, the national curriculum debates and a seemingly unlikely champion of the heritage industry. In different guises, the one consistent motif of his working life was a sustained attempt to recognise history-making as common social activity. For all this activity, much of it in the public eye, he is an elusive figure in the existing literature surrounding contemporary British historiography, a passing mention or footnote at most.2 There are several possible reasons for this. His work lacked ‘scholarly’ impact within the profession, he produced only one sole-authored monograph, Theatres of Memory(1994), in his lifetime, which he published through a political press (Verso, formerly New Left Books). Despite its ambitions, the book did not set out a clear theoretical position or advance a specific argument about the British past. Further, his career had few of the traditional markers of professional success: he did not gain a doctoral qualification, he worked mostly in a further (rather than higher) education institution and only in the year of his death was he appointed to a professorship and given a prominent chair at a university (University of East London). 2 Existing engagements with his life and work include the following: Robin Blackburn, ‘Raphael Samuel: The Politics of Thick Description’, New Left Review (NLR), I/221, Jan–Feb (1997), 133–38; Alison Light, ‘Preface’, in Raphael Samuel, The Lost World of British Communism (London: Verso, 2006); Sally Alexander, Alison Light and Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Editorial Preface’, in Raphael Samuel, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain (London: Verso, 1998); Ken Jones, ‘Raphael Samuel: Against Conformity’, Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 5, 1 (1998), 17–26; Bill Schwarz, ‘Foreword’, in Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: The Past in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 2012). 2 INTRODUCTION Raphael Samuel, Ruskin College, Oxford, 1993 Source: Photographer Stefan Wallgren . Picture from Raphael Samuel Archive, Bishopsgate Institute, London, courtesy of Alison Light and the Raphael Samuel Estate . 3 THE HISTORIES OF RAPHAEL SAMUEL Not only did he lack these attributes, he also spent much of life openly criticising them, prompting those with a vested interest in identifying the discipline’s innovators (namely, professional historians) to dismiss him as inconsequential, a minor figure embedded within a minority culture of radical left-wing British intellectuals. Even here, his position appears tenuous. He is far less prominent
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