DOCSLIB.ORG

1. Harvey J. Kaye, the British Marxist Historians: an Introductory Ana- 2. the Victor Ludorum Is J. C. D. Clark, Revolution

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1. Harvey J. Kaye, the British Marxist Historians: an Introductory Ana- 2. the Victor Ludorum Is J. C. D. Clark, Revolution Notes Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. Introduction 1. Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Ana- lysis (Cambridge, 1984). In this general survey and in a number of subsequent volumes devoted to the historians Kiernan, Rude, Thompson, etc., Kaye has publicized the work of the English Marxists in an accessible manner. The criticism of Bill Schwarz (Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), 11 September 1987) is, however, I be- lieve accurate - and damning: 'He engages in the exemplary job of excavating and promoting the scholarship of an extremely talented group of historians. In the process, their work becomes transmog- rified into a tradition which then takes on a life of its own. Every- thing which touches this tradition is itself sanctified, indiscriminately elevated for worship and celebration.' And Schwarz adds, 'there doesn't seem much point in resurrecting historical texts in this way'. 2. The victor ludorum is J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Cam- bridge, 1986). Though not without its insights and felicities, Clark's study is primarily a demonology which makes little attempt either to distinguish its various 'Left' leaning targets or to explore the contexts in which they were established. Chapter 1 The Great Bourgeois Revolution: A False Genealogy? 1. E. P. Thompson, 'The Peculiarities of the English' in R. Miliband and J. Saville (eds), The Socialist Register, No. 2, 1965, p. 45, sub- sequently reprinted in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (1978) 4th edn, 1981 (henceforth POT), p. 257. 2. 'Forms which precede capitalist production' from Part IV of The 'Grundrisse', see E. J. Hobsbawm (ed.), Karl Marx: Pre-capitalist Economic Formations (1964). 3. A. Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (1981), pp. 82-3. 4. L. Stone, 'The Results of the English Revolutions of the Seven- teenth Century' in J. G. A. Pocock (ed.), Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), pp. 23ff. For a not entirely con- vincing attempt to justify the applicability of modern usage to the period before 1688, see C. Hill, 'The Word "Revolution" in Seven- teenth Century England' in R. Ollard (ed.), Essays Presented to C. Notes to pp. 8-1 1 327 V. Wedgwood (1983), pp. 134-51, subsequently in A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seventeenth Century England (1990), pp. 82-101. Stone's supposed semantic demonstration of the existence of revo- lution in the 1640s only in fact illustrates the perception of rebel- lion and/or godly reformation. L. Stone, Causes of the English Revolution (1972), pp. 49-52. Likewise, Melvyn Lasky, Utopia and Revolution (1976) has much to illustrate 'the metaphysics of Dooms- day', but little to demonstrate a more secular usage. Louis XVI: 'C'est un revolte.' Duc de Liancourt: 'Non, Sire, c'est la Revolution.' A. Cobban, 'The Myth of the French Revolution' in Cobban, As- pects of the French Revolution (1968), p. 95. J. G. A. Pocock, op. cit., p. 7. For 'bourgeosie of convenience', see J. H. Hexter, Reappraisals in History (1961), p. 95. Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp. 14ff; C. Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution (1967), part 111, i, passim. Indeed, this has become a standard item of the revisionist critique: the attribution of solely political meaning to the terminology of 1789 (aristocrat, bourgeois, people, etc.). A. Soboul, 'Classes and Class Struggles during the French Revolu- tion' in Science and Society, 17, 1953, pp. 239, 241-5; The French Revolution, 1787-99 (1974), introduction, passim. R. S. Neale, 'The Bourgeoisie Historically Has Played a Most Rev- olutionary Part' in E. Kamenka and R. S. Neale, Feudalism, Capital- ism and Beyond (1975), p. 84-03, subsequently reprinted in R. S. Neale, Writing Marxist History (Oxford, 1985); D. Cannadine, New York Review of Books, 2 February 1985; J. H. Hexter, 'The Myth of the Middle Class' in Hexter, op. cit., pp. 76-116. A. Soboul, 'Classes and Class Struggles', p. 245; G. Lefebvre, Etudes sur la Rtvolution Fran~aise(Paris, 1962), p. 246. Cf The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton, 1947), introduction, conclusion. E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The origin of the Black Act (1975), pp. 190ff; 'The Peculiarities of the English', loc. cit., pp. 252, 258- 62, 296. K. Marx, 'The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution' in D. Fernbach (ed.), The Revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 192-3. F. Furet, Marx and the French Revolution (Chicago, 1988), p. 45. E. P. Thompson, 'Peculiarities', loc. cit., p. 288; G. McLennan, Marxism and the Methodologies of History (1981), p. 175. Thus Furet almost completely inverts Thompson's point: 'Marx['s] explanation elaborated and developed at great length in the case of England, takes as its key the development of capitalism and of a class that was at once dominant and ruling, master of capital, of Parliament, and of the state. Couched on this Procrustean bed, the France of the Revolution and of the nineteenth century is not eas- ily understood or even recognizable.' Furet, op. cit., p. 93. 328 Notes to pp. 12-17 See below Chapter 7. E. J. Hobsbawm, 'The Historians' Group of the Communist Party' in M. Cornforth (ed.), Rebels and their Causes: Essays in Honour of A. L. Morton (1979), p. 27. Cf Raphael Samuel, 'British Marxist Historians, 1880-1980; Part One', New Left Revim (NLR), 120, 1980, pp. 26, 28; Daphne May, 'Work of the Historians' Groups', Com- munist Review (CR), May 1949, pp. 541ff. Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left (Oxford, 1986), pp. 177ff. George C. Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution (1987), esp. chapters 3, 5. See also E. J. Hobsbawm, Echoes of the Marseillaise (1990), chapters 1, 2. G. Rude, Introduction to G. C. Comninel, Comninel, op. cit., p. 4. See Duncan Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics (Cambridge, 1975). Also Duncan Forbes's introduction to Hume: The History of Great Britain (The reigns of James I and Charles I) (Harmondsworth, 1970). Hume, History, ed. Forbes, pp. 219ff, 231; D. Hume, History of En- gland, vol. VIII (1776 ed.), appendix 111. Hume, History, ed. Forbes, pp. 41-2. F. Guizot, 'Discours sur l'histoire de la Revolution dfAngleterre' quoted in G. Plekhanov, The Development of the Monist View of His- toy (Moscow, 1956), p. 29. Augustin Thierry, Vue des rivolutions dfAngleterre (Paris, 1817), p. 51, quoted in Comninel, op. cit., pp. 60-1. Communist Manifesto (ed., A. J. P. Taylor), p. 2ff. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957); J. Q. C. Mackrell, The Attack on 'Feudalism' in Eighteenth Cen- tury France (1973). R. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge, 1976), p. 98, 10lff; S. N. Mukherjee, 'The Idea of Feudalism from the Philosophes to Karl Marx' in E. Leach, S. N. Mukherjee and J. 0. Ward, Feudalism: Comparative Studies, Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture, 2, 1985, pp. 34-5; Istvan Hont, 'The Rich Country Poor Country Debate in Scottish Classical Political Econ- omy' in I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (eds), Wealth and Virtue (Cam- bridge, 1983), pp. 271-316. R. Brenner, 'Bourgeois Revolution and the Transition to Capital- ism' in A. L. Beier et al., The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 281-5. Cf R. Brenner, 'The Origins of Capitalist Development, A Critique of Neo-Smithean Marxism', NLR, 104, 1977; 'Agrarian Class Struc- ture and Economic Development', Past and Present (PBP), 70, 1976, pp. 30-75, 'The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism', ibid., 97, 1982, pp. 16-113. Communist Manifesto, p. 4. Brenner, Loc. cit., p. 284; L. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, I1 (1978), pp. 34ff. See esp. Claude Lefort, 'Marx: From One Vision of History to Another', Social Research, xlv, 1978. Brenner, Loc. cit.; Giddens, op. cit. pp. 81-9. Notes to pp. 17-21 329 For a discussion of this radical divergence from the familiar evol- utionary model, see esp. Claude Lefort, loc. cit. Giddens, op. cit., chapter 3. For these problems, see especially the debate in Science and Society between 1950 and 1953, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: A Symposium (New York, Science and Society, 1954); R. Hilton (ed.), The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (1976); M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946); see Scott Meikle, 'Marxist Theory and the History of the Communist Movement' Critique, 10/ 11, 1978/9, pp. 88-91. See esp. P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974) pp. 18- 19; L. Althusser, Montesquieu: Politics and History (1972), pp. 101-3; B. Porshnev, Les Soulevements populaires en France de 1623 ii 1648 (Paris, 1963). F. Guizot, Preface to 'History of the English Revolution' in S. Mellon (ed.), Historical Essays and Lectures (Chicago, 1972), pp. 132-3; S. Mellon, The Political Uses of History (Stanford, 1958), pp. 12-13,21- 9; D. Johnson, Guizot: Aspects of French History (1963), p. 320ff. Guizot, op. cit., p. 55f; quoted in M. G. Finlayson, Historians, Puri- tanism and the English Revolution: The Religious Factor in English Politics before and after the Interregnum (Toronto, 1983), p. 36. See, for example, Marx's essay of 1847, Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality. Also the passages quoted in C. Hill, 'The English Civil War Interpreted by Marx and Engels', Science and Society, xii, i, 1949, pp. 142-3. See Marx's review of Guizot, D. Fernbach (ed.), Karl Marx, Sur- veys from Exile (Harmondsworth, 1973), Surveys, pp. 254-5. G. Blainey, The Great See-Saw (1989). J.Stewart, The Moral and Political Philosophy of David Hume (1967); D.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • People, Place and Party:: the Social Democratic Federation 1884-1911
    Durham E-Theses People, place and party:: the social democratic federation 1884-1911 Young, David Murray How to cite: Young, David Murray (2003) People, place and party:: the social democratic federation 1884-1911, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3081/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk People, Place and Party: the Social Democratic Federation 1884-1911 David Murray Young A copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Durham Department of Politics August 2003 CONTENTS page Abstract ii Acknowledgements v Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1- SDF Membership in London 16 Chapter 2 -London
    [Show full text]
  • File Is Composed of the Comfortable Class
    The English Radical Tradition and the British Left 1885-1945 ENDERBY, John Stephen Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26096/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26096/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. The English Radical Tradition and the British Left 1885-1945 by John Stephen Enderby A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2019 I hereby declare that: 1. I have not been enrolled for another award of the University, or other academic or professional organisation, whilst undertaking my research degree. 2. None of the material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award. 3. I am aware of and understand the University's policy on plagiarism and certify that this thesis is my own work. The use of all published or other sources of material consulted have been properly and fully acknowledged. 4. The work undertaken towards the thesis has been conducted in accordance with the SHU Principles of Integrity in Research and the SHU Research Ethics Policy.
    [Show full text]
  • Adam Sisman, Hugh Trevor-Roper
    Adam Timmins Ex Historia 208 Adam Sisman , Hugh Trevor-Roper (Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2010), xviii + 598 pp. £25.00 In biographical terms the heavyweight British historians of the twentieth century have been poorly served. Granted, in the last ten years or so studies of A.J.P. Taylor and E.H. Carr have appeared (although Taylor has had at least four biographies devoted to his life – including one by Sisman - and can hardly claim to be under-represented). 1 However, we await full length studies for the likes of Lawrence Stone, Christopher Hill and Lewis Namier (excluding his wife’s odd biography of him – reading it one would never guess that Namier was a historian), to name but name but three. 2 A gap has been filled then, by Adam Sisman’s life of Hugh Trevor-Roper. Would it be a touch unfair to call this an ‘official’ life? Sisman knew Trevor-Roper, and was given access to his personal papers as a result; but his biography is no hagiography. Though it might be said to be incomplete in certain areas – Sisman himself admits that some material from Trevor-Roper’s years as Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge has been excluded due to potential libel threats – and given some of the stories that do make it into the book, the mouth waters at the scurrilousness that must have been excluded. Nonetheless, Sisman has managed to produce an absorbing – and one suspects definitive for the foreseeable future – biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper. Given the material he has to work with one would expect nothing less.
    [Show full text]
  • The Press in the Arab World
    The Press in the Arab World a Bourdieusian critical alternative to current perspectives on the role of the media in the public sphere Hicham Tohme A thesis submitted to the Department of Politics in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2014 1 Abstract The current literature on the role of media in the public sphere in general, and particularly politics, is divided among two opposing trends. The liberal/pluralists argue that media is playing a democratic role consisting of either representing public opinion and/or informing it. The critical theorists argue that media is in fact controlled by and represents elite interests. But even critical theories of the role of media in politics are driven by the belief that media ought to play a democratic and liberal role in society. Both theories therefore share a common normative understanding of what the role of media ought to be and are therefore the product of a common normative ideological framework, the liberal paradigm. This prevents them from properly framing the question of what media actually do in societies which lie beyond the scope of the experience of liberal Europe. This dissertation seeks to transcend this debate, and the liberal paradigm along with it, by arguing that, given a different historical context than the European one, the practice and ethos of media develop differently, and cannot therefore be understood from the lens of the European experience and the liberal paradigm born from within it. To do that, I use Bourdieu's theory of fields to trace the birth and evolution of the private press in Beirut and Cairo from 1858 till 1916.
    [Show full text]
  • The Historiography of Social Movements Å
    Chapter 1 The Historiography of Social Movements å Halfway through the twentieth century, Fernand Braudel raised a call for establishing a productive dialogue between history and the social sciences whereby history might freely employ indispensable concepts that it was incapable of developing by itself, and the social sciences might acquire the temporal depth they lacked. He went on to state that there would be no social science ‘other than by the reconciliation in a simultaneous practice of our different crafts’. The convergence of history with the social sciences was baptized ‘social history’ and later, in the United States, as ‘historical sociology’ to underline sociologists’ shift towards historiography.1 At the fi rst international congress of historical sciences held after the Second World War in Paris, 1950, Eric Hobsbawm was involved in the section on social history, ‘probably the fi rst in any historical congress’, as he recalls in his autobiography.2 It gained momentum in 1952 with the creation of the British journal Past and Present, which brought to- gether a group of Marxist historians (Hobsbawm himself, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, George Rudé, and E.P. Thompson), joined by such prominent scholars as Lawrence Stone, John Elliot and Moses Finley. Meanwhile, in the United States, historical sociology took its fi rst steps forward with Barrington Moore, the Harvard teacher of Charles Tilly. It would be very hard to fi nd a sociologist who has taken better ad- vantage of history than Tilly. With the exception of his fi rst book, on the counter-revolution in the Vendée (published in 1964), long duration, which Braudel conceptualized as the history of structures, is the time- frame for Tilly’s analysis, whether it be of social struggles in France, state systems, European revolutions, democracy or social movements worldwide.
    [Show full text]
  • Homage to Edward Thompson, Part I Bryan D
    Document généré le 27 sept. 2021 05:13 Labour/Le Travailleur Homage to Edward Thompson, Part I Bryan D. Palmer Volume 32, 1993 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/llt32ob01 Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History ISSN 0700-3862 (imprimé) 1911-4842 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Palmer, B. D. (1993). Homage to Edward Thompson, Part I. Labour/Le Travailleur, 32, 10–72. All rights reserved © Canadian Committee on Labour History, 1993 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ OBITUARY / NÉCROLOGIE Homage to Edward Thompson, Parti Bryan D. Palmer EDWARD PALMER (E.P.) THOMPSON, described in 1980 as "our finest socialist writer today — certainly in England, possibly in Europe,"1 died at his home, Wick Episcopi, Worcester on 28 August 1993. Born 3 February 1924, he is survived by his wife of 45 years, fellow historian and political comrade, Dorothy, their daughter Kate, sons Mark and Ben, and numerous grandchildren. He left us—whom I define as those interested in and committed to the integrity of the past and the humane possibilities of a socialist future — a most enduring legacy, his example.
    [Show full text]
  • Law, Law-Consciousness and Lawyers As Constitutive of Early Modern England Christopher W
    From Michael Lobban, Joanne Begiato and Adrian Green (eds), Law, Lawyers and Litigants in Early Modern England. Essays in Memory of Christopher W. Brooks (Cambridge University Press, 2019) 32-57 Law, Law-Consciousness and Lawyers as Constitutive of Early Modern England Christopher W. Brooks’s Singular Journey DAVID SUGARMAN* Abstract During his lifetime, Christopher W. Brooks (1948–2014) established himself as the foremost historian of law in early modern English society. He was the leading exponent of a history of early modern England that transcended the boundaries of social, political and legal history, and which placed law and lawyers centre stage. This chapter brings a critical, but friendly, eye to Brooks’s work, focusing on how Brooks created a distinctive vision of law in history, and on the strengths and weaknesses of that vision. I examine the influences that shaped his work (including Lawrence Stone, Wilfrid Prest, Sir John Baker, E.P. Thompson, Jürgen Habermas and Robert W. Gordon), locating his scholarship within several contemporary contexts, including social, intellectual and legal history, and socio-legal and critical legal studies. I then critically assess the claims, topics, factors, methods and theories that Brooks emphasised. I argue, for example, that Brooks’s tended to de-emphasise the relationship between law, power, domination, exclusion, structure, totality and society, and the way in which the legal system can be routinely manipulated to serve those privileged by property and position, problematizing the nature and extent of popular belief in the rule of law; and that this reflected and was sustained by his limited engagement with the new histories of crime, punishment and policing.
    [Show full text]
  • Roger Scruton
    ROGER SCRUTON Roger Vernon Scruton 27 February 1944 – 12 January 2020 elected Fellow of the British Academy 2008 by ANTHONY O’HEAR There can be little doubt that by the time of his death in 2020 Sir Roger Scruton had become one of the most important thinkers of his time, not just in Britain, but throughout the English-speaking world and in Europe, particularly in Central Europe. The term ‘thinker’ is used advisedly here. For while Scruton was primarily and pre- eminently a philosopher, indeed an academic philosopher, his range and influence extended into many fields, including religion, music, architecture, politics, the environ- ment, culture in a general sense, the writing of novels, the appreciation of wine, defences of hunting and traditional country life and the nature of animal rights. In addition to his writing, he composed music, including two operas, was a publisher and editor and advised governments. He was active politically in this country and played a significant role in dissident movements in the Eastern bloc before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, XIX, 447–465 Posted 26 November 2020. © British Academy 2020. ROGER SCRUTON Academic career Roger Vernon Scruton was born in Lincolnshire in 1944, and educated at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe from 1954 to 1961. He then attended Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1962 to 1965 and again from 1967 to 1969. He took a Double First in Moral Sciences (Philosophy) in 1967, after which he spent a year as a lecteur in the University College of Pau.
    [Show full text]
  • Kennedycollection.Pdf
    University of Sheffield Library. Special Collections and Archives Ref: Special Collection Title: Kennedy Collection Scope: A collection of books on Japan and the Far East, including China, mainly in the 20th century. Dates: 1891-1979 Extent: c. 350 vols. Name of creator: Malcolm Duncan Kennedy Administrative / biographical history: Malcolm Duncan Kennedy, O.B.E., (1895-1984), expert on Japanes affairs, had a varied career as army officer, businessman, civil servant and intelligence officer, during which he spent some two decades in Japan. Kennedy was born in Edinburgh, though some of his earliest years were spent in Penang, and educated at Glenalmond School. During his army career he attended Sandhurst before serving in the First World War. After being severely wounded he convalesced for eighteen months before taking a course in Japanese at SOAS, having been posted to the Intelligence Section of Eastern Command Headquarters in London. From 1917 to 1920 he was a Military Language Officer in Japan, before returning to London where he worked in the Far Eastern Section of the War Office. The following year he was invalided out of the army and returned to Japan as a businessman. From 1925 until 1934 he took up a post in the Japanese Section of the Government Dode and Cypher School, combining this with free-lance journalism. During World War II he continued to work there on Far Eastern Intelligence duties. At the end of the war he moved to the War Office, being based in the headquarters of the Inter-Service Organisation. From 1945 until his retirement in 1955 he worked for S.I.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Communism As a Way of Life, the Communist Party Historians’ Group and Oxford Student Politics
    1 The Ingrained Activist: Communism as a Way of Life, the Communist Party Historians’ Group and Oxford Student Politics When Richard Lloyd Jones came to look back on his wartime school days at Long Dene, a progressive boarding school in Buckinghamshire, one particular incident stuck in his mind.1 He remembered being kept awake during the hot summer of 1944. It was not the heat alone that was responsible for this. Nor was there any particular physical reason why he should have been so wakeful. Part of the school’s ethos was a strenuous emphasis on the pupils participating in forms of outdoor and rural work such as harvesting. All that fresh air and exercise should have been quite sufficient to exhaust even the most active of small boys. What kept Richard Lloyd Jones awake was the incessant talking of a young, hyperactive ‘Raf-Sam’. Lloyd Jones did not recall exactly what it was that so animated the juvenile Samuel, late into that sticky summer’s night, but a reasonable assumption would be that it was politics, specifically communist politics, as the nine-year-old Samuel was already practising his skills as an aspiring communist propagandist and organiser.2 1 Lloyd Jones later became Permanent Secretary for Wales (1985–93) and Chairman for the Arts Council of Wales (1994–99). 2 Richard Lloyd Jones quoted in Sue Smithson, Community Adventure: The Story of Long Dene School (London: New European Publications, 1999), 21. See also: Raphael Samuel, ‘Family Communism’, in The Lost World of British Communism (London: Verso, 2006), 60; Raphael Samuel, ‘Country Visiting: A Memoir’, in Island Stories: Unravelling Britain (London: Verso, 1998), 135–36.
    [Show full text]
  • Antony Howe Abstract the Theme of the 2007 Celtic Studies Foundation
    RED HISTORY WARS? COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA AND THE MANIPULATION OF CELTIC HISTORY IN THE THIRTIES Antony Howe Abstract The theme of the 2007 Celtic Studies Foundation Conference was ‘Celts in Legend and Reality: Ancient and Modern.’ This paper looks at communist propaganda that packaged a leftist form of national history. In the British Isles this set off debate over how ‘History’ could be used and abused in the dubious service of propaganda for an avowedly internationalist Marxist party. The awkward fact of multiple national pasts was glossed over and the ‘line’ was clumsily implemented by the British party centre in London. A grab-bag of bits of ‘English’ history was adopted that ignored nearly all ‘Celtic’ history. The Scottish and Welsh party districts reacted very differently, the Scots alone successfully resisting this affront.1 Red Armband History The dependence of the Communist Party of Great Britain [CPGB] on Moscow for money, policy direction, and even choices of leadership has been well covered.2 Less well known is the impact the ‘line’ from Moscow had on the party’s approach to issues such as national identity, the related recourse to ‘History’ (both English and Celtic), and the impact these manipulations had within the party and its allies. Any hint of nationalism was a toxic topic on the left in the era of fascism. Decreed by Moscow, this ‘line’ was in response to fascist demagogy and meant to claim legitimacy through local roots. But it was one thing in Moscow to set this very general ‘line’, quite another to implement it in Dundee.
    [Show full text]
  • CHRISTOPHER HILL Copyright © British Academy 2005 – All Rights
    CHRISTOPHER HILL Copyright © British Academy 2005 – all rights reserved John Edward Christopher Hill 1912–2003 CHRISTOPHER HILL was a great historian. People who question this can point to his apparent limitations. Nearly all his huge output was on the seventeenth-century ‘English Revolution’ and its origins. He seldom used manuscript records or original letters. He did not write much straight nar- rative. He said little about art or music or agriculture to add to his huge knowledge of literature. More seriously it was claimed that his Marxism, even when mellowed, led him to ignore evidence that did not support it. The ‘bourgeois revolution’ was a theme he never quite discarded but its meaning changed uneasily. None of this, even so far as it was valid, dimin- ished his great achievement—to show, largely from one period and coun- try, the role of historical studies in the sum of human knowledge. In at least twenty books and innumerable articles he made two vital additions to the old accounts of his chosen time: the impact of popular movements and the immense range of ideas written and spoken. No seventeenth- century author escaped him. No group and no person was insignificant. His regular technique was to combine close study of an individual, great or obscure, with a forthright account of the social and economic setting. His style was lucid, uncomplicated, enthusiastic. He showed that it was possible for a great historian to have a most pleasing personality, gener- ous and tolerant, warm and humorous. Belief in equality was as essential in his life as in his scholarship even when he rose to a position of power.
    [Show full text]