Issue 133 Spring 2017 The magazine of the Historical Association The Man from Keighley Asa Briggs’ Birmingham Asa Briggs and Labour History Asa Briggs: an appreciation Asa Briggs and political history Raising the bar Asa Briggs and the Age of Improvement Is it a Maze or a Labyrinth? William Coltman VC the most decorated non- combatant of the Great War The eighteenth- century Lying-in Hospital and the Celebrating the unmarried mother life and work of Asa Briggs 1921-2016 New podcasts from the HA Global Maoism The Great Depression Dr Julia Lovell of Professor Peter Fearon of Birkbeck, University of the University of Leicester London, discusses the discusses the economic and role and significance of social impact of the Great Global Maoism in the Depression in the United development of the Cold States, from the failure of War, including the Sino- the Federal Reserve and the Soviet split and rapprochement between China victory of FDR to the loss of and the USA. faith in the Free Market. www.history.org.uk/go/globalmaoism www.history.org.uk/go/greatdepression The Women’s Movement Good Evening Sweetheart Dr Anne Logan, Professor When Sue and Peter June Hannam and Ms Jean Mowforth were clearing Spence look at the Women’s out their parents’ attic, they Movement in the UK from discovered hundreds of letters its early origins through to exchanged between 1941 the end of the twentieth and 1945, unravelling a captivating story about century, including the Victorian Women’s life, and love, on the front line and at home during Movement, the Suffragette Movement and WWII. In this podcast Peter and Sue read extracts New Wave Feminism. from their parents’ letters with commentary. www.history.org.uk/go/womensmovement www.history.org.uk/go/sweetheart Tang Dynasty The LGBT Movement in the USA Lance Pursey, Chen Xue and Joshua Hollands of Jonathan Dugdale of the University College London University of Birmingham discusses the early LGBT look at the culture, influence civil rights movement in the and the significance of the United States from the end Tang Dynasty (618-907), of the Second World War, from Early Tang Emperors, through the Stonewall Riots Buddhism, Taosim and Confucianism to the An to political mobilisation and Gay Pride. Lushan Rebellion. www.history.org.uk/go/tang www.history.org.uk/go/lgbtus Listen to hundreds of other podcasts here: www.history.org.uk/podcasts Issue 133 Spring 2017 Articles 6 The Man from Keighley Trevor James 10 Asa Briggs’s Birmingham Roger Ward 12 Asa Briggs and labour history Chris Wrigley 16 Asa Briggs: an appreciation Stephen Yeo 22 Asa Briggs and political history Peter Catterall 26 Raising the bar Hugh Gault 28 Asa Briggs and Regulars The Age of Improvement 4 Reviews Boyd Hilton in this issue 5 Editorial 30 Two branch members... 21 The President’s Column 34 Is it a Maze or a Labyrinth? 31 Obituary Richard Stone and Trevor James 32 HA Conference 40 William Coltman VC – the most decorated non- 36 My Favourite History Place: combatant of the Great War York Watergate PEFC Certified Trevor James This product is Edward Green from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources 42 The eighteenth-century 37 Empress Matilda – ‘Lady of the PEFC/16-33-254 www.pefc.org lying-in hospital and the English’ (1102-67) in ten tweets The Historical Association 59a Kennington Park Road unmarried mother 38 HA Tours London SE11 4JH Telephone: 020 7735 3901 Marie Paterson Fax: 020 7582 4989 39 News from 59a PRESIDENT Professor Justin Champion DEPUTY PRESIDENT Dr Michael Maddison HONORARY TREASURER Richard Walker HONORARY SECRETARY Dr Tim Lomas EDITOR Contact us c/o The Historical Association’s office at: CHIEF EXECUTIVE Rebecca Sullivan Trevor James and Hugh Gault 59a Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4JH or email us at: [email protected] © The Historical Association 2017 all rights reserved. EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Registered charity 1120261 Alf Wilkinson, Paula Kitching, Rebecca Sullivan, Dave Martin Contributions to The Historian are welcomed for Incorporated by Royal Charter and Maggie Wilson consideration for possible publication but the Advertising Association cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited telephone: 020 7820 5985 PUBLISHER Rebecca Sullivan manuscripts nor guarantee publication. All enquiries Printed in Great Britain by should be sent initially to the Association at the above Stephens & George Print Group DESIGN AND LAYOUT Martin Hoare Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, CF48 3TD address. The publication of a contribution by the Historical Association does not necessarily imply the ISSN 0265-1076 (Print) Association’s approval of the opinions expressed in it. ISSN 2398-158X (Online) Reviews Sir Richard Richard Tangye, although deeply involved his adopted home. Along with many other Tangye 1833- in engineering by his personal and family smaller charitable contributions within 1906: a Cornish interests, was primarily an entrepreneur. It Birmingham, in 1880 he announced that, entrepreneur was through such people that Birmingham if the council was to build an art gallery, he in Victorian was able to prosper, and its people to achieve would donate £5,000 towards the purchase employment, in the later ninetenth century. of exhibits. Further he indicated that, if his Birmingham One of the early achievements of his business donation was to be matched by subscriptions Stephen Roberts was to provide the hydraulic jacks for the from elsewhere, he would double his gift. Birmingham launch of Brunel’s Great Eastern in 1858. The council moved very quickly to respond Biographies, The increased level of trade which followed and by 1885 the art gallery was opened, 2015, 65p, £4-99. enabled the Tangye Brothers to construct to huge popular acclaim. He was also the ISBN 9781512207910 their extensive Cornwall Works factory initiator of the move to provide the School of For those interested in the industrial in Smethwick, reinforcing their pride in Art in Margaret Street, to which he donated and commercial history of Birmingham, their Cornish origins as they prospered in £10,000. His knighthood in 1894 was for his Eric Hopkins’s Birmingham: the first Birmingham. services to the arts; this was fully deserved manufacturing town in the world 1760-1840 because he was instrumental in making the (1989) has been our essential starting point. Tangye participated in the Liberal politics arts much more accessible to the people of In contrast what Stephen Roberts offers us of late nineteenth-century Birmingham, Birmingham. is a different perspective on the economic serving as a councillor in the Rotton Row development of Birmingham, albeit from a ward between 1878 and 1882 but his civic Trevor James slightly later period. memory is to be seen in his philanthropy to King John and Yet John squandered his legacy: rebelling as John’s great, if unintended, legacy and the Road to against his father, betraying his brother ‘the beginning of English constitutional Magna Carta Richard I, murdering his nephew Arthur and m o n a r c h y ’. Stephen Church alienating the pope, following a quarrel with Pan Macmillan, the English Church over the appointment His conclusion remains that John was indeed 2016, 456 pp, £9.99. of a candidate to the see of Canterbury. ‘a catastrophic failure’, having given the ISBN 9781447241959 Moreover he failed to control his British reader a fair and rounded picture fleshed out territories, and lost almost all of his French with inevitably extensive forays into Poitevin ones. Civil war raged at the end of his reign politics, and comprehensive descriptions with a French army loose in eastern England. of John’s frequent journeys in both Britain Stephen Church has written a biography of and France. Thus this volume is a worthy England’s most reviled monarch, trying very Professor Church’s great virtue is his mastery addition to the debate recently entered also hard to understand his character against the of contemporary documents which are by David Carpenter and Marc Morris, and background of thirteenth-century English often patchy and contradictory. He has building on the biographies of W.L. Warren society and the troubled times over which examined recently-revealed household (1961) and J.C. Rolt (1965). It would be rash, he had little control. In particular John papers but he is still admirably cautious in perhaps, to expect the setting up of a King succeeded to an ungovernable inheritance reaching definite conclusions from them. He John Society any time soon. as ‘Lackland’, the last of Henry II’s sons, and writes particularly well about Magna Carta, thus was the least expected to succeed. the greatest text of all, which he regards Edward Towne 1851 One historian has said that Asa Briggs’s earliest possible opportunity to travel from Asa Briggs writing retains the freshness it had when it Windsor to Watford to join the newly- Historical Association, was composed. Those of us who still refer established railway to Tamworth, where they this Classic Pamphlet to his Age of Improvement will attest to that went to stay with Sir Robert Peel at Drayton is now available in feeling. This pamphlet especially reflects that Manor, this portrayal has always seemed digital format free for sense. Written over 50 years ago, it reads in a dubious. In composing this pamphlet 50 HA members. Non-HA very accessible, helpful and modern manner. years ago, Briggs’s research evidence from members buy it for for the Royal Archives of letters written by the £3.49 see the Historical In reflecting on a critical year in Britain queen in 1851, in which she comments Association website. and Europe, Briggs examines 1851 with an that some of the political difficulties that engagement which reveals his analytical were being encountered would not have skills as an historian but also his undoubted been experienced if the wisdom of ‘dear skills as a researcher.