Abstract
Fifty years after the publication of The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson’s work is still relevant and celebrated around the academic globe. As suggested in the last chapter of E.P. Thompson and English Radicalism, Thompson must be seen as a historical happening. It was his peculiar way of writing and making history that left its mark in the work of a number of subsequently prominent historians and activists. Roger Fieldhouse and Richard Taylor’s book provides a comprehensive summary of Thompson’s own history and activism and, in some ways, continues the themes that another anthology called E.P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives, edited by H.J. Kaye and Keith McClelland, discussed in the early 1990s. The book by Fieldhouse and Taylor starts with a short biographical introduction of E.P. Thompson, written by the editors and Theodore Koditschek, which provides the reader with the basic facts of his life. It is divided into three parts: (1) on Thompson the historian, (2) Thompson the activist, and (3) a general overview of Thompson’s accomplishments written by one of his friends and disciples, B.D. Palmer. It is accompanied with an afterword and an appendix of three examples of Thompson’s writing style.
Roger Fieldhouse and David Goodway expand our understanding of Thompson’s career as an adult educator, and their essays are arguably ones that bring some new evidence to readers’ attention. They offer a fresh view of the origins of The Making and Thompson’s decision to resign from the Leeds extramural department due to its increasing bureaucratization and elitism. Fieldhouse sheds new light on the reasons for Thompson’s frustration with the organiational structures and his anger with the university standards that the WEA promoted. His essay is nicely followed by Goodway’s account on the making of The Making, which explains how the book emerged from Thompson’s preparation of his teaching material.
Theodore Koditschek and Luke Spencer discuss Thompson’s merits as a historian and political essayist. Thompson’s influences from Romantic literature and Gramsci’s philosophy of history are well established. In addition, in her essay on Thompson’s concept of class, Nina Power underlines the affinities of Thompson with Jean-Paul Sartre, for example the former’s concepts of agency and structure and the latter’s ‘progressive-regressive method’. Indeed, due to his distinctive explorations in the history and theory of the British working class, Thompson’s work can be seen as part of the European Marxist tradition of theorising the notion of class and studying the history of class struggle. His double commitment to the literature and history of lower classes was directly tied to his radical engagement, his pledge to denounce (along with other radicals) capitalism as a whole as detrimental to human life and dignity.
However, Thompson was not only a man of letters, but also an activist. His politics are mainly covered by Kate Soper, Michael Newman and Richard Taylor. Soper gives an overall account of his socialist humanism from 1956 up to the late Cold War era; Newman analyses his role in the early New Left; and Taylor focuses on his peace activism. Despite the fact that Thompson never attempted to create a synthesis of his political ideas – mostly presented in the form of polemics – he never ceased to intervene in political matters through different movements’ activities (early New Left) and organisational structures (CND, END). In hindsight, his political attempts may be open to criticism; for example, his theory of socialist humanism seems obsolete, and his criticism of other socialists a bit sharp. (His temperamental character did not make him the easiest person to work with.) Still, as these essays reveal, his political vision of a people’s Europe is (or, at least, should be) inspiring.
If there is one aspect of E.P. Thompson and English Radicalism that is weaker than the rest, it is the relationship of Thompson to modern radicalism. Despite its title, the book does not really focus on what is seen as ‘Thompson’s great blind spot… his sentimental loyalty to pre-1956 Communism’ (1). Thompson’s adherence to Communist ideology in his own dissident way is either neglected or treated in a meagre and unsatisfactory manner by the contributors to this volume. In the second part of the book, in which one would expect to learn more about Thompson’s political stance, most writers focus on Thompson the humanist or the New Leftist. A closer analysis of Thompson’s pre-1956 politics would definitely offer a better explanation of his ideals and polemics. How else can one explain his optimism in his essay on ‘Revolution’ or his disagreement with other peace activists who did not attempt to connect political theory with action, without Thompson’s socialist pronouncements and their relatedness to 1930s British radical culture?
If one is interested in answering the above question, the best way to start is, in fact, by reading a recently published collection of Thompson’s early political essays – Cal Winslow’s edition on E.P. Thompson and the Making of the New Left. This volume is a welcome addition to the posthumous collections of Thompson’s works, especially because Thompson wanted to republish his early political work before devoting himself wholeheartedly to antinuclear activism. The collection introduces readers to Thompson’s political thought as demonstrated in some of his most important political writings of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Most of these writings stem from the small and short-lived journals of the early New Left and give a valuable insight into his efforts to recover English radicalism in the Britain of the ‘welfare’ years. Some of the most persistent themes in Thompson’s oeuvre can be traced here: his opinion of the 1956 Hungarian crisis (‘Through the smoke of Budapest’); his attack on Stalin’s thought (‘Socialist Humanism’); his idea for a new left-wing movement (‘New Left’); his hope for a socialist and democratic revolution (‘Revolution’); and his sympathy for dissident voices (William Morris, Tom Maguire). Among the collected writings, one can also find an unpublished and long neglected document written as a memo to the New Left Review editorial board (‘Where are we now?’), which sheds new light on the division inside the early New Left. For instance, it is fascinating to read how Thompson tried to defend himself from the accusation of populism and nationalism, examining internationalism in the ‘Third World’ and changes in non-British socialist theory and practice.
Winslow’s edition would have benefitted from the inclusion of some of Thompson’s writings pre-1956. Despite Winslow’s thoughtful and careful introduction, once again one misses a sense of continuity in Thompson’s work. Winslow suggests that Thompson’s ‘ideas would over time be modified’ (34), but we must not forget that Thompson was also a man who insistently pleaded for a radical change in the social system inside and outside of political institutions. If William Morris remained with him for most of his life, this was not only because of Thompson’s political ‘reasoning’ but also due to a certain loyalty to the ‘Good Old Cause’. It would be interesting for the general reader, for example, to compare his 1957 article ‘Socialism and the Intellectuals’ and his 1952 pamphlet ‘The Struggle for a Free Press’.
All in all, both books are a welcome addition to the existing literature as they provide a valuable introduction to Thompson, whose passion for, and interest in, the history of common people is still all-important. Both works are indeed a ‘must read’ for those students who are interested in Thompson’s politics, and a valuable resource for browsing and reference in the future.