“Radiant Illusion: Middle-class recruits to Communism in the 1930s”, edited by Nicholas Deakin, with contributions from Geoff Andrews, Jane Bernal, Norma Cohen, Philip Cohen, Elizabeth Dolan, Roderick Floud, Hamish MacGibbon and Kevin Morgan, is published on 20 October by Eve Editions. Further details are available on http://www.radiantillusion.co.uk/
The Legacy of 1945 and its Lessons for Today
Stan Newens, SHS President and former Labour MP, delivered an inspiring talk to the society on 19 September when he spoke about the record of the 1945 Labour government headed by Clement Attlee.
Combining factual description and analysis with personal memories and anecdotes, Stan convincingly argued that the proud record of the post-war Labour government was a victory for socialist advance and a tremendous gain for working people. The victory was a political earthquake and its legacy improved people’s lives enormously for generations to come.
Tony Blair titled his autobiography, A Journey. Blair took the party far away from the fine ideals that guided the reforming Labour government of Clement Attlee which was swept to power on a wave of enthusiasm for social change in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
As Stan recalled people were determined not to repeat the mistake of the previous war when Lloyd George’s promise of “Homes Fit for Heroes” went unfulfilled.
The journey taken by Attlee and his colleagues was to take the country in a completely different destination to the cruel neo-liberalism that drives Blair and the Blairites today.
Stan totally repudiated the Blairite insistence that the 1945 manifesto had been a “moderate programme”, by which they sought to reinterpret Attlee’s inspirational victory as support for a “realistic” pro-business agenda.
He vividly described exactly how radical the ‘45 administration actually was and pointed out that it fulfilled many of its promises to the people in terms of housing, education, social welfare and better healthcare.
The party had defied predictions to defeat war hero Winston Churchill, who had badly misjudged the popular mood by alleging during the election that Labour was intent upon establishing a “gestapo” in Britain; an utterly ludicrous suggestion given the reputation of the mild-mannered Attlee.
The principle of state intervention in the economy, shown to be successful during wartime, was essential in the period of post-war reconstruction. It was not a gestapo tactic but common sense.
Stan’s criticisms of Labour’s record concerned its controversial foreign policy which was increasingly dictated by cold war anti-Soviet ideology and embodied in the figure of the pugnacious Ernest Bevin. His cold war rhetoric was never very popular and Stan recalled attending a debate in 1948 during which backbench Labour MP Konni Zilliacus demolished Bevin’s attack on the USSR.
The mood of the public had been well ahead of the views of many Labour leaders who remained cautious of their possible victory right up to the last moment. Herbert Morrison, for instance, believed that Labour would lose the election if it was too radical.
But the policies that Labour was to implement were not at all “moderate” in modern Blairite terms. Stan listed the range of ambitious achievements such as the extensive nationalisation, the creation of a national investment bank, repeal of the Trades Disputes Act, the new towns, the NHS, education reform and granting freedom to India. The welfare state and full employment led to a real rise in the standard of living of ordinary people. Many of those who moved into new council housing experienced running water for very first time. Previously they had outside toilets, drawing water from a pump and tin baths in front of the fireplace. Labour had created an entirely different world and it was a significant step on the way towards building a socialist future.
Stan compared the excitement of Labour’s victory 70 years ago to the enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign to become Labour leader in September 2015. The Tories had lost 181 seats and it was a fantastic feeling, Stan recalled. He remembered how church bells were rung in celebration at the first news of Labour’s triumph.
In conclusion, Stan insisted that the 1945 Attlee government initiated the greatest social transformation of the 20th century and its record needed to be studied and lessons needed to be learned from it. The achievements could still inspire people today to aspire for a better future.
David Morgan
It seems clear now that the West wants to defeat Russia in Syria at all costs. This latest protracted confrontation in the Middle East can be understood as a proxy war of the US and NATO against Putin’s resurgent Russia. But Syria is just one zone of engagement in a much wider war against Russia that has been taking place since Putin started to stand up to the West. The same confrontation also occurs in Ukraine and formerly in Georgia, where Russia successfully halted, albeit temporarily, the Western advance. This amounts to a new Cold War or an undeclared war where East and West are once more in global confrontation.
To date the policy to unseat Assad has failed miserably despite the West’s imposition of punishing economic sanctions, its bombing of the country and the sponsoring, financing and training of what are little more than terrorist mercenaries. It is virtually impossible to distinguish the moderate rebels from the Islamist fanatics of ISIS (Islamic State).
read on here
Jack Goody: An Appreciation
Jack Goody, who died on 16 July age 95, was a social anthropologist whose influences were Marx, Weber and Freud among others. He was from the generation of left-wing scholars whose experiences in the 1930s and the Second World War were to shape their approach to academic research and influence their entire outlook on the world.
Goody had a very fertile mind and, like his contemporaries Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm, he was very productive. He was to author over 30 highly original books on subjects as diverse as the growth of literacy, writing and the organisation of society, the development of the family, inheritance and kinship, the culture of flowers and food, cooking and class and modes of production.
Again like Hill and Hobsbawm, Goody always wrote in a clear style with the minimum of jargon.
Born in 1919 to a Scottish mother and English father, Goody grew up in St Albans. He won a scholarship to read English literature at St John’s, Cambridge, in 1938, where he came into contact with Hobsbawm and other scholars who were attracted to the left.
In his ambitious last book, Metals, Culture and Capitalism (published in 2012), Goody writes about Europe and the Near East from the Bronze Age onwards, but he begins on a personal reflection stating that “my life has been much influenced by the Hunger Marches of the miners of my youth, by my serving in a regiment of Nottinghamshire miners in the war, by friends as Bevin Boys on my return, by the work of the Tavistock Institute in the coalfields after the war, of political activity of workers in the Fife coalfields, and by the attempts of Arthur Scargill and others to fight to keep the industry in this country.”
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Goody immediately joined the army and was to fight against Rommel in North Africa. Captured by the Germans during the fall of Tobruk in June 1942, Goody was to spend nearly three years as a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany.
During his time in the POW camps, Goody discovered two volumes that were to have a decisive impact on his future, JG Frazer’s The Golden Bough and V Gordon Childe’s, What Happened in History?
After the war, he returned to Cambridge to complete his studies and later carried out fieldwork in Ghana. Goody began producing pioneering comparative studies of the cultures, societies and economic development of Europe, Africa and Asia. In what is perhaps his most famous book, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977), Goody challenges the division between so-called “primitive” and “advanced” societies.
He was especially interested in challenging notions of Europe’s supremacy and uniqueness which he saw was related to the growth of imperialism and colonialism.
Jack Goody’s work shares some affinities with that of Victor Kiernan, Edward Said and Martin Bernal in uncovering the influences of the East on the West and vice versa.
His historical critique of “Eurocentrism” can be found in books such as The East in the West (1996) and The Theft of History (2007).
In Renaissances (2010), Goody takes a new look at the concept of the European Renaissance and argues that it was only one of many similar “renaissances” that can be found in the histories of China, India, Judaism and Islam over the course of many centuries.
In this volume, Goody dismisses traditional histories of European medicine which trace its foundations to Greece and Rome to the exclusion of the Arab, Jewish and Asian contributions; this is a “notion that displayed some of the features of what it is not entirely wrong to describe as racist thinking,” he says.
In all his books Goody is concerned with “big picture” issues in historical perspective such as inequality, which is what makes his work so deeply stimulating and readable.
While his approach was clearly influenced by Marx, Goody did not describe himself as a “Marxist” – as far as I am aware – but he did say that he was “not a non-Marxist”.
He remained strongly associated with the left, writing occasional articles for New Left Review and sitting on the editorial board of Past and Present journal. Jack Goody also gave a talk to the SHS at Marx House.
An extended interview with Goody conducted by Eric Hobsbawm can be found here:
http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1117872
David Morgan
A World Turned Upside Down
This year’s A L Morton Memorial Lecture was delivered by the Emeritus Professor of History at Warwick University, Bernard Capp, renowned for his research into 17th century popular culture and politics during the ferment of the English Revolution.
His first and perhaps most well-known book, The Fifth Monarchy Men, published in 1972, was an original and pioneering account of one of the small radical sects which emerged during the mid-century turmoil. Capp felt that they had been relatively neglected by previous historians of the period.
His talk, which stimulated an enthusiastic discussion, concentrated on the radical groups “to the left” of the Levellers, namely the True Levellers or Diggers, the Ranters and other short-lived groups such as the aforementioned Fifth Monarchy Men – who were appropriately named given that most of them were indeed men.
Prof Capp explained that the 1640s was a decade noted for two key developments that provided fertile ground for the growth of radicalism: the breakdown in censorship led to the flourishing of cheap pamphlets and birth of weekly newspapers; meanwhile the flight of King Charles from London in 1642 had a great impact on the popular consciousness and undermined belief in regal authority.
Capp compared the 1640s to the upheaval of 1789 in France as a period when people began to think the unthinkable, that the old social order could be “overturned” and replaced with an entirely new form of society. .
With the Bible for guidance, people saw the deep social unrest as signs that a new age was about to be born which would see “the rule of the godly”. Such millenarian beliefs were shared by people across the social spectrum including Oliver Cromwell and John Milton, but they were especially prevalent among the “middling sort” who made up the ranks of the New Model Army.
The fifth monarchists believed in direct action to usher in the New Jerusalem and their tendency to violence means that they never been fashionable among historians, Capp said, unlike the Diggers and Levellers, whose ideas were much more amenable to modern political thinking.
Capp pointed out that the Quakers, who have long since become a respectable religious organisation in society, trace their roots to the radical sects that emerged during the 1640s and they shared some common beliefs with the Ranters, who were one of the most subversive of all the groups.
The Ranters held that “God was within everyone” which resembles the Quaker belief in the “inner light”, but while the Quakers simply stood up to authority by refusing to remove their caps when in the presence of supposed social superiors, the Ranters brazenly swore, got drunk and rioted.
Capp stated that these various groups continue to be remembered if only as rich material for writers, playwrights and film directors. Their influence has extended well beyond this country as is indicated, for example, by the memorial to Digger leader Gerard Winstanley that was erected in Red Square by the Bolsheviks following the Russian revolution of 1917.
Bernard Capp delivered his talk to a packed meeting room at Marx House on 18th July. The SHS was honoured to be able to host such a distinguished historian.
David Morgan
Campaigns for Decent Housing Past and Present
Speaker Duncan Bowie
2pm, 21st November 2015
Venue Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green
Duncan Bowie will give a talk on radical and socialist campaigns for decent housing, land nationalisation and town planning in the 19th century and seek to relate them to the current housing crisis and contemporary struggles. Duncan’s book, ‘The Radical and Socialist Tradition in British Planning: From Puritan Colonies to Garden Cities’ is to be published by Ashgate later this year. Duncan is a member of the SHS committee and of the committee of the London Labour Housing Group. He is a lecturer at the University of Westminster. He is the author of SHS OP No 34, Roots of the British Socialist Movement.
Free to attend; all welcome.
Call for papers
Conference: “Before ’68: The Left, activism & social movements in the long 1960s”
13-14 February 2016, School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
Organised and hosted by UEA School of History in conjunction with Socialist History and the Institute of Working Class History, Chicago.
The events of 1968, particularly those in France, have achieved a mythical status in both the memory and the historiography of the 1960s. For some, 1968 marked the end-point of a realignment of the European ‘New Left’. For others 1968 represented a student generation in revolt, and many of the first accounts which sought to explain the history and meaning of ’68 were written by that generation.
More recently historians have tried to demythologise ’68, looking both at less ‘glamourous’ locales and at the deeper histories of anti-colonial struggles and worker activism prior to the events of that year. The aim of this conference is to explore the diverse histories of social activism and left politics in Britain and elsewhere, and how they prepared the ground for and fed into ‘1968’. Themes might include, but are not limited to:
• Anti-nuclear & peace movements
• Civil Rights struggles
• The Black Power movement
• Anti-colonial politics
• The activities of the Labour movement and the ‘traditional’ Left
• The grassroots activism of the ‘New Left’
•Far Left challenges: Trotskyism & Maoism
• Campaigns around housing and the built environment
• Campaigns around race and discrimination in the workplace and housing
• Solidarity movements with struggles abroad (e.g. South Africa, Vietnam)
• Campaigns for Homosexual Equality
• Second Wave Feminism
We are seeking papers of 5000 to 10000 words on any aspects of left activism and social movements in the period preceding 1968 to be presented at the conference. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Socialist History. Attendance at the conference will be free of charge, but we ask that anyone wishing to attend registers in advance. Proposals for papers and any enquiries should be submitted to Ben Jones at UEA.
Deadline for proposals for papers: 31 October 2015
NOT SUCH A LOVELY WAR
Saturday 1st November 2014
Venue: Conway Hall
11am to 4.00pm Admission free
Speakers:
‘Class cohesion and spurious patriotism: trade
union internationalism in the First World War’
Professor Kevin Morgan
Kevin is a historian of British Communism and the left whose latest book is ‘Bolshevism,
syndicalism and the general strike: The lost internationalist world of A.A. Purcell.
(Lawrence & Wishart 2013)
‘Imperialist Rivalries and the Origins of the First World War’
Stan Newens
Stan, a former MP and MEP, is President of the Socialist History Society and a keen
historian who recently published his autobiography, In Quest of a Fairer Society.
‘So Bloody Much to Oppose – grassroots opposition to World
War One’
Keith Flett
Convener of the London Socialist Historians Group, Keith is a prolific letter writer and
author of Chartism After 1848: The Working Class and the Politics of Radical Education
(Merlin 2005).
German Women and the First World War
Dr Helen L Boak
‘Down with the war! We don’t want to starve any longer’: German working-class women
and the First World War
Dr Boak will discuss working-class woman’s perspectives on the war covering attitudes to
the outbreak of war, their experiences during the war and the ramifications of the war
for women in the early 1920s. Author of Women in the Weimar Republic.
The SHS has joined with Conway hall for a seven-session lecture series “Stop the First World War” on Oppositions to the Great War which starts Tuesday 30th September with Professor Martin Ceadel on “Norman Angell – Liberal, Radical, Socialist, Pacifist or Patriot?”
Venue: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1R 4RL. Starting at 7pm.
Further information:
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