Dorothy Thompson - The Dignity of Chartism

I am indebted to Kate Thompson, who gave permission for the work of her parents to be collected together in this volume and who also patiently answered my numerous requests for assistance. Ben and Mark Thompson both read the introduction, and gave me great help with points of detail. At the outset Kate Tiller discussed this project with me over lunch in Oxford, and, as it came together, offered advice and assistance. Owen Ashton, on several occasions, talked over my plan of action, and also read one section of the book. Bob Fyson, Robert Hall and Ted Royle agreed to read the other sections of the book, and their feedback was much appreciated. I am grateful to Sheila Rowbotham, with whom I enjoyed two long conversations one in a black cab and the other on a train about Dorothy and Edward Thompson. I have also profitably discussed sections of this book with Terry Brotherstone, John McIlroy and Malcolm Chase. In their different ways Penny Corfield, Jim Epstein, Julian Harber, Patrick Joyce, Bob Knecht and Bryan D. Palmer have been most supportive. Richard Brown, Margot Finn, John Hargreaves, Antony Taylor, Alex Tyrrell and Cal Winslow responded helpfully to my queries. I am very grateful to Debbie Roberts and Staffordshire University Library for the help and support I received. Pete Bounous and Lewis Jones provided essential technical assistance. My thanks, too, to Sebastian Budgen and Mark Martin at Verso for their expert advice and for reassurance when it was needed.

I would like to acknowledge the support of a number of people who helped clear the way and enabled all of this work to appear between the covers of one volume: Paul Corthorn; Malcolm Chase; Kevin Towndrow; James Chastain; Karen Shook; Alan Crosby and the British Association for Local History; Michael Carty; Terry Brotherstone, Anna Clark and Kevin Whelan; Peter Burns; the Editorial Collective of History Workshop Journal; and Christian Gutleben. I have indicated the original place of publication in the first footnote of each essay.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my great-uncle, Charlie Williams. He embraced such causes as communism and vegetarianism, and was arrested on a fabricated charge of striking a police officer when local Communists disrupted a meeting in the Central Hall in Birmingham in 1923. His espousal of the Communist cause cost him his job at Cadburys, and, at the outbreak of war in 1939, he only just managed to get home from the Soviet Union. I waited thirty years to tell Dorothy Thompson his story. It proved to be the final conversation we had.