Raphael Samuel - Peoples History and Socialist Theory

First published in 1981, this book brings together different types of work by numerous fragmented groups in the field of Marxist history and puts them in dialogue with each other. It takes stock of then recent work, explores the main new lines, and looks at the political and ideological circumstances shaping the direction of historical work, past and present. The scope of the book is international with contributions on African history, fascism and anti-fascism, French labour history, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It also incorporates feminist history and gives attention to some of the leading questions raised for social history by the womens movement.

First published in 1981
by Routledge & Kegan Paul

This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge
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1981 History Workshop Journal

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 81155963

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-67123-2 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-61709-1 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-67131-7 (pbk)

edited by

Tutor in Social History and Sociology Ruskin College, Oxford

First published in 1981
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street, London WC1E 7DD,
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA, and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EN
Printed in Great Britain by
Lowe & Brydone Ltd.
History Workshop Journal 1981
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Peoples history and socialist theory . - (History
workshop series).
1. History - Philosophy
I. Samuel, Raphael II. Series
901 D16.9 80-41391

ISBN 0 7100 0765 5
ISBN 0 7100 0652 7 Pbk

Raphael Samuel

Raphael Samuel

Peter Burke

Ian Carter

Ruskin History Workshop Students Collective

Ken Worpole

Jerry White

Stephen Yeo

Rosamond Faith

Dave Douglass

Paul Thompson

Peter Worsley

Ian Carter

Alessandro Triulzi

Alf Liidtke

John Lonsdale

Hans Medick

Michael Ignatieff

Gareth Stedman Jones

Perry Anderson

Barbara Taylor

Catherine Hall

Anna Davin

Ellen Ross

Paul Preston

Ronald Fraser

Franco Andreucci

Tim Mason

Lutz Niethammer

Peter Burke

Stuart Hall

Bob Scribner

Andrew Lincoln

Jacques Rancire

Sandra Pescarolo

Niels Finn Christiansen and Jens Rahbek Rasmussen

Alessandro Triulzi

Shula Marks

Richard Rathbone

Robin Law

Royden Harrison

Franz-Josef Brggemeier

Patrick Fridenson

Michael Ignatieff

John Walsh

Sheila Rowbotham

Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor

Raphael Samuel

Stuart Hall

Richard Johnson

E.P. Thompson

Raphael Samuel

Britains most distinct contribution to Marxist and socialist thought is arguably in the field of history, and recent years have seen a very large expansion of work in this field, as can be seen by the wide readership for the work of such historians as Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, E.P, Thompson and Shiela Rowbotham; by the publication of outstanding and innovatory work by a large number of younger historians; by the vitality of the social history journals Past and Present, History Workshop, Oral History and Social History; by the flourishing state of the regional labour history societies, notably those in Lancashire, Sheffield and South Wales; by the large amount of historical material appearing in the form of cultural studies and by the extensive coverage of historical work in the pages of the labour and socialist press.

One of the striking features of this work is how much of it is being nurtured outside the universities and polytechnics, or on their extra-mural fringes: in WEA groups, such as the Peoples autobiography of Hackney whose work is discussed in this volume, in community arts projects, in womens studies groups, and in the work of independent worker-historians one might instance John Gormans Banner Bright , a pioneering exploration of popular art, Malcolm Pitts The World on Our Backs (a history of the Kent miners by one of them), and the work of A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl on the history of folk song. Retrieval projects have also taken inspiration from this source, as in the Labour History Museum in Limehouse, the Miners Library in Swansea, and Eddie and Ruth Frows Working Class Movements Library in Manchester, a remarkable collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century source materials collected, as a labour of love, by a retired engineer and a school teacher. Some of the most ambitious historical work in recent years e.g. Ronald Frasers Blood of Spain , a massive oral history of the Spanish Civil War written by a novelist turned historian has been produced in proud independence of the academy challenging both the form of academic historical production and its content; while within the universities one can see determined attempts to escape from institutionally defined lines of specialisation and sub-specialism. In another sphere one could point to the importance of history in socialist work in the arts: plays such as Red Ladders Taking our Time; films such as Kevin Brownlows Winstanley , and television productions such as Garnett and Loachs Days of Hope have probably done as much to popularise a socialist interrogation of history as all the work undertaken in more traditional historical modes; while John Arden and Margaretta DArcys Non Stop Connolly Show , a twelve-part cycle of plays, set in the years of the Second International, represents a notably ambitious attempt, through theatre, to extend an understanding of the dialectics of socialist politics.

It is both a weakness and a strength of this work that it is being fragmented into entirely separate discourses, with, at one extreme, the global synthesis of Perry Andersons Lineages of the Absolutist State, or Hindess and Hirsts Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, and, at the other, a materialist analysis of the lump enp role tar iat in a single London street (Jerry Whites recent Campbell Bunk, History Workshop Journal No 7, November 1979). Feminist history groups, community-based publishing projects, local history workshops, regional labour history societies, oral history groups, independent writers and specialist scholars, each pursue their particular projects, sometimes with outstanding results but with little reference to each other; while in another sphere entirely, a ferocious discussion is going on among socialists about the philosophical foundations of historical enquiry. This book is an attempt to bring these different kinds of work into dialogue with one another; to take stock of work undertaken in the recent period; to explore, or at any rate indicate, some of the main new lines which an oppositional history needs to pursue; and to look at the political and idealogical circumstances shaping the direction of historical work, both in the past and in the present. In all there are fifty-two pieces, covering a wide range of both problems and perspectives. They are drawn from a History Workshop held in December 1969 at Ruskin College, Oxford, and attended by some 1,000 people, where many of these issues were rehearsed. The papers have been extended in the light of the discussion and criticism directed at them, and bibliographies added to make the book serviceable to those who will use it as an introduction to the work of British socialist historians.