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Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular ''
The Making of the English Working Class ''The Making of the English Working Class'' is a work of English social history written by E. P. Thompson, a New Left historian. It was first published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and republished in revised form in 1968 by Pelican, after ...
'' (1963). Thompson published biographies of
William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
(1955) and (posthumously)
William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
(1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. He published the novel ''The Sykaos Papers'' and a collection of poetry. His work is considered by some to have been among the most important contributions to labour history and
social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
in the latter twentieth-century, with a global impact, including on scholarship in Asia and Africa. In a 2011 poll by ''
History Today ''History Today'' is an illustrated history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents serious and authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and pub ...
'' magazine, he was named the second most important historian of the previous 60 years, behind only
Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (; 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian and leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: ''The Mediterranean'' (1923–49, then 1949–66), ''Civilization and Capitalism'' ...
. Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the
Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...
. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a "historian in the
Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
tradition", calling for a rebellion against
Stalinism Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...
as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
in Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist critic of the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79, and an early and constant supporter of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nucle ...
, becoming during the 1980s the leading intellectual light of the movement against nuclear weapons in Europe.


Early life

E.P. Thompson was born in
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
to
Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...
missionary parents: His father,
Edward John Thompson Edward John Thompson (9 April 1886 – 28 April 1946) was a British scholar, novelist, historian and translator. He is remembered for his translations from Bengali into English and his association with Rabindranath Tagore, on whom he wrote t ...
(1886–1946) was a poet and admirer of the Nobel Prize–winning poet
Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter ...
. His older brother was
William Frank Thompson Major William Frank Thompson (17 August 1920 – 10 June 1944) was a British officer who acted as a liaison between the British Army and the Bulgarian communist partisans during the Second World War. Early life, family, and education Thompson ...
(1919–1944), a British officer in the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, who was captured and shot aiding the Bulgarian anti-fascist partisans. Thompson attended two independent schools,
The Dragon School ("Reach for the Sun") , established = 1877 , closed = , type = Preparatory day and boarding school and Pre-Prep school , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Head , head = Emma Goldsm ...
in Oxford and
Kingswood School (''In The Right Way Quickly'') , established = , closed = , type = Independent , religious_affiliation = Methodist , president = , head_label = Headmaste ...
in
Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...
. Like many he left school in 1941 to fight in the Second World War. He served in a tank unit in the Italian campaign, including at the fourth battle of
Cassino Cassino () is a ''comune'' in the province of Frosinone, Southern Italy, at the southern end of the region of Lazio, the last city of the Latin Valley. Cassino is located at the foot of Monte Cairo near the confluence of the Gari and Liri rive ...
. After his military service, he studied at
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College (full name: "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary", often shortened to "Corpus"), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century through to the early 19th century ...
, where he joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...
. In 1946, E. P. Thompson formed the
Communist Party Historians Group A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the Communist Party Historians Group (CPHG) formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below" from 1946 to 1956. Famous members ...
with Christopher Hill,
Eric Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. H ...
,
Rodney Hilton Rodney Howard Hilton (17 November 1916 – 7 June 2002) was an English Marxist historian of the late medieval period and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Biography Hilton was born in Middleton in Lancashire. He studied at Ma ...
, Dona Torr and others. In 1952 they launched the influential journal '' Past and Present''.


Career


''William Morris''

Thompson's first major work of scholarship was his biography of
William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
, written while he was a member of the Communist Party. Subtitled ''From Romantic to Revolutionary'', it was part of an effort by the Communist Party Historians' Group, inspired by Torr, to emphasise the domestic roots of Marxism in Britain at a time when the Communist Party was under attack for always following the Moscow line. It was also an attempt to take Morris back from the critics who for more than 50 years had emphasised his art and downplayed his politics. Although Morris's political work is well to the fore, Thompson also used his literary talents to comment on aspects of Morris's work, such as his early Romantic poetry, which had previously received relatively little consideration. As Thompson noted in his preface to the second edition (1976), the first edition (1955) appears to have received relatively little attention from the literary establishment because of its then-unfashionable Marxist point of view. However, the somewhat rewritten second edition was much better received.


The first New Left

After
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
's "secret speech" to the 20th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union "Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper ...
in 1956, which revealed that the Soviet party leadership had long been aware of Stalin's crimes, Thompson (with
John Saville John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second E ...
and others) started a dissident publication inside the CP, called ''The Reasoner''. Six months later, he and most of his comrades left the party in disgust at the Soviet invasion of
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
. But Thompson remained what he called a "socialist humanist". With Saville and others, he set up the ''
New Reasoner ''The New Reasoner'' was a British journal of dissident Communism published from 1957 to 1959 by John Saville and E.P. Thompson. The publication is best remembered as an antecedent of the long running journal ''New Left Review.'' ''The Reasone ...
'', a journal that sought to develop a democratic socialist alternative to what its editors considered the ossified official
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
of the Communist and
Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...
parties and the managerialist cold war social democracy of the Labour Party and its international allies. The ''New Reasoner'' was the most important organ of what became known as the "
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
", an informal movement of dissident leftists closely associated with the nascent movement for nuclear disarmament in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The ''New Reasoner'' combined with the ''
Universities and Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960. History Background As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on m ...
'' to form ''
New Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960. History Background As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on m ...
'' in 1960, though Thompson and others fell out with the group around
Perry Anderson Francis Rory Peregrine "Perry" Anderson (born 11 September 1938) is a British intellectual, historian and essayist. His work ranges across historical sociology, intellectual history, and cultural analysis. What unites Anderson's work is a preoc ...
who took over the journal in 1962. The fashion ever since has been to describe the Thompson ''et al.'' New Left as "the first New Left" and the Anderson ''et al.'' group, which by 1968 had embraced
Tariq Ali Tariq Ali (; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and con ...
and various Trotskyists, as the second. Thompson subsequently allied himself with the annual ''
Socialist Register The ''Socialist Register'' is an annual socialist publication. It was founded in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville. They had criticisms of the ''New Left Review'' (''NLR'') after Perry Anderson became editor of the ''NLR'' in 1962. Miliband a ...
'' publication. With
Raymond Williams Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
and Stuart Hall, he was one of the editors of the 1967 ''May Day Manifesto'', one of the key left-wing challenges to the 1964–70 Labour government of
Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...
.


''The Making of the English Working Class''

Thompson's most influential work was and remains ''
The Making of the English Working Class ''The Making of the English Working Class'' is a work of English social history written by E. P. Thompson, a New Left historian. It was first published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and republished in revised form in 1968 by Pelican, after ...
'', published in 1963 while he was working at the
University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...
. The massive book, over 800 pages, was a watershed in the foundation of the field of
social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
. By exploring the ordinary cultures of working people through their previously ignored documentary remains, Thompson told the forgotten history of the first working-class political left in the world in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Reflecting on the importance of the book for its 50th anniversary, Emma Griffin explained that Thompson "uncovered details about workshop customs and rituals, failed conspiracies, threatening letters, popular songs, and union club cards. He took what others had regarded as scraps from the archive and interrogated them for what they told us about the beliefs and aims of those who were not on the winning side. Here, then, was a book that rambled over aspects of human experience that had never before had their historian. ''The Making of the English Working Class'' had a profound effect on the shape of British historiography, and still endures as a staple on university reading lists more than 50 years after its first publication in 1963. Writing for the
Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...
in 2013,
Robert Colls Robert Colls is Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University, Leicester. Before that he was Professor of English History at Leicester University. He is married with two adult children. Personal History He was born in 1949 in South Shi ...
recalled the power of Thompson's book for his generation of young British leftists:
I bought my first copy in 1968 – a small, fat bundle of
Pelican Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before s ...
with a picture of a Yorkshire miner on the front – and I still have it, bandaged up and exhausted by the years of labour. From the first of its 900-odd pages, I knew, and my friends at the University of Sussex knew, that this was something else. We talked about it in the bar and on the bus and in the refectory queue. Imagine that: young male students more interested in a book than in gooseberry tart and custard.
In his preface to this book, E.P. Thompson set out his approach to writing history from below, "I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the
Luddite The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century who formed a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group is believed to have taken its name from Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver s ...
cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "Utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of
Joanna Southcott Joanna Southcott (or Southcote; April 1750 – 26 December 1814) was a self-described religion, religious prophetess from Devon, England. A "Southcottian" movement continued in various forms after her death; its eighth prophet, Mabel Barltrop, ...
, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties." Thompson's thought was also original and significant because of the way he defined "class." To Thompson, class was not a structure, but a relationship: By re-defining class as a relationship that changed over time, Thompson proceeded to demonstrate how class was worthy of historical investigation. He opened the gates for a generation of labour historians, such as David Montgomery and
Herbert Gutman Herbert George Gutman (1928–1985) was an American professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he wrote on slavery and labor history. Early life and education Gutman was born in 1928 to Jewish immigran ...
, who made similar studies of the American working classes. A major work of research and synthesis, the book was also important in
historiographical Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...
terms: with it, Thompson demonstrated the power of a historical Marxism rooted in the experience of real flesh-and-blood workers. Thompson wrote the book while living in Siddal,
Halifax, West Yorkshire Halifax () is a minster and market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It is the commercial, cultural and administrative centre of the borough, and the headquarters of Calderdale Council. In the 15th cen ...
and based some of the work on his experiences with the local Halifax population. In later essays, Thompson has emphasized that crime and disorder were characteristic responses of the working and lower classes to the oppressions imposed upon them. He argues that crime was defined and punished primarily as an activity that threatened the status, property and interests of the elites. England's lower classes were kept under control by large-scale execution, transportation to the colonies, and imprisonment in horrible hulks of old warships. There was no interest in reforming the culprits, the goal being to deter through extremely harsh punishment.


Time discipline

Time discipline, as it pertains to sociology and
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
, is the general name given to
social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...
and economic rules, conventions, customs, and expectations governing the measurement of time, the
social currency Social currency refers to the actual and potential resources from presence in social networks and communities, including both digital and offline. It is, in essence, an action made by a company or stance of being, to which consumers feel a sense ...
and awareness of time measurements, and people's expectations concerning the observance of these customs by others. Thompson authored ''Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism'', published in 1967, which posits that reliance on clock-time is a result of the European
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
and that neither industrial capitalism nor the creation of the modern state would have been possible without the imposition of synchronic forms of time and work discipline. An accurate and precise record of time was not kept prior to the industrial revolution. The new clock-time imposed by government and capitalist interests replaced earlier, collective perceptions of time—such as natural rhythms of time like sunrise, sunset, and seasonal changes—that Thompson believed flowed from the collective wisdom of human societies. However, although it is likely that earlier views of time were imposed by religious and other social authorities prior to the industrial revolution, Thompson's work identified
time discipline In sociology and anthropology, time discipline is the general name given to social and economic rules, conventions, customs, and expectations governing the measurement of time, the social currency and awareness of time measurements, and people's ...
as an important concept for study within the
social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
s. Thompson addresses the development of time as a
measurement Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared ...
that has value and that can be controlled by
social structure In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rel ...
s. As labor became more mechanized during the industrial revolution, time became more precise and standardized. Factory work changed the relationship that the capitalist and laborers had with time and the
clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...
; clock time became a tool for social control. Capitalist interests demanded that the work of laborers be monitored accurately to ensure that cost of labor was to the maximum benefit of the capitalist.


Freelance polemicist

Thompson left the
University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...
in protest at the commercialisation of the academy, documented in the book ''Warwick University Limited'' (1971). He continued to teach and lecture as a visiting professor, particularly in the United States. However, he increasingly worked as a freelance writer, contributing many essays to ''
New Society ''New Society'' was a weekly magazine of social inquiry and social and cultural comment, published in the United Kingdom from 1962 to 1988. It drew on the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, psychology, human geography, social history and so ...
'', ''Socialist Register'' and historical journals. In 1978, he published ''The Poverty of Theory'' which attacked the
structural Marxism Structural Marxism is an approach to Marxist philosophy based on structuralism, primarily associated with the work of the French philosopher Louis Althusser and his students. It was influential in France during the 1960s and 1970s, and also c ...
of
Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser ...
and his followers in Britain on ''New Left Review'' (famously saying: "...all of them are , unhistorical shit"). The title echoes that of
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
's 1847 polemic against
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...
, ''
The Poverty of Philosophy ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (French: ''Misère de la philosophie'') is a book by Karl Marx published in Paris and Brussels in 1847, where he lived in exile from 1843 until 1849. It was originally written in French language, French as a critique ...
''; and that of philosopher
Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
's 1936 book ''
The Poverty of Historicism ''The Poverty of Historicism'' is a 1944 book by the philosopher Karl Popper (revised in 1957), in which the author argues that the idea of historicism is dangerous and bankrupt. Publication ''The Poverty of Historicism'' was first written as a ...
''. Thompson's polemic provoked a book-length response from Perry Anderson entitled ''Arguments Within English Marxism''. During the late 1970s, Thompson acquired a large public audience as a critic of the then Labour government's disregard of civil liberties; his writings from this time are collected in ''Writing By Candlelight'' (1980). From 1981 onward, Thompson was a frequent contributor to the American magazine ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
''.


Voice of the peace movement

From 1980, Thompson was the most prominent intellectual of the revived movement for
nuclear disarmament Nuclear may refer to: Physics Relating to the Atomic nucleus, nucleus of the atom: *Nuclear engineering *Nuclear physics *Nuclear power *Nuclear reactor *Nuclear weapon *Nuclear medicine *Radiation therapy *Nuclear warfare Mathematics *Nuclear ...
, revered by activists throughout the world. In Britain, his pamphlet ''Protest and Survive'', a parody on the government leaflet ''
Protect and Survive ''Protect and Survive'' was a public information campaign on civil defence. Produced by the British government between 1974 and 1980, it intended to advise the public on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack. The campaign compris ...
'', played a major role in the revived strength of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nucle ...
. Just as important, Thompson was, with
Ken Coates Kenneth Sidney Coates (16 September 1930 – 27 June 2010) was a British politician and writer. He chaired the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and edited ''The Spokesman'', the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Labour Party Memb ...
,
Mary Kaldor Mary Henrietta Kaldor (born 16 March 1946) is a British academic, currently Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is also the Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit. She also teaches ...
and others, an author of the 1980 ''Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament'', calling for a nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal, which was the founding document of
European Nuclear Disarmament European Nuclear Disarmament (END) was a Europe-wide movement for a "nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal” that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991. Origins The founding statement of END was the Eur ...
. Confusingly, END was both a Europe-wide campaign that comprised a series of large public conferences (the END Conventions), and a small British pressure group. Thompson played a key role in both END and
CND The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nucle ...
throughout the 1980s, speaking at many public meetings, corresponding with hundreds of fellow activists and sympathetic intellectuals, and doing more than his fair share of committee work. He had a particularly important part in opening a dialogue between the west European peace movement and dissidents in Soviet-dominated eastern Europe, particularly in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
, for which he was denounced as a tool of American imperialism by the Soviet authorities. He wrote dozens of polemical articles and essays during this period, which are collected in the books ''Zero Option'' (1982) and ''The Heavy Dancers'' (1985). He also wrote an extended essay attacking the ideologists on both sides of the cold war, ''Double Exposure'' (1985) and edited a collection of essays opposing
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
's
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic ...
, ''Star Wars'' (1985). An excerpt from a speech given by Thompson featured in the computer game
Deus Ex Machina ''Deus ex machina'' ( , ; plural: ''dei ex machina''; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function ...
(1984). Thompson's own haunting recitation of his 1950 poem of "apocalyptic expectation, "The Place Called Choice," appeared on the 1984 vinyl recording "The Apocalypso", by Canadian pop group
Singing Fools Singing Fools was a short-lived Canadian non-performing musical group based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, composed of musicians Tim Dunlop and Kevin Murphy. The pair wrote and recorded hip hop-style songs with politically focused lyrics. History ...
, released by A&M Records. During the 1980s Thompson was also invited by
Michael Eavis Athelstan Joseph Michael Eavis (born 17 October 1935) is an English dairy farmer and the co-creator of the Glastonbury Festival, which takes place at his farm in Pilton, Somerset. Personal life Eavis was born in Pilton, Somerset and grew up ...
, who founded a local branch of CND, to speak at the
Glastonbury Festival Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemp ...
on several occasions after it became a fundraising event for the organisation: Thompson's speech at the 1983 edition of the festival, where he declared that the audience were part of an "alternative nation" of " inventors, writers... theatre, musicians" opposed to
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
and the tradition of "moneymakers and imperialists" which he identified her with, was named by Eavis as the best speech ever made at the festival.


William Blake

The last book Thompson finished was '' Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law'' (1993). The product of years of research and published shortly after his death, it shows how far Blake was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English civil war.


Personal life

In 1948 Thompson married Dorothy Towers, whom he met at Cambridge. A fellow left-wing historian, she wrote studies on women in the Chartist movement, and the biography ''
Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...
: Gender and Power''; she was Professor of History at the
University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...
. The Thompsons had three children, the youngest of whom is the award-winning children's writer, Kate Thompson. After four years of declining health, Thompson died at his home in Upper Wick, Worcestershire, on 28 August 1993, aged 69.


William Frank Thompson

Thompson's older brother
Frank Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Curr ...
(1920–1944), was also a member of the British Communist Party during the Second World War. A gifted linguist, Frank Thompson parachuted into fascist-occupied Bulgaria as part of a "Phantom Brigade" during Operation Mulligatawny. He supported the resistance as a liaison officer but was captured and on 10 June 1944 he was executed. His body was buried in the War Cemetery of Sofia. After the war, the Bulgarians erected a statue in his honour. The nearby villages of Livage, Lipata, Tsarevi Stragi, Malak Babul, Babul and Zavoya were merged and renamed to
Thompson Thompson may refer to: People * Thompson (surname) * Thompson M. Scoon (1888–1953), New York politician Places Australia *Thompson Beach, South Australia, a locality Bulgaria * Thompson, Bulgaria, a village in Sofia Province Canada * ...
in his honour. E. P. Thompson and his mother wrote ''There is a Spirit in Europe: A Memoir of Frank Thompson'' (1947). Frank Thompson was also a friend and confidant of
Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her fi ...
, the philosopher and novelist. E. P. Thompson wrote another book about his brother, published in 1996.


Criticism

Although Thompson left the Communist Party of Great Britain, he remained committed to Marxist ideals.
Leszek Kołakowski Leszek Kołakowski (; ; 23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history, '' Main Currents of Marxism'' (1976). ...
wrote a very harsh criticism of Thompson in his 1974 essay "My Correct Views on Everything".
Tony Judt Tony Robert Judt ( ; 2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was a British-American historian, essayist and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European ...
considered this rejoinder so authoritative that he claimed that "no one who reads it will ever take E.P. Thompson seriously again". Kołakowski's portrait of Thompson elicited some protests from readers and other left-wing journals came to Thompson's defence. On the 50th anniversary of the landmark publication of ''The Making of the English Working Class'', journalists celebrated E.P. Thompson as one of the pre-eminent historians of his day. As Marxist history became less fashionable in the face of the adaptation of discourse-focused approaches inspired by the
linguistic turn The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy and the other humanities primarily on the relations between language, langua ...
and
post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
in the 1980s, Thompson's work was subjected to critique by fellow historians.
Joan Wallach Scott Joan Wallach Scott (born December 18, 1941) is an American historian of France with contributions in gender history. She is a professor emerita in the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Scott ...
argued that Thompson's approach in ''The Making of the English Working Class'' was
androcentric Androcentrism (Ancient Greek, ἀνήρ, "man, male") is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing a masculine point of view at the center of one's world view, culture, and history, thereby culturally marginalizing femininity. The related a ...
, and ignored the centrality of gender in the construction of class identities, with the sphere of paid labour in which economic class was rooted being understood as inherently male and privileged over the feminised domestic realm.
Sheila Rowbotham Sheila Rowbotham (born 27 February 1943) is a British socialist feminist theorist and historian. Early life Rowbotham was born on 27 February 1943 in Leeds (in present-day West Yorkshire), the daughter of a salesman for an engineering company a ...
, also a feminist historian and a friend of E.P. and Dorothy Thompson, has argued that Scott's critique was ahistorical, given that the book was published in 1963, before the
second-wave feminist Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. W ...
movement had fully developed a theoretical gender perspective. In a 2020 interview, Rowbotham acknowledged that "there was not a great deal of reference to women in ''The Making''... But at the time it seemed like there were a lot of references to women, because we had to read people like
J. H. Plumb Sir John (Jack) Harold Plumb (20 August 1911 – 21 October 2001) was a British historian, known for his books on British 18th-century history. He wrote over thirty books. Biography Plumb was born in Leicester on 20 August 1911. He was educate ...
— history in which there were really absolutely no women at all", and suggested that Thompson limited his writing about woman in deference to his wife, for whom women's history was a key area of research interest. Rowbotham did acknowledge that whilst they supported the emancipation of women, the Thompsons had mixed feelings about the contemporary second-wave feminist movement, regarding it as too middle class. Barbara Winslow, who studied under Thompson and named him as "the most important academic influence on my life", similarly acknowledged that whilst "he was not politically sympathetic to the women's liberation movement, in part because he thought it was an American import, he was not hostile to women students or their feminist research agendas", and argued that early women's history in the 1960s primarily focused on "writing women into history", with more sophisticated feminist theoretical approaches only arriving later.
Gareth Stedman Jones Gareth Stedman Jones (born 17 December 1942) is an English academic and historian. As Professor of the History of Ideas at Queen Mary, University of London, he deals particularly with working-class history and Marxism. Career Educated at St ...
claimed that the conception of the role of experience in ''The Making of the English Working Class'' embodied the idea of a direct link between social being and
social consciousness Social consciousness or social awareness, is collective consciousness shared by individuals within a society.discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
as a means of mediating between the two, enabling people to develop a political understanding of the world and orientating them to political action. Marc Steinberg argued that Stedman Jones' interpretation of Thompson's perspective was "reductionist", with Thompson understanding the relationship between experience and consciousness as a "complex dialectical relationship". Wade Matthews argued in 2013: :Numerous books, special collections, and journal articles on E.P. Thompson's scholarly work and legacy appeared soon after his death in 1993. Since then, however, interest in Thompson has waned. The reasons for this are perhaps easily enough summarized. Today, Thompson's histories are viewed as old-fashioned, while his socialist politics are believed extinct. Class is considered neither a fruitful concept of historical analysis nor an appropriate basis for an emancipatory politics. Nuclear weapons proliferate, but no anti-nuclear movement grows up alongside their proliferation. Civil liberties are a minority, and increasingly "radical," interest in the age of the "war on terror." Internationalism, as ideology and practice, is the preserve of capital not labour. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, then, Thompson seems out of place. ...certainly part of his distinctiveness lay in his literary style and tone. But it also lay in the moral quality which undergirded his histories and his political interventions. Part of that quality was the "glimpses of other possibilities of human nature, other ways of behaving" that they gave us. In this way, as Stefan Collini has suggested, Thompson is perhaps more relevant than he ever was.


Honours

A
blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
to the Thompsons was erected by the
Halifax Civic Trust Halifax commonly refers to: *Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada * Halifax, West Yorkshire, England *Halifax (bank), a British bank Halifax may also refer to: Places Australia *Halifax, Queensland, a coastal town in the Shire of Hinchinbrook * Halifax ...
.


Selected works

* ''William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary.'' London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1955. * "Socialist Humanism," ''The New Reasoner,'' vol. 1, no. 1 (Summer 1957), pp. 105–143. * "The New Left," ''The New Reasoner,'' whole no. 9 (Summer 1959), pp. 1–17. * ''
The Making of the English Working Class ''The Making of the English Working Class'' is a work of English social history written by E. P. Thompson, a New Left historian. It was first published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and republished in revised form in 1968 by Pelican, after ...
'' London: Victor Gollancz (1963); 2nd edition with new postscript, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, third edition with new preface 1980. * "Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism." ''Past & Present,'' vol 38, no. 1 (1967), pp. 56–97. * "The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century." ''Past & Present,'' vol. 50, no. 1 (1971), pp. 76–136. * ''Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act'', London: Allen Lane, 1975. * ''Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England.'' (Editor.) London: Allen Lane, 1975. * ''The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays'', London: Merlin Press, 1978. * ''Writing by Candlelight'', London: Merlin Press, 1980. * ''Zero Option'', London: Merlin Press, 1982. * ''Double Exposure'', London: Merlin Press, 1985. * ''The Heavy Dancers'', London: Merlin Press, 1985. * ''The Sykaos Papers'', London: Bloomsbury, 1988. *
Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture
', London: Merlin Press, 1991. * ''Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. * ''Alien Homage: Edward Thompson and Rabindranath Tagore'', Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. * ''Making History: Writings on History and Culture'', New York: New Press, 1994. * ''Beyond the Frontier: The Politics of a Failed Mission, Bulgaria 1944'', Rendlesham: Merlin, 1997. * ''The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age'', Woodbridge: Merlin Press, 1997. * ''Collected Poems'', Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1999.


See also

*
Communist Party Historians Group A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the Communist Party Historians Group (CPHG) formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below" from 1946 to 1956. Famous members ...
* ''
The New Reasoner ''The New Reasoner'' was a British journal of dissident Communism published from 1957 to 1959 by John Saville and E.P. Thompson. The publication is best remembered as an antecedent of the long running journal ''New Left Review.'' ''The Reasone ...
'' *
Postpositivism Postpositivism or postempiricism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism and has impacted theories and practices across philosophy, social sciences, and various models of scientific inquiry. While positivists emphasize ...
*
Cultural studies Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...
*
Time discipline In sociology and anthropology, time discipline is the general name given to social and economic rules, conventions, customs, and expectations governing the measurement of time, the social currency and awareness of time measurements, and people's ...


References


Further reading

* * Berger, Stefan, and Christian Wicke. "‘… two monstrous antagonistic structures’: E. P. Thompson’s Marxist Historical Philosophy and Peace Activism during the Cold War." in ''Marxist Historical Cultures and Social Movements during the Cold War'' (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019) pp. 163-185. * Bess, M. D., "E. P. Thompson: the historian as activist", ''American Historical Review'', vol. 98 (1993), pp. 19–38. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/98.1.19 * Best, Geoffrey, "''The Making of the English Working Class'' eview, ''The Historical Journal'', vol. 8, no. 2 (1965), pp. 271–81. * * Clevenger, Samuel M. "Culturalism, EP Thompson and the polemic in British cultural studies." ''Continuum'' 33.4 (2019): 489-500. * Davis, Madeleine; Morgan, Kevin, "'Causes that were lost'? Fifty years of E. P. Thompson's ''The Making of the English Working Class'' as contemporary history", ''Contemporary British History'', vol. 28, no. 4 (2014), pp. 374–81. * Delius, Peter. "E.P. Thompson,‘social history’, and South African historiography, 1970–90." ''Journal of African History'' 58.1 (2017): 3-17. * Dworkin, Dennis, ''Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies'' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). * Eastwood, D., "History, politics and reputation: E. P. Thompson reconsidered", ''History'', vol. 85, no. 280 (2000), pp. 634–54. * Efstathiou, Christos. "E.P. Thompson's concept of class formation and its political implications: Echoes of popular front radicalism in The making of the English working class." ''Contemporary British History'' 28.4 (2014): 404-421. * Efstathiou, Christos. "E.P. Thompson, the Early New Left and the Fife Socialist League." ''Labour History Review'' 81.1 (2016): 25-48
online
* Efstathiou, Christos. ''E.P. Thompson: A Twentieth Century Romantic'', (London: Merlin Press, 2015). * Epstein, James. "Among the Romantics: EP Thompson and the Poetics of Disenchantment." ''Journal of British Studies'' 56.2 (2017): 322-350. * Fieldhouse, Roger and Taylor, Richard (Eds.) (2014) ''E. P. Thompson and English Radicalism'', Manchester: Manchester University Press. * Flewers, Paul. "E.P. Thompson’s Investigation of Stalinism: An Unrealised Project." ''Critique'' 45.4 (2017): 549-582. * Fuchs, Christian. "Revisiting the Althusser/EP Thompson-controversy: towards a Marxist theory of communication." ''Communication and the Public'' 4.1 (2019): 3-2
online
* Hall, Stuart, "Life and times of the first New Left", ''New Left Review'', 2nd series, vol. 59 (2010), 177–96. * Hempton, D., and Walsh, J., "E. P. Thompson and Methodism", in Mark A. Noll (ed.), ''God and Mammon: Protestants, Money and The Market, 1790–1860'' (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 99–120. * * Hobsbawm, Eric, "Edward Palmer Thompson (1924–1993)", ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', vol. 90 (1996), pp. 521–39. * Hyslop, Jonathan. "The Experience of War and the Making of a Historian: E.P. Thompson on Military Power, the Colonial Revolution and Nuclear Weapons." ''South African Historical Journal'' 68.3 (2016): 267-28
online
* * * * Kenny, Michael. "E.P. Thompson: last of the English radicals?." ''Political Quarterly'' 88.4 (2017): 579-588. * Kenny, Michael, ''The First New Left: British Intellectuals after Stalin'' (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995)
online
* * * McCann, Gerard. ''Theory and History: The Political Thought of E. P. Thompson'' (Routledge, 2019). * McIlroy, John. "Another look at E. P. Thompson and British Communism, 1937–1955." ''Labor History'' 58.4 (2017): 506-539
online
* McWilliam, Rohan, "Back to the future: E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and the remaking of nineteenth-century British history", ''Social History'', vol. 39, no. 2 (2014), pp. 149–59. * Matthews, Wade. "Remaking EP Thompson." ''Labour/Le Travail'' 72#1 (2013): 253–278
online
* * * Millar, Kathleen M. "Introduction: Reading twenty-first-century capitalism through the lens of EP Thompson." ''Focaal'' 2015.73 (2015): 3-1
online
* Palmer, Bryan D. "Paradox and polemic; argument and awkwardness: Reflections on E.P. Thompson." ''Contemporary British History'' 28.4 (2014): 382-403. * * * * Sandoica, Elena Hernández. "Still Reading Edward P. Thompson." ''Culture & History Digital Journal'' 6.1 (2017): e009-e009
online
* Scott, Joan Wallach, "Women in ''The Making of the English Working Class''", in Scott, Joan Wallach, ''Gender and the Politics of History'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 68–92. * Shenk, Timothy. "" I Am No Longer Answerable for Its Actions": EP Thompson After Moral Economy." ''Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development'' 11.2 (2020): 241-24
excerpt
* Steinberg, Marc W., "'A way of struggle': Reformations and affirmations of E. P. Thompson's class analysis in the light of postmodern theories of language", ''British Journal of Sociology'', vol. 48, no. 3 (1997), pp. 471–492. * Todd, Selina, "Class, experience and Britain's twentieth century", ''Social History'', vol. 49, no. 4 (2014), pp. 489–508. * del Valle Alcalá, Roberto. "A multitude of hopes: Humanism and subjectivity in E.P. Thompson and Antonio Negri" ''Culture, Theory and Critique'' 54.1 (2013): 74-8
online
* * Winant, Gabriel, et al. "Introduction: The Global E.P. Thompson." ''International Review of Social History'' 61.1 (2016): 1-
online


External links



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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Edward Palmer 1924 births 1993 deaths 20th-century English historians 20th-century English male writers 20th-century English novelists 20th-century biographers Academics of the University of Leeds Academics of the University of Warwick Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Anti-Stalinist left British Army personnel of World War II British Marxist historians Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activists Communist Party Historians Group members Communist Party of Great Britain members English biographers English communists English historians English humanists English male novelists Historians of the British Isles Labor historians Male biographers Marxist humanists Marxist journalists Marxist writers People educated at Kingswood School, Bath People educated at The Dragon School People from Malvern Hills District The Nation (U.S. magazine) people Writers from Oxford