These are the words that begin the Preface to E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class published as a hardback by Gollancz in 1963 and then as a Penguin paperback in1968. It remains in print.
Thompson was born on February 3rd 1924 and would have been 100 today. In fact he died on 28th August 1993 aged 69.
He was a socialist, long term peace campaigner and author of several other important history books such as Whigs and Hunters, and the collection, Customs in Common.
Even so, while some of the research in the Making is now of its time, a range of issues and concepts raised in the book, such as the moral economy, remain current debates and discussions.
Thompson’s wider position on class and class formation remains an important statement. Class is not a static category, its something forged in the heat of the struggle.
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