So Bloody Much to Oppose: English exceptionalism & why Perry Anderson is still wrong
In the case of Britain the idea that the British left and working-class are uniquely useless has been around for 50 years or so. This point is a sort of offshoot of declinist theories of British history that sees the country as never really becoming a modern industrial power, still stuck firmly in an aristocratic past.
David Edgerton continues to do excellent work in debunking declinism (New Statesman 5th October).
British industry is in a slow decline in many areas- competing with China really wont be happening in the political structures the UK has however authoritarian Johnson tries to make them or Starmer dreams of making them.
The British working class movement is hardly at a peak either. Organised workers are increasing slightly in number but the age of the average trade unionist suggests there is trouble ahead. On the other hand before Starmer, the Labour Party had managed to become by far the largest social-democratic party in Europe. Of course for those that think winning Elections is the be all and end all that didn’t matter (I’m in favour of winning elections btw) but a social force was created that one way or another will be around probably for a generation now.
That is the 2021 backdrop in labour movement terms of the declinist analysis.
Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn, writing in New Left Review in the mid-1960s declared themselves to be profoundly disappointed with the ‘labourist’ traditions of the British working class, compared to more exciting developments elsewhere in Europe.
While it’s true that TUC General Secretaries and Labour leaders are rarely radical firebrands leading militant action- so Anderson and Nairn had a point- the general thrust of their argument that Britain was exceptional was answered by the historian EP Thompson.
He noted that while it was true that the British working class had perhaps not developed a sustained and sophisticated marxist analysis of capitalism, this might have been because it was too busy opposing the activities of British imperialism and its numerous foreign interventions and wars. It still is.
For the historian the claim that something is exceptional always needs to be viewed with care. Comparative history is one of the most difficult aspects of the historians art because comparing like with like is so tricky.
But it is better history to explain what has or has not happened by careful reference to objective circumstances rather than simply noting things are better or worse elsewhere.
That said, it is true that the British labour movement does have one claim to exceptionality.
It genuinely was the first in the world.
When the Chartists formed the National Charter Association in 1841 it was the world’s first working-class party, although the development of working class political organisation in France and Germany, along similar but slightly different lines followed closely on.
An alternative way of understanding Anderson/Nairn is that the British labour movement paid a price for being first. It developed into forms of organisation that have been sustained but might have been different if they had been formed later…
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