Stuart Macintyre 1947-2021: Historian of Little Moscows
I was sorry to read of the death of Australian academic and labour historian Stuart Macintyre. He wrote mainly about issues related to Australian history but 40 years ago he came to research in Britain.
He produced two classic studies of the early period of the British Communist Party (CPGB) A Proletarian Science, Marxism in Britain 1917-1933 and Little Moscows, Communism and Working-Class Militancy in inter-war Britain. Both were published in 1980 and are long since out of print and I suspect not as known to younger generations of socialist historians as they might be.
The influence of the CPGB in the 1920s and 1930s was one of a minority but often a significant minority.
Little Moscows were areas of the UK where Communists in effect ran the local area and shaped a good deal of daily life. MacIntyre’s book touches on three of them Maerdy in South Wales and Lumphinans and the Vale of Leven in Scotland. Little Moscows were not absent in England either- at Chopwell in Durham for example.
The centre of these militant communities was around Communist and socialist support and control of what went on in their main industries- coal and textiles. Macintyre’s book looks not just at the political struggles involved but the working-class culture they existed. That of self-taught autodidacts teaching themselves the principles of Marxism or learning them in Labour Colleges. It was a reading culture but one dominated largely by a male working-class.
It’s a world we have lost but even in the 2020s one can find examples of communities where the ideas and politics of the left form a major part of daily life.
One great way of remembering the important research Macintyre did 40 years ago would surely be to re-publish in an accessible form Little Moscows
I cycled up Moscow Drive in Liverpool today