London Socialist Historians
December 2023
Radio 3 Series. E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class at 60. Geoff Andrews on the influence of adult education, Ruskin, the Business University & History Workshop
Sheila Rowbotham has written about her relationship with Dorothy and Edward Thompson in her memoirs. It covered an extended period from when Edward was writing the Making in the early 1960s to Rowbotham’s own ground breaking socialist feminist histories from the late 1960s onwards.
On Radio 3 at 22.45 on Monday 4th December Rowbotham discussed the continuing influence of the Making sixty years on.
She recalled the times she met the Thompson’s in Halifax and her familarity with many of the locations in the book, growing up in Yorkshire. She was critical of the absence of women in the Making noting that in the 1950s and early 60s Thompson’s sources were mainly of male activists. She also reflected on the lack of a focus on slavery. She concluded though that while the book at sixty may be outdated in some ways, the approach Thompson took, of history from below with a focus on the activity of ordinary people was still an influential one.
Rowbotham’s commentary can be heard on BBC Sounds at the link below. There are four more programmes this week looking at issues such as what Thompson learnt as an adult education tutor, the absence of slavery in the book, and the impact of Thompson’s break from the Communist Party.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001svv9
On 5th December Geoff Andrews looked at the influence of the adult education classes Thompson taught in the 1950s on how the book was written. He goes on to discuss his own experiences of Ruskin College and History Workshop in the late 1960s and the threat of the Business University to history from below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001svy9
On 20th November Logie Barrow and Keith Flett discussed the Making of the English Working Class at 60 in the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. A link to the recording is here:
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