The Making of the English Working Class at 60: its influence on class politics today
To mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class Radio3 has run five brief discussions of the book, all available on Sounds (22.45). The last was on 8th December when author Natasha Carthew.
Carthew was born and lived in poverty on a working class estate in Cornwall. She has gone on to be a well known author writing a series of books reflecting on working class life and nature. She also organises working class writers workshops.
In the discussion she notes that she picked up a second hand copy of the Making and read the entire 900 pages. The view has been that due to its length many readers dip into the book rather than read it cover to cover.
Carthew had no particular insights about Thompson’s methodology in writing the Making or bits of the book that sixty years on seem to significantly underplay the history of working class women and the impact of slavery.
Rather for her the book was important because it gave a sense of the history of the class to which she belongs, not always a central feature of Our Island Story. It also demonstrated how that class was made, in discussion and interaction, rather than being born at a particular moment.
Carthew demonstrated a subject too little discussed. The impact of the Making in 2023 on those looking for the context and history of class politics, their own politics.
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