The centenary of the birth of the marxist historian E P Thompson was marked on 3rd February 2024
One byway is that he never knowingly wore a beard and had a somewhat disdainful attitude to them.
Whether this was a result of his army background during World War Two or his membership of the Communist Party until 1956 (moustaches only were acceptable to that point)
Thompson in Warwick University Ltd (1970) made clear his disdain for ‘hairy’ students with long hair and facial hair. He saw in this a possible link to intellectual laziness and general irregularity of habit when it came to the need to oppose capital.
In the Making of the English Working Class Thompson associates hirsuteness with millenarianism finding ‘beard prophets’ and noting that some followers of the millenarian prophet Johanna Southcott were obliged to wear beards.
That is the only reference to beards in the nearly thousand pages of the Making.
He stands accused of ignoring his own point on the enormous condecension of posterity
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