Kmflett's Blog

EP Thompson on polemic, academic rigour & the Matthew Goodwin issue

The socialist historian E P Thompson died in 1993 and certainly never heard of or knew Matthew Goodwin the GBNews presenter and former academic.

It is perhaps worth noting how I came across a Thompson paragraph that relates directly to the issues Goodwin has faced with his latest volume. Namely that while his status has been that of an academic he is currently a polemicist. As critics have pointed out while the polemic may appeal to some (not myself) is it not soundly based academically.

I was trying to check if Thompson had actually delivered a series of lectures on his book Customs in Common (1991) before it was published at Queens University Canada in the Spring of 1998.

A Canadian Professor had pinged me a flyer for the lecture series on BlueSky but other sources seem to suggest that Thompson was worried about how rigorous his research was at this point and perhaps did not actually lecture. I haven’t yet found a definitive answer.

Thompson most well-known book The Making of the English Working Class (1963 and still in print) was a lengthy and well researched book but it was aimed at a general audience and perhaps particularly a left activist one. The book contained ground breaking historical research but also polemic.

Thompson was criticised from the right for doing this and as he noted he made a distinct effort to keep his researches and his polemics separate even if they often informed each other.

Goodwin might usefully ponder Thompson’s words, but I don’t think he will

Thompson wrote in a monograph

I have been invited to say something about the relationship between writing, history and politics, as it comes to me through my own experience. In one sense, there is little to say that is not obvious. Or so it seems to me. One writes history as a historian and engages in political polemic as a citizen, and the one does not exclude the other. Yes, the two roles may sometimes overlap or become confused, but this need not be made into a big deal. It is less a theoretical problem than a practical one, which practical measures can sort out. I am very much against mixing teaching with political (or any other sort of) proselytising, since this is to take unfair advantage of the students. It is my decided impression that this offence is more flagrantly committed from the Right –who sometimes suppose, in all innocence, that its views are the only possible “objective” orthodoxy- than from the Left. But that is no excuse for the Left to imitate the offenders.

I hav3 been invit~d to say something about the relationship