Kevin Morgan

Socialists and ?mobility? in twentieth-century Britain: images and experiences in the life histories of British communists

Writing in the 1980s, Hartmut Kaelble identified two ‘quite separate’ accounts of social mobility as having developed almost independently of each other. One was the ‘historians’ history’, focusing on the nineteenth century and processes of urbanization and industrialization. The other was the ‘sociologists’ history’ of the twentieth century, focusing on occupational change, educational opportunity and ‘achievement motivation’. Different research agendas, Kaelble argued, were paralleled by distinct research methods reflecting the different source materials on which the literatures had depended. Though a synthesis had hitherto proved elusive, Kaelble held that historians and sociologists were concerned with the ‘same basic questions’ and had much to learn from each other. Kaelble’s own work, in providing a long, synoptic view of mobility, provided just such a bridge between different time periods and academic disciplines. The account presented here, which by contrast is on a ‘micro’ scale, seeks to problematize the measurements of achievement which in accounts like Kaelble’s were implicitly assumed. Through the life-history testimonies of those experiencing movements around and across the so-called ‘collar line’, its central contention is of the essentially contested character of mobility as a discourse of social betterment.

THE OPEN CONSPIRACY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE CASE OF W. N. EWER, COMMUNIST AND ANTI-COMMUNIST

This article is a response to an account of a communist espionage circle which appeared in this journal in 2003. It argues that the original article is seriously misleading because of its apparently exclusive reliance on previously classified intelligence documents and the interpretations found within them. Combined with a failure to provide an appropriate historical context, particularly concerning the politics of the dramas central figure – the Daily Herald journalist W. N. Ewer – and a tendency to import questionable value judgements into the narrative, the original piece substitutes the secret policemans opinions for a real history of its subject-matter.

Party people : communist lives : explorations in biography

This collection of biographical essays brings to life a diverse and colourful cavalcade of British revolutionaries from the first part of the 20th century. The cast includes pioneering women Communists, doughty trade union leaders and dusty apparatchiks, together with lawyers, poets, critics and the odd sexual outlaw. The book also depicts the tragic fate of groups of British Communists who encountered Stalinism at first hand in the USSR. Much of the information in this section - as elsewhere in the book - is the result of new research on recently released material from previously closed archives in Moscow.

For a Life beyond Governing Persons: Alternative Reflections on Political Life History in Britain (and Beyond)

R.A.W. Rhodes is to be applauded for restating the case for life history methods within the field of political studies, and many of his arguments will be found unexceptionable by those actively working with such methods. Ironically, in his recent contribution to Political Studies Review Rhodes nevertheless eschews biographical and other forms of complexity in favour of essentialising comparison. A ‘British tradition of political biography’ is constructed according to inert criteria lacking explicit periodisation and excluding much current work. An overstated contrast is drawn between this tradition and an Australian one defined according to quite different disciplinary and chronological parameters. This article offers alternative reflections drawing on work on labour movement biographies developed through practices of transnational scholarly exchange and the rejection of methodological nationalism. Addressing the examples provided by Rhodes, and the use of life histories in his other recent work, we propose a life history method that goes beyond Governing Men.

International Movement, National Histories: Recent Work on Communism in France and the USA

John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2003). Pp.x + 300; index.

‘Causes That Were Lost’? Fifty Years of E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class as Contemporary History

25.95 (hardback). ISBN 1-893554-72-4. Michael E. Brown, The Historiography of Communism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009). Pp.ix + 218; notes; bibliography; index.

Cult Reflections: No Saviour from on High

76.50 (hardback);

Cults of Circumstance

26.95 (paperback). ISBN 1-59213-921-3; 1-59213-922-1. Randi Storch, Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928–35 (Champaign and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007; paperback 2009). Pp.xiv + 230; notes; index.

Cult Developments 1917–1956

25.00 (paperback). ISBN 0-252-03206-3; 0-252-07638-1. Julian Mischi, Servir la classe ouvrière: Sociabilités militantes au PCF (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010). Pp.344. E19.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-2-7535-0984-9. Sylvain Boulouque and Frank Liaigre, Les listes noires du PCF (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2008). Pp.252. E20.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-2-70213853-3. Sylvain Boulouque and Pascal Girard (eds.), Traı̂tres et trahisons: guerres, imaginaires sociaux et constructions politiques (Paris: Seli Arslan, 2007). Pp. 224. E24.00. ISBN 978-2-84276-132-5. John Bulaitis, Communism in Rural France: French Agricultural Workers and the Popular Front (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2008). Pp.xiv + 250. £54.50 (hardback). ISBN 978-1-84511-708-5. Bernard Pudal, Un monde défait: Les communistes français de 1956 à nos jours (Brossieux: Éditions de croquant, 2009). Pp.215. E18.50 (paperback). ISBN 978-2-914968-60-7.

Introduction: Wherever a Communist Party is at Work…

In the summer of 1959, the historian John Saville was approached by R. W. Harris of Victor Gollancz publishing house to write a textbook on the nineteenth century British labour movement, in a series on ‘Men and Ideas’ suitable for sixth form and undergraduate students. Saville declined the commission, but suggested his close collaborator and fellow editor of the New Reasoner, Edward Thompson. ‘I choose my words carefully’ Saville wrote,