Abstract
Now in his 90s, Asa Briggs can look back on a life rich in labour and achievement. A practising historian for more than seven decades, he has made important contributions not only to the discipline and its popularisation but to intellectual life more generally, and the development of Britain’s universities more particularly. He has not finished yet. Sixty-nine years after his first book appeared he is about to publish a third volume of memoirs.1 Introducing the essays presented to Asa on his seventieth birthday, Derek Fraser emphasised four historiographical themes which categorised his achievement. Most scholars will recognise his significance in the evolution of the fields of social history, urban history and the study of broadcasting and communications from the 1940s.2 Younger historians may be less familiar with his engagement with labour history, given that subject’s marginality in both universities and popular discourse since the 1990s and the dominant role typically accorded to Marxist historians when it was in vogue between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. Yet it was a feature of his career from 1945 to the 1970s. The substantial and sometimes overlooked part he took in its take-off after 1960 was propelled by an enduring interest rooted in his background, his intellectual development, his times and the challenges that they presented to the expansion, modernisation and maturation of the discipline.3
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Notes
Asa Briggs, David Thomson and Eric Meyer, Patterns of Peacemaking (London, 1945);
Asa Briggs, Secret Days: Codebreaking at Bletchley Park (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2011); Special Relationships (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2012).
Derek Fraser, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in Fraser (ed.), Cities, Class and Communications: Essays in Honour of Asa Briggs (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 4–8.
There is useful biographical material in Geoffrey Smith, ‘Asa Briggs: A personal profile’, in Fraser (ed.), Cities, Class and Communications, pp. 10–21; Daniel Snowman, ‘Interview with Asa Briggs’, History Today, 49 (October 1999), pp. 22–4;
Paul Lay, ‘A Very Open Intelligence’, History Today, 61 (January 2011), pp. 10–11;
Martin Hewitt, ‘Briggs, Asa 1921–’, in Kelly Boyd (ed.), Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol. 1 (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), pp. 125–26.
This informed his writing. One small example which sticks in my memory must suffice: ‘If Engels had lived not in Manchester but in Birmingham his conception of “class” and his theories of the role of class in history might have been very different … Marx might not have been a communist but a currency reformer’. Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: Odhams Press, 1963), p. 113.
Partly from personal experience, partly from conversations with Asa, Richard Hoggart contrasted the Yorkshire woollen towns with his own city, Leeds: ‘They had a sort of unity … a kind of organic quality … the men have an air of self-respect. The trade turned out experts’. He recollected that the Briggs family kept a corner shop which failed in the 1930s — Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, ‘Working class attitudes’, New Left Review, 1 (1960), pp. 26–30.
Asa Briggs, ‘The New Society’, The Highway, 48 (1957), pp. 164–66.
Hoggart compared his own background and journey with Asa’s. His essay ‘The Scholarship Boy’ may have some relevance here: Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), pp. 353–54, 291–304.
Jim Obelkevich (ed.), ‘Witness Seminar: New Developments in History in the 1950s and 1960s’, Contemporary British History, 14 (Winter 2000), p. 145; Asa Briggs, ‘R. H. Tawney’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History (BSSLH), 4 (1962), p. 3.
Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life (London: Allen Lane, 2002), pp. 114–26;
H. S. Ferns, Reading from Left to Right: One Man’s Political History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), pp. 112–20.
Brian Simon, A Life in Education (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998), pp. 10–12;
Pat Sloan, ‘Notes on the Teaching of History at Cambridge’, in Sloan (ed.), John Cornford, A Memoir (Dunfermline: Borderline Press, 1978 edn.), pp. 151–58.
www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/historians/briggs_asa.html, accessed 29 April 2014; Julia Stapleton, Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
Michael Bentley, The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Briggs, letter to author, 8 November 2009; Maxine Berg, A Woman in History: Eileen Power 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
See Asa Briggs, Victorian People: Some Reassessments of People, Institutions and Events (London: Odhams Press, 1954). The fact Asa cited these influences does not mean we should underestimate others, from Beales and Tawney, he specified both elsewhere, to G. M. Young and Trevelyan himself — see David Cannadine, ‘The Macaulay of the Welfare State’, London Review of Books, 6 June 1985, pp. 3–6.
Noel Annan, Our Age: The Generation That Made Post-War Britain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), pp. 368, 506.
Asa Briggs, ‘Sixty-four Years of the WEA’, Workers’ Education, 1 (1987), p. 10, quoting his 1953 annual conference address.
Quoted in John A. Blyth, English University Adult Education 1908–1958: A Unique Tradition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), p. 341.
John McIlroy, ‘The Society for the Study of Labour History, 1956–1985: Its Origins and Its Heyday’, in John McIlroy, Alan Campbell, John Halstead and David Martin (eds.), Making History: Organisations of Labour Historians in Britain since 1960, Labour History Review 50th Anniversary Supplement, 75 (2010), pp. 25–6, 30–5.
Adam Sisman, A. J. P. Taylor: A Biography (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), p. 161. Bullock and Trevor-Roper, both born in 1914, were a little older than Asa. Despite his forays into these areas in his critiques of Lawrence Stone and Tawney and his interest in witchcraft, Trevor-Roper could not be usefully classified as an economic or social historian.
See Roger Fieldhouse, Adult Education and the Cold War: Liberal Values under Siege (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1985), pp. 1–4;
Lawrence Goldman, Dons and Workers: Oxford and Adult Education since 1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 259–62.
Fraser, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, p. 6. For a personal account of Cole in the post-war years see, G. D. N. Worswick, ‘Cole and Oxford, 1938–1958’ in Asa Briggs and John Saville (eds.), Essays in Labour History: In Memory of G. D. H. Cole (London: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 25–40.
McIlroy, ‘Society’, pp. 42–5; Alan Fox, A Very Late Development: An Autobiography (Coventry: University of Warwick, 1990), pp. 183–225. ‘The Cole group’ based on students reading PPE and History across the colleges as well as graduate students continued until 1957: Worswick, ‘Cole’, pp. 26–7.
It is infiltrated by Magnus Pym in John Le Carré’s A Perfect Spy (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986), pp. 352–53.
See the comments in Asa Briggs, ‘Trade-Union History and Labour History’, Business History, 8 (1966), pp. 39–47.
Asa Briggs, ‘The Social Background’, in Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg (eds.), The System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), pp. 1–41.
Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Trade Union Historiography’, BSSLH, 8 (1964), p. 33;
John McIlroy and Alan Campbell, ‘Still Setting the Pace?: Labour History, Industrial Relations and the History of Postwar Trade Unionism’, Labour History Review, 64 (1999), 179–99.
Fox, A Very Late Development, pp. 228–39. For a recent discussion of the evolution of industrial relations see, John Kelly, Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform (London: Routledge, 2010). Industrial relations scholars largely turned their back on the past. There were exceptions but Clegg’s sustained interest was largely separate from his work on contemporary issues.
See also Alan Fox, History and Heritage: The Social Origins of the British Industrial Relations System (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985) which uses Asa’s work in discussing the 19th century. However labour history gradually ceased to be a significant concern of younger scholars who had contributed to the field, such as Richard Hyman and Richard Croucher.
Chris Wrigley, A. J. P. Taylor: Radical Historian of Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 227. Asa admired Taylor and his rare incursions into social history but noted, ‘he thought of it as inferior … he believed in the history of events’: Briggs in Obelkevich, ‘Witness Seminar’, pp. 149–50. In the celebrated competition for the Regius Professorship in 1956–1957, Asa favoured Trevor-Roper over Taylor:
Adam Sisman, Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2010), p. 280.
Sheila Rowbotham, Threads through Time: Writings on History and Autobiography (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 15.
Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 206.
Asa Briggs, History of Birmingham, vol. 2: Borough and City, 1865–1938 (London: Oxford University Press, 1952); idem, Victorian People.
Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Commitment and Working-Class History: A Review of Recent Labour Movement History’, Universities and Left Review, 6 (1959), p. 71.
Asa Briggs, Friends of the People: The Centenary History of Lewis’s (London: Batsford, 1956).
Miles Taylor, ‘The Beginnings of Modern British Social History’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), pp. 159–60.
Asa Briggs, ‘Middle-Class Consciousness in English Politics, 1780–1846’, Past and Present, 9 (1956), pp. 65–74.
See A. J. Taylor, ‘History at Leeds, 1877–1974: The Evolution of a Discipline’, Northern History, 10 (1975), pp. 141–64; Fraser, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, pp. 2–3.
Harold Perkin, The Making of a Social Historian (London: Athena Press, 2002), p. 139; Notes of a conversation between Malcolm Chase and J. F. C. Harrison, 28 November 2008. I am grateful to Malcolm for providing a copy. For more on Leeds, see Malcolm Chase’s chapter in this volume.
Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement, 1783–1867 (London: Longman, Green, 1959); Fraser, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, p. 5.
Donald Read, Peterloo: The ‘Massacre’ and Its Background (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958). See ‘Bibliography of British Labour History 1955–June 1960’, BSSLH, 1 (1960), pp. 6–26;
Royden Harrison, review of Press and People, BSSLH, 2 (1961), pp. 19–20;
Sidney Pollard, review of Donald Read and Eric Glasgow, Feargus O’Connor: Irishman and Chartist, BSSLH, 3 (1961), pp. 64–5.
For Raybould’s views see Raybould, The WEA: The Next Phase (London: WEA, 1949);
J. F. C. Harrison, Learning and Living 1790–1960: A Study in the History of the English Adult Education Movement (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 342–63. Where Asa emphasised infusing the freedom of adult education into the internal curriculum, Raybould tended to stress replication of the approach and standards operative inside the walls in extramural work.
J. F. C. Harrison, Scholarship Boy: A Personal Record of the Mid-Twentieth Century (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1993).
Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman and John McIlroy (eds.), British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics: The Post-War Compromise, 1945–1964 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999). It is, of course, reductionist to attribute changes in historiography, the organisation of history and learned societies of historians simply to political and social change. As a significant factor it is mediated in varying ways through the actions of scholars.
For brief comment see: John McIlroy, Alan Campbell and Joan Allen, ‘Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives’, in Joan Allen, Alan Campbell and John McIlroy (eds.), Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (Monmouth: Merlin Press, 2010), pp. 12–14. The influence of scholarship on organised labour, the state and civil society likewise requires more critical address.
In the 1950s and early 1960s Asa reviewed books by Clegg, Henry Phelps Brown, J. F. C. Harrison, Hobsbawm, Pelling, Roberts, George Rudé and Saville, among others, in the Guardian, Observer and Listener. Taylor, who had critically but affirmatively reviewed Cole and Postgate’s Common People in the Manchester Guardian as long ago as 1938, reviewed a range of contributions to labour history from A. R. Schoyen, Pelling, Read, Norman McCord and E. P. Thompson to Hobsbawm, Royden Harrison, Clegg, Fox and Thompson and Walter Kendall — as well as Asa Briggs — in the Guardian and Observer. See: Chris Wrigley, A. J. P. Taylor: A Complete Annotated Bibliography (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980).
Asa Briggs (ed.), Chartist Studies (London; Macmillan, 1959); Briggs and Saville (eds.), Essays in Labour History;
John McIlroy, ‘The Road from Malet Street: The Society for the Study of Labour History, from 1960 to the New Millennium’, Labour History Review, 75 (2010), pp. 3–4; Joan Allen and Malcolm Chase, ‘Britain, 1750–1900’, in Allen et al. (eds.), Histories of Labour, pp. 65–6.
J. F. C. Harrison, review, New Left Review, 3 (1960), pp. 69–70.
Asa Briggs, ‘Open Questions of Labour History’, BSSLH, 1 (1960), pp. 2–3.
Royden Harrison, ‘Twenty Years On’, BSSLH, 41 (1980), p. 2.
Peter Scott, Knowledge and Nation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), p. 51.
See David Daiches (ed.), The Idea of a New University: An Experiment in Sussex (London: Deutsch, 1964).
Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012), p. 79.
Asa Briggs, ‘Chartism in Tasmania: A Note’, BSSLH, 3 (1961), pp. 4–8; Greg Patmore, ‘Australia’, in Allen et al. (eds.), Histories of Labour, p. 237.
Frank Bongiorno, ‘Australian Labour History: Contexts, Trends and Influences’, Labour History, 100 (2011), pp. 1–15.
Henry Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party 1880–1900 (London, 1954), p. vi; Harrison, Learning and Living 1790–1960, p. x;
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), p. 14; Hoggart, Uses of Literacy, Acknowledgements [no pagination], pp. 22, 88, 108, 116. See also the comments in Hobsbawm, ‘Commitment and Working-Class History’, p. 71,
and John Saville, Memoirs from the Left (London: Merlin, 2003), pp. 118, 129, 134–35, 161.
Richard Johnson, Jon Clarke, Chas Critcher (eds.), Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics (London: Hutchinson, 1982).
See, for example, Asa Briggs (ed.), William Morris: Selected Writings and Designs (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962); ‘Introduction’ to Sidney Webb (ed.), Fabian Essays (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962); ‘Introduction’, to G. D. H. Cole, Chartist Portraits (London: Macmillan, 1965); William Cobbett (London: Oxford University Press, 1967); ‘Introduction’ to J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760–1832 (London: Longman, 1966 edn.);
Asa Briggs and John Saville, ‘Introduction’, to Briggs and Saville (eds.), Essays in Labour History, 1886–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1971);
Briggs, ‘H. M. Hyndman’, in David Rubinstein (ed.), People for the People: Radical Ideas and Personalities in British History (London: Ithaca Press, 1973), pp. 113–21; ‘Looking Backwards’, BSSLH, 33 (1976), pp. 47–51;
Asa Briggs and John Saville (eds.), Essays in Labour History, 1918–1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1977);
Asa Briggs, ‘The Language of “Mass” and “Masses”’, in David Martin and David Rubinstein (eds.), Ideology and the Labour Movement: Essays Presented to John Saville (London: Croom Helm, 1979), pp. 62–83.
For ‘the golden age’ see: Eric Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. vii.
Cf. Neville Kirk, ‘The Continued Relevance and Engagements of Class’, Labour History Review, 60 (1995), pp. 2–15; McIlroy, Campbell and Allen, ‘Histories of Labour’, pp. 8–10.
Eric Hobsbawm, ‘From Social History to the History of Society’, Daedalus, 100 (1971), pp. 20–45.
See the comments by Hobsbawm, quoted in McIlroy, ‘Society’, p. 79 and Sir Keith Thomas, quoted in Paul Cartledge, ‘What Is Social History Now?’, in David Cannadine (ed.), What Is History Now? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 21.
He repeated the claim that social history could transform the relationship between existing specialisms: Asa Briggs, ‘A Message from the President’, Social History Society Newsletter, 1 (1976), p. 1.
Dai Smith, Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale (Cardigan: Parthian, 2008), p. 374.
For the contemporary background see Walter Perry, Open University: A Personal Account (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1976);
Alan Woodley and Naomi McIntosh, The Door Stood Open (Lewes: Falmer, 1980). Asa remained at the Open University until 1994.
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McIlroy, J. (2015). Asa Briggs and the Emergence of Labour History in Post-War Britain. In: Taylor, M. (eds) The Age of Asa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137392596_6
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