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A Very Rooted Cosmopolitan: E.P. Thompson’s Englishness and His Transnational Activism

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The Transnational Activist

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

Abstract

The political thought of the British peace activist E.P. Thompson (1924–1993) is often regarded as being torn between Marxist transnationalism and English traditionalism, articulated by his public roles as a political activist on the one hand and author/historian on the other. By analysing the social networks that were fundamental for his political activity, however, this chapter aims at writing a different story: although his thinking was rooted within a national context, Thompson at the same time was truly global in the articulation of internationalist ideas. His political aim of bringing about a democratic socialist revolution from below, breaking the circle of the nuclear arms race, is paralleled by his academic concept of a “history from below” that takes into consideration the specific local, regional, and national context of people and their agency to understand possibilities of transformation and to make predictions for the future. This internationalism, “earthed” in a history of the ordinary, was central to his political thinking.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the international reception of Thompson’s writing, see the recent issues of the International Review of Social History, vol. 61, no. 1, 2016, and Historical Reflections, vol. 41, no. 1, 2015.

  2. 2.

    On his father’s liberal cosmopolitanism, see Mary Lago, ‘India’s Prisoner’: A Biography of Edward John Thompson, 1886–1946, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

  3. 3.

    Mary Kaldor, ‘Obituary: E.P. Thompson,’ Independent, 30 August 1993, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-e-p-thompson-1464255.html [Access Date 2 August 2016].

  4. 4.

    Bryan D. Palmer: E. P. Thompson: Objections and Oppositions, London: Verso, 1994, pp. 40–51.

  5. 5.

    Harvey J. Kaye , British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984; Bill Schwartz, ‘“The People” in History: The Communist Party Historians’ Group, 1945–1956,’ in Richard Johnson et al., eds., Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982, pp. 44–95.

  6. 6.

    E.P. Thompson, ed., The Railway: An Adventure in Construction, London: British Yugoslav Association, 1948.

  7. 7.

    ‘Interview with E. P. Thompson,’, in Henry Abelove et al., eds., Visions of History: Interviews with E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm , Sheila Rowbotham, Linda Gordon, Natalie Zemon Davis, William Appleman Williams, Staughton Lynd, David Montgomery, Herbert Gutman, Vincent Harding, John Womack, C. L. R. James, Moshe Lewin, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976, pp. 3–26, here p. 14.

  8. 8.

    Scott Hamilton, ‘The Making of EP Thompson: Family, Anti-fascism and the 1930s,’ in Scott Hamilton, ed., The Crisis of Theory: E.P. Thompson, the New Left and Postwar British Politics, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011, pp. 11–45.

  9. 9.

    Roger Fieldhouse, ‘Thompson: the Adult Educator,’, in Roger Fieldhouse and Richard Taylor, eds., E. P. Thompson and English Radicalism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, pp. 25–47.

  10. 10.

    Many examples can be found in John Rule and Robert Malcolmson, eds., Protest and Survival: Essays for E.P. Thompson, London: Merlin Press, 1993.

  11. 11.

    Cal Winslow , ‘Introduction: Edward Thompson and the Making of the New Left,’ in Cal Winslow, ed., E.P. Thompson and the Making of the New Left: Essays and Polemics, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014, pp. 9–34.

  12. 12.

    Bryan D. Palmer, ‘Homage to Edward Thompson, Part I,’ Labour/Le Travail, vol. 32, 1993, pp. 11–71, esp. p. 45.

  13. 13.

    Michael D. Bess, Realism, Utopia and the Mushroom Cloud: Four Activist Intellectuals and their Strategies for Peace, 1945–1989: Louise Weiss (France), Leo Szillard (USA), E.P. Thompson (Britain) and Danilo Dolci (Italy), Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993, p. 107.

  14. 14.

    The importance of 1956 is also emphasised in Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The Left and the Struggle for Democracy in Europe, 1850–2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

  15. 15.

    For the full speech in English, see: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/26/greatspeeches1 [Access Date 2 August 2016].

  16. 16.

    Matthews , The New Left, National Identity and the Break-up of Britain, Chap. 3.

  17. 17.

    Paul Lendvai (transl. by Ann Major), One Day that Shook the Communist World: The 1956 Hungarian Uprising and Its Legacy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 35.

  18. 18.

    E.P. Thompson , ‘Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines,’ The New Reasoner, vol. 1, no. 1, 1957, pp. 105–143.

  19. 19.

    Eric Hobsbawm , ‘Suppressing Facts,’ Daily Worker, 11 September 1956, in which he approved, ‘with a heavy heart’ the crushing of reform communism in Hungary, although he did also call on the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops as soon as possible.

  20. 20.

    Chun Lin, The British New Left, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993; Michael Kenny, The First New Left: British Intellectuals after Stalin, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995. On Saville, see David Howell, Diane Kirby, and Kevin Morgan, eds., John Saville: Commitment and History, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2011.

  21. 21.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘Socialism and the Intellectuals,’ Universities and Left Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1957, pp. 31–36, available [online]: http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/ulr/1_socialismint.pdf [Access Date 2 August 2016].

  22. 22.

    On third way traditions after 1945, see Jonathan Schneer, Labour’s Conscience: The Labour Left 1945–1950, Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Darren Lilleker, Against the Cold War: The History and Political Traditions of Pro-Sovietism in the British Labour Party, 1945–1989, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

  23. 23.

    On the brief flowering of the Fife Socialist League, see Christos Efstathiou, ‘E.P. Thompson, the Early New Left and the Fife Socialist League,’ Labour History Review, vol. 81, no. 1, 2016, pp. 25–48.

  24. 24.

    For an interesting comparison, see Bess: Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud.

  25. 25.

    Holger Nehring, Politics of Security: British and West German Protest Movements and the Early Cold War, 1945–1970, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

  26. 26.

    Richard Taylor, ‘Thompson and the Peace Movement : from CND in the 1950 and 1960s to END in the 1980s,’ in Roger Fieldhouse and Richard Taylor, eds., E.P. Thompson and English Radicalism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, Chap. 9.

  27. 27.

    E.P. Thompson, William Morris: From Romantic to Revolutionary (Spectre Classics), Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011, p. 2.

  28. 28.

    ‘Interview with E.P. Thompson,’ 1976, p. 13.

  29. 29.

    Ibid, p. 21.

  30. 30.

    Gerard McCann , Theory and History: The Political Thought of E.P. Thompson (Avebury Series in Philosophy), Aldershot, Brookfield: Ashgate, 1997, p. 1.

  31. 31.

    Harvey J. Kay, The British Marxist Historians, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995.

  32. 32.

    Cited in Newman, p. 162.

  33. 33.

    Michael D. Bess and E.P. Thompson: ‘The Historian as Activist,’ American Historical Review, vol. 98, no. 1, 1993, pp. 18–38, here p. 21.

  34. 34.

    Goulden Hugh, The Last Romantics, London: Duckworth, 1949, Chap. 3.

  35. 35.

    Ruth Kinna , William Morris and the Problem of Englishness,’ European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 5, no. 1, 2006, pp. 85–99.

  36. 36.

    Melanie Hall, Redeeming Holy Wisdom: Britain and St. Sophia, in Melanie Hall, ed., Towards World Heritage, London: Routledge, 2011, p. 50.

  37. 37.

    E.P. Thompson , The Making of the English Working Class, London: Penguin, 1963; see also Dorothy F. Thompson, ed., The Essential E.P. Thompson, New York: The New Press, 2001, pp. 104–105.

  38. 38.

    Tony Mason and Jim Obelkevich, ‘Labour history at the Centre for the Study of Social History, Warwick ,’ Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, vol. 48, 1984, pp. 22–23; Emma Griffin wrote: ‘His tenure at the newly created University of Warwick was brief: he resigned just six years after taking up the post, disgusted at the commercial turn it was taking,’ see ‘E.P. Thompson: The Unconventional Historian,’ The Guardian, 6 March 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/06/ep-thompson-unconventional-historian [Access Date 12 August 2016].

  39. 39.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,’ Past and Present, vol. 38, no. 1, 1967, pp. 56–97.

  40. 40.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,’ Past and Present, vol. 50, no. 1, 1971, pp. 76–136.

  41. 41.

    Ira Berlin, ‘Introduction: Herbert G. Gutman and the American Working Class,’ in Ira Berlin, ed., Herbert Gutman, Power and Culture: Essays and the American Working Class, New York: The New Press, 1987, pp. 3–69, here pp. 20–25.

  42. 42.

    Thus the title of Ralph Miliband’s formidable critique of reformist socialism in Britain which Thompson no doubt shared with his close personal friend Miliband. See Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism: a Study in the Politics of Labour, London: Allen and Unwin, 1961; on Miliband see also Michael Newman, ‘Ralph Miliband and the Labour Party: from Parliamentary Socialism to “Bennism,”’ in John Callaghan, Steven Fielding, and Steve Ludlam, eds., Interpreting the Labour Party. Approaches to Labour Politics and History, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003, pp. 57–70.

  43. 43.

    New Left May Day Manifesto 1967, available [online]: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/u/ulsmanuscripts/pdf/31735061540344.pdf [Access Date 6 February 2017].

  44. 44.

    Stefan Berger and Norman Laporte, ‘Between Scylla and Charybdis: END and Its Attempt to Overcome the Bipolar World Order in the 1980s,’ Labour History, vol. 111, 2016, pp. 11–25.

  45. 45.

    Lawrence S. Wittner, The Struggle against the Bomb, vol. 3: Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford Nuclear Age Series 3), Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003.

  46. 46.

    Patrick D.M. Burke, ‘European Nuclear Disarmament: A Study in Transnational Social Movement Strategy,’ PhD dissertation, University of Westminster, 2004.

  47. 47.

    The Bertrand Russell Foundation, ‘European Nuclear Disarmament: An Appeal for Action,’ Security Dialogue, vol. 11, 1980, p. 108.

  48. 48.

    Palmer: E.P. Thompson: Objections and Oppositions, pp. 126–142.

  49. 49.

    E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: the Origins of the Black Act, London: Penguin, 1975.

  50. 50.

    Daniel H. Cole, ‘“An Unqualified Human Good:” E.P. Thompson and the Rule of Law,’ Journal of Law and Society, vol. 28, no. 2, 2001, pp. 177–203; see https://thelegalexchange.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/the-rule-of-law-is-an-unqualified-human-good-e-p-thompson/ [Access Date 6 February 2017].

  51. 51.

    E.P. Thompson, Writing by Candlelight, London: Merlin, 1980; on the close relationship between liberty and Thompson’s peace activism, see also McCann , Theory and History: The Political Thought of E.P. Thompson, 1997, pp. 145–176.

  52. 52.

    Such a critique of Thompson can be found, for example, in Perry Anderson , Arguments within English Marxism, London: Verso, 1980.

  53. 53.

    ‘Interview with E.P. Thompson,’ pp. 16–17.

  54. 54.

    E.P. Thompson , The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London: The Merlin Press, 1978, pp. 17–18.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 265.

  56. 56.

    Dennis Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Post-War Britain: History, the New Left and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Post-Contemporary Interventions), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997.

  57. 57.

    Joh Saville and E.P. Thompson , ‘Editorial,’ The New Reasoner, vol. 1, no. 1, 1957.

  58. 58.

    Mary Kaldor, ‘Obituary: E. P. Thompson,’ The Independent, 29 Aug. 1993, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-e-p-thompson-1464255.html [Access Date 6 February 2017].

  59. 59.

    Thompson, Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines, pp.105–143. See also https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1957/sochum.htm [Access Date 6 February 2017].

  60. 60.

    Thompson, ‘Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines,’ p. 138.

  61. 61.

    ‘Interview with E.P. Thompson,’ p. 16.

  62. 62.

    Thompson, ‘Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines,’ pp. 105–107.

  63. 63.

    Thompson, ‘Socialism and the Intellectuals,’ p. 36.

  64. 64.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘Commitment in Politics,’ Universities & Left Review, vol. 1, no. 6, 1959, pp. 50–55, see also: https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1959/commitment.htm [Access Date 6 February 2017].

  65. 65.

    Ibid.

  66. 66.

    Winslow, ‘Introduction: Edward Thompson and the Making of the New Left,’ p. 11.

  67. 67.

    Ibid, p. 17.

  68. 68.

    McCann , Theory and History: The Political Thought of E.P. Thompson, p. 2.

  69. 69.

    Matthews , The New Left, National Identity and the Break-up of Britain, p. 64; Fieldhouse and Taylor, eds., E.P. Thompson and English Radicalism, p. 2.

  70. 70.

    E.P. Thompson , Beyond the Cold War, London: Pantheon, 1982, p. 10.

  71. 71.

    Ibid.

  72. 72.

    E.P. Thompson, The Sykaos Papers, London: Pantheon, 1988; on the topic of the Apocalypse in connection with anti-nuclear protests, see also Philipp Gassert, ‘Popularität der Apokalypse: Zur Nuklearangst seit 1945,’ Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 61, no. 46/47, 2011, pp. 48–54, available [online]: http://www.bpb.de/apuz/59696/popularitaet-der-apokalypse-zur-nuklearangst-seit-1945?p=all, [Access Date 6 February 2017].

  73. 73.

    E.P. Thompson, Exterminism and Cold War, London: Pantheon, 1982.

  74. 74.

    See http://territorialmasquerades.net/in-conversation-e-p-thompson-and-c-l-r-james/ [Access Date 14 September 2014].

  75. 75.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘Outside the Whale’ [1960], reprinted in E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London: The Merlin Press, 1978, p. 145.

  76. 76.

    Bess: Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud, p. 114.

  77. 77.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘“The Wet Gate.” An Introduction to the North Atlantic,’ in Olafur Gromsson and Angus McCormack, eds., END Special Report: The Nuclear North Atlantic, London: Merlin Press, 1982, pp. 6–10, here p. 8.

  78. 78.

    Bess and Thompson: ‘The Historian as Activist,’ pp. 18–38.

  79. 79.

    Reprinted as part of Ken Coates , ‘European Nuclear Disarmament,’ originally published in Spokesman, Vol. 38, 1980, available [online]: http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/Spokesman/PDF/100Coates.pdf [Access Date 2 August 2016].

  80. 80.

    Michael E. Howard , ‘Reviving Civil Defence,’ The Times, 30 January 1980, printed in E.P. Thompson, Protest and Survive, second (revised) edition, London, 1980, p. 2., available [online]: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113758 [Access Date 18 June 2014].

  81. 81.

    Thompson, Protest and Survive.

  82. 82.

    Martin Shaw, ‘From Total War to Democratic Peace: Exterminism and Historical Pacifism,’ in Harvey J. Kaye and Keith McClelland, eds., E.P Thompson. Critical Perspectives, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990, pp. 233–251.

  83. 83.

    E.P. Thompson, ‘Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilisation,’ New Left Review, vol. 1, no. 121, 1980, p. 7.

  84. 84.

    Ibid., pp. 17–21.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., pp. 27–29.

  86. 86.

    Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte, ‘Great Britain: Between Avoiding Cold War and Supporting Free Trade Unionism,’ in Idesbald Goddeeris, ed., Solidarity with Solidarity: Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982 (The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series), Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 129–158.

  87. 87.

    E.P. Thompson , ‘Author’s Note,’ in E.P. Thompson: Beyond the Cold War, London: Pantheon, 1982, p. 1.

  88. 88.

    Ibid.

  89. 89.

    Francis Fukuyama , The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Free Press, 1992.

  90. 90.

    On morality and Marxism, see the observations in Stefan Berger and Alexandray Przyrembel, ‘Moral, Kapitalismus und soziale Bewegungen: Kulturhistorische Annäherungen an einen alten “Gegenstand,”’ Historische Anthropologie, vol. 24, no. 1, 2016, pp. 88–107.

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  1. Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Stefan Berger

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Christian Wicke

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  1. Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Stefan Berger

  2. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Sean Scalmer

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Berger, S., Wicke, C. (2018). A Very Rooted Cosmopolitan: E.P. Thompson’s Englishness and His Transnational Activism. In: Berger, S., Scalmer, S. (eds) The Transnational Activist. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66206-0_10

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