Capital comes to Penge (2008)

Capital comes to Penge

Written By: Martin Spence
Date: January 2008

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 30: Lent 2008  

The existence of a London Socialist Historians Group implies the existence of Socialist Historians, which in turn implies the existence of Socialist History. But if Socialist History exists, what is it? What defines it?

We might define Socialist History by its subject matter, as the history of socialist ideas, movements, parties, and states (if any). But this would surely be a narrow, artificial position, running the risk of abstracting socialist experience from the wider world. What’s more, if we were to define Socialist History in this way, it would allow conservatives, post-modernists and others to become “Socialist Historians” simply by virtue of writing about socialist subjects. It implies that if David Irving wrote a book on the relationship between the German Social Democrats and the German Communists during the rise of Nazism, he would become a Socialist Historian. Is this what we intend? I don’t think so.
Socialist History is surely defined not by its subject matter, but by its approach. It is history made by historians who are – or who aspire to be – socialist. It is history conceived and constructed from a distinctively socialist viewpoint. And in practical terms, given the history of socialist ideas and the intellectual traditions available for us to draw upon, this means that it is likely to be broadly Marxist.
Certainly this was my approach to the making of Penge. My subject matter was an unremarkable urban landscape. I started from the conviction that this could best be understood as a capitalist landscape, as the outcome of decades of capitalist development. I wasn’t sure at first exactly how the argument might develop: I wasn’t sure how I might point to a railway line or terrace of houses and demonstrate their specifically capitalist provenance. But I was convinced that an approach informed by Marxist concepts and tools of analysis was worth a try.

Now that the writing is done, and the book is published, I would highlight two lessons from my experience.

Firstly, don’t get trapped by conventional disciplinary boundaries. I quickly realised that Penge’s emergence as a capitalist railway suburb could only be explained by referring to London’s emergence as a capitalist world-city – but to attempt to write a brief history of London seemed presumptuous to say the least. The insights of two non-historians - Lefebvre (“sociologist”) and Harvey (“geographer”) – came to the rescue, suggesting lines of approach that helped me through.

Secondly – and if this contradicts the first point then so be it - don’t scorn good old primary sources in good old archives. While researching the enclosure of Penge Common, I spent hours poring over the original hand-written minutes of the Battersea Vestry in Wandsworth Local History Library. These include instances of fence-breaking by parish officials, written up by the participants themselves. Without this primary source, the story could not have been told.

Book Review - A Socialist at War (2007)

A Socialist at War

Written By: David Renton
Date: September 2007

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 29: Autumn 2007 

A Socialist at War: With the Pioneer Corps Harry Ratner London, Socialist Platform, 2007 118pp + iv ISBN 0-9551127-96 

Harry Ratner is already the author of one volume of autobiography, Reluctant Revolutionary, in which he tells the story of his 24 years of political activity as a Trotskyist, beginning in 1936 and ending in 1960. One charm of that book lies in Ratner's account of becoming a socialist. A sixteen year old Jewish boy, the product of a definite lower middle-class upbringing, he came to Marxism via a loose, ethical socialism and membership of the Labour Party. He might have become a Stalinist, save that the Trotskyists met him first. To imagine this happening in 1970 or 1980 would be to make the story seem more commonplace than it was. Ratner joined the Militant Group in London at a time when it had just a few dozen members. Within four years he would be carrying out clandestine activities in wartime Paris. Following the German occupation of Belgium, Ratner was instructed to return to England in order to shelter a prominent Trotskyist fugitive Pierre Frank.

In England, Ratner determined to volunteer for the army. He, like his comrades, knew that the previous 1914-1918 war had ended with Europe in a revolutionary ferment. If the same result was to occur a second time, that could only happen as a result of people joining the army and attempting to convince rank and file troops of the need for insurrection. The next five years of Ratner's attempts to contribute towards that goal are the subject of A Socialist At War.

Much of Ratner's story is a familiar narrative: of parade grounds and time on leave, of long marches and of grumbles about officers or food. As well as telling of his own experiences, however, Ratner also takes care to put the events of his service in the context of the regiment in which he served. The Pioneer Corps were uniformed soldiers tasked with the labouring activities necessary to keep an army in the field: dock construction, the laying of railways, building ammunition and storage depots and hutted camps. Pioneers were recruited from the British colonial territories of Africa, from Palestine, from Jewish emigrants living in wartime in Britain and from the defeated armies of Czechoslovakia and Republican Spain. While the soldiers were regarded by High Command very much as inferior troops, for Ratner, they appear to have provided an easy home.

One episode from 1941 conveys something of the disdain of the officers for their men. Under attack by German land forces at Kalamata in Greece the commanding officer, a Brigadier Parrington, informed his German counterpart of his intention to surrender the following day. Other officers, perhaps realising that a Pioneer force largely composed of sundry anti-fascists would suffer worse than Brigadier Parrington in the Nazi camps, staged a covert rebellion, encouraging their troops to disperse rather than acquiesce in their own capture. Many thousands did escape in this fashion. (It is a pleasure to mention that the Colonel Renton praised by Ratner for this small act of insubordination was recorded in the stories of my childhood as my roguish Great Uncle Fritz).

A consensus among historians holds that the army was radicalised. A Socialist At War shares this perspective, discussing initiatives such as soldiers' newspapers and the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, the army's plan to boost morale by offering lectures as to the likely shape of the post-fascist world. The increasing self-confidence of men who had served under fire culminated ultimately in the proto-mutinies of 1944-1948. There was a growing audience for Ratner’s leaflets and newspapers. After the Normandy landings, for example, he was able to find a group of co-thinkers in his regiment, who met to plan what they would do if they were ordered by Churchill to disarm the Resistance. "Whether anything would have come of this effort", Ratner writes, "if it had come to the crunch is hard to say."

Ratner's memoir adds to a story told elsewhere, by Al Richardson, Andrew Davies and Richard Croucher among others: of how the 1939-45 war did enough to persuade thousands of people of the necessity of a different economic order, but ended with that ambition unachieved.

Book Review - 1956 and All That (2007)

1956 and All That

Written By: Ian Birchall
Date: September 2007

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 29: Autumn 2007 

1956 and All That Keith Flett (editor) (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9-781847-181848

1956 was an important turning point. The Suez adventure reshaped British imperialism’s place in the world; the Hungarian rising reshaped the British left. In these twelve papers, taken from a London Socialist Historians’ conference in February 2006, Keith Flett has collected some valuable material about the events of that year. Taken together with Revolutionary History 9/2 (“Remembering 1956”) and the various articles in International Socialism 112, these provide a valuable resource, both to counter the myths of mainstream history and to encourage further research.

Nigel Willmott’s opening chapter usefully places the Hungarian rising in an international context – though one wonders if his claim that the USA at this time was a “reluctant imperialist” would have received much credence in Guatemala. He also stresses the importance of the workers’ councils – crucial when one recalls that Eric Hobsbawm recently wrote a major article on Hungary in which workers’ councils got no mention. (See London Review of Books, 16 November 2006 and subsequent correspondence.) From the narrower standpoint of the writings of CLR James Christian Hogsbjerg links Hungary to the struggles in the colonial world. Stan Newens recalls the Trafalgar Square demonstration against Suez and how he distributed 6000 leaflets defending the Hungarian rising and calling for industrial action against Suez.

Most of what has appeared in Britain about Suez takes a British viewpoint. Anne Alexander gives a fascinating account of the Egyptian left at the time of Suez. She shows the courageous popular resistance, but also how Nasser manipulated the Communists – and how the Communists let themselves be manipulated. Mike Haynes makes a creative application of the theory of state capitalism in studying the Hungarian working class prior to 1956. Toby Abse analyses the role of Italian communist leader Togliatti in 1956 and demolishes claims that he was some sort of anti-Stalinist.

The other six papers all deal with the impact of the Hungarian crisis in Britain. Paul Flewers gives a carefully documented account of press reactions to the Khrushchev “secret” speech, examining the “rival schools of thought” which believed either that nothing would change in Russia, or that there would be real progress towards democratisation. Both were sadly inadequate. David Renton gives a useful account of the CP Historians’ Group, showing that it contained many different currents. Perhaps he underestimates the extent to which even the best of the group continued to work within a Popular Front framework even when they had broken with Stalinism.

Terry Brotherstone looks at the particular contributions of Brian Pearce and Peter Fryer, while two papers look at the work of Alasdair Macintyre. Neil Davidson examines his often forgotten Marxist writings of the early sixties, while Paul Blackledge looks at his views on the place of morality and freedom in Marxist thought. Alan Woodward considers the “libertarian” response to Hungary, under which label he includes both classical anarchists and the followers of Castoriadis in the Solidarity group. There is some interesting new material here - but I wonder how happy Alan would have been in Castoriadis’s “libertarian” organisation, which at one point proposed to expel anyone who missed two consecutive meetings.

Keith Flett’s Introduction takes up some other issues not covered in the collection, for example the New Left’s “disdainful” attitude to rock’n’roll, a topic deserving further study. I would take issue with his claim that Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism showed the “first stirrings” of New Labour. Crosland was a right-winger in his day, but he believed in the redistribution of wealth and greater equality. Today he would be on the far left of the Labour Party.

Flett deserves our thanks for editing this valuable book. Unfortunately it could have been even better. A number of errors have been left uncorrected: the opposition faction in the Socialist Labour League took its name from Stamford in Lincolnshire, not Stamford Hill [71]; the Comintern was not dissolved when Russia entered the war, but two years later [100]; the Communist Party did not participate in the French Popular Front government of 1936 [125].

Inclusion in the index seems to have been decided in a purely random fashion, and there are far too many misprints. [If this is the standard of proof-reading provided by “Cambridge Scholars”, God help the rest of us.] But don’t let these nitpicking criticisms from a born pedant put you off buying this very useful little volume.

Book Review - Chartism: A New History (2007)

Chartism: A New History

Written By: Keith Flett
Date: September 2007

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 29: Autumn 2007  

Chartism: A New History Malcolm Chase Manchester University Press, 2007 464pp ISBN 978-0719060878

Histories of Chartism since Robert Gammage produced the first in 1854 while the movement was still an on-going concern have not exactly come thick and fast. There was a clutch of Fabian-inspired efforts around the First World War and then Reg Groves’ Trotskyist account ‘We Shall Rise Again’ - a book that could still be usefully reprinted.

In the modern era the only historian to really attempt the task, Dorothy Thompson, provided a large volume based on, for the time, state of the art research into Chartism. It could be argued that Malcolm Chase’s welcome new history of Chartism continues in that tradition.

That is to say that it doesn’t have a specifically ‘political’ take on Chartism but instead seeks to view it in the context of recent historiographical concerns and trends. For example the pages he writes on the 1839 Newport Rising are both well written and authoritative and cover the latest research in the field.

Chase ends each chapter with brief lives of some leading Chartist figures - although they are what might be called ‘second rank’ rather than national leaders. These are the kind of biographies that might have appeared in the Dictionary of Labour Biography and Chase is an authoritative figure in this area, expert at teasing out the often obscure details of Chartist lives and writings. They are interesting because they provide a window into the activism of an individual Chartist and help us to understand how the great movement that was Chartism actually worked in practice. Indeed Chase’s work on applying some of the techniques of micro-history to Chartism, for example his discussion of Chartist children, is ground breaking.

Chase also picks up on some of the charges made in Miles Taylor’s 2003 biography of Ernest Jones about anti-semitism and racism in the Chartist ranks. Chase dismisses the idea that there was a general racism in the Chartist movement. Indeed he might have said more about its international solidarity work and early anti-imperialism which John Newsinger has touched on. He does find an element of anti-semitism but explains this in the contexts of the time rather than judging it by the standards of the early twenty-first century.

Overall Malcolm Chase has produced a book that deserves to be the standard text for some years to come and to be widely read. One hopes that his publisher shares these intentions so that the readership for the book, which should be significant, can actually get hold of copies!

One is wary of reviewing books and suggesting that the author should have written another volume altogether. So let us say that important though Chase’s work is there remains room for further research and approaches in this area and hopefully his book will do something to stimulate this. It would be interesting to see some further explicitly Marxist work on Chartism, following on from John Saville’s book on Ernest Jones - which should surely be republished - his more recent work on 1848 and John Foster’s comparative study of Oldham. There is not one single Marxist approach of course but the kind of questions asked from within that tradition can still shed fresh light on some of the dilemmas and developments of Chartism.

Book Review - The Blair Years (2007)

Useful History?

Written By: Keith Flett
Date: September 2007

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 29: Autumn 2007 

The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell Hutchinson, 2007 ISBN 978-0091796297

One of the publishing events of the year is the publication of Alastair Campbell’s Diaries covering the period from the mid-1990s before Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 to the beginnings of the Iraq War in 2003 when Campbell resigned as his press officer.

The Diaries have been extensively reviewed and extracted from in the media; there is a website where we can view videos of Alastair and Tony and there was a series of TV programmes as well.

Previous memoirs by senior Labour figures from Barbara Castle to Dick Crossman and Tony Benn have not had quite as much publicity. But then again Campbell was a press officer, spin doctor in New Labour parlance, and perhaps the relevant comparison is with the memoirs of Harold Wilson’s press spokesman Joe Haines. Both men, of course, worked for the Daily Mirror.

A comparison of the most recent account by Haines of his time as Wilson’s press secretary and Campbell’s Diaries suggests that both men were seized by obsessions - in the case of Haines with Lady Falkender’s influence on Wilson, in the case of Campbell around the role of the BBC in the Kelly affair. This is political history of a sort but not one that is likely to detain historians for too long.

What research historians will be looking for in Campbell’s Diaries are clues to how the Blair Government worked that they are unlikely to get from official papers for many years. Indeed were it not for a challenge by the Sunday Times and Dick Crossman over his Diaries the British Secret State would still be banning the publication of such material.

So very broadly we can say that Campbell’s effort is better published than not. Of course Campbell is disdainful of the left, complaining about how much he dislikes George Galloway and belittling, but being compelled to write, a Diary entry for the great anti-war march of 15th February 2003, pictured above.

But few would imagine Campbell to be a left-wing socialist and in fact several reviewers have pointed out that the Diaries do suggest a distinctive political position, loyal to New Labour but leaning slightly not to Old Labour but to an earlier, perhaps Kinnockite, version of the modernisation project.

There remains the crucial matter of what Campbell has left out and this is central for historians. Steve Richards’ review of the Diaries in the Independent noted that the full text would be an invaluable resource for historians, but we have an abridged text. Campbell has made it clear that he (or his editor the late Richard Stott) has excised much material relating to relations between Blair and Brown. What he has not discussed is the lack of any reference to his spin doctoring activities, interventions behind the scenes and so on. For these we will have to await official papers, assuming they are not shredded or withheld.

However compared to historians of earlier generations we still in the modern era have a lot more material to go on to situate recent events historically than used to be the case.

The General Strike 80 Years On (2006)

The General Strike 80 Years On

Written By: Keith Flett
Date: May 2006

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 27: Summer 2006 

May sees the eightieth anniversary of the British General Strike. Already a new book by Guardian journalist Anne Perkins has been published to mark the event and no doubt there will be much media commentary.

Many will try and claim that it was a unique event in British labour history. That isn’t true. The Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions called one day general strikes around the struggles against the Industrial Relations Act in the early 1970s, and they were highly effective. Some others will suggest that the world of work has changed and that general strikes belong to a world that is past. Again history is not on their side. Not only are general strikes a regular feature of labour struggles around the world, but as the Unions involved reminded us, the recent British public sector strike over pensions was claimed to be the biggest in terms of numbers involved since 1926.

If we manage to get even these points across to wider audience we will have done well. However as socialist historians we will want to go quite a bit further.

Anne Perkins book focuses on several major themes. Firstly that if we forget for a moment the benefit of hindsight the authorities and perhaps some of the left did genuinely believe that the events of 1926 could lead to a revolution. Perkins argues that there was a genuine threat from Moscow to fund and organise such an outcome but then again she has an established reputation as rather a right-wing labour historian.

Perkins also argues that this led nowhere because the Prime Minister Baldwin was successfully able to persuade the TUC that a sense of ‘Britishness’ where fair play ruled was essential. Except of course, as Perkins herself has to admit there was not much fair play when it came to the miners, the reason for the strike, many of whom were victimised as their own action against wage cuts dragged on into the winter months of 1926. The parallels that Perkins makes with the 1984 miners strike are probably the most interesting aspect of her book.

It is doubtful if there is now anyone left alive who played a significant role in the events of 1926- although there may be some who participated and were eye-witnesses to what took place. That means that it is time to move beyond oral history.

Several works have recently been published. A book edited by Alan Campbell, Keith Gildart and John McIlroy looks in detail at the 1926 miners strike. It raises many interesting questions not least an essay by John Foster about what exactly the employers and the Government’s strategies actually were. There is also a short volume by Barry Johnson on Mansfield, which uses local Trades Council papers to highlight in particular the preparations that the local State made before the strike started and how they dealt with it once it had begun.

We could do with many more local studies and more work on official papers from 1926.

Anne Perkins book has the particular strength of making historians think again about what a General Strike of 80 years ago has to say to people coming to its history anew. More research in archives and records may throw light on issues that will interest a new audience. For example the specific role of women in a labour movement even more dominated by men than it is now.

At the same time there is a duty on socialist historians to make sure that some of the historical lessons learnt in earlier generations are learnt again in May 2006. Namely that for workers to win a battle solidarity can be crucial; trade union leaders whether left or right should not be trusted too far; the independent preparation and organisation of the left is hugely important to an outcome of any key industrial battle.

As we know, for reasons which historians can throw some light on, too much faith was placed in union leaders in 1926 and the left, which was largely responsible for that, was badly prepared in comparison to the Government. These lessons of 80 years ago are still valuable ones for public sector workers involved in the current fight to defend hard won pension rights.

Books cited in the text:
Anne Perkins, A Very British Strike (Macmillan, 2006)
Barry Johnson, Nine Days That Shook Mansfield: The General Strike in the Mansfield Area (The Ragged Historians, 2003)
Alan Campbell, Keith Gildart & John McIlroy (Editors), Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lock-out: The Struggle for Dignity (University of Wales Press, 2004)

Newcastle October 1819 (2006)

A truly mass demonstration unearthed: Newcastle October 1819

Written By: John Charlton
Date: January 2006

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 26: Lent 2006 

A vast but little known reform demonstration took place in Newcastle on 11th October 1819. Strangely this demonstration is not a celebrated event in radical history. It was widely reported at the time but modern historians with the exception of Edward Thompson who did notice its significance, have given it very little attention.

There are a number of possible reasons for this. It took place in the shadow of Peterloo which registered as a deeply significant event. There was no violence. No one died. So far as we know no one was injured and there was no associated riot. It took place far away from the epicentres of revolt in 1819: London, Manchester, Yorkshire and the east midlands.

I started to research the event about six months ago and have shared my enthusiasm with friends and local historians. Many of them have looked askance when I have mentioned the contemporary reports of over seventy thousand people attending. Some have put that down to the common tendency of participants to exaggerate the numbers taking part in such events. When I have pointed out that non-participant observers also reported such numbers it has met with the rejoinder that no one at that time had any experience of large crowds so that any estimates could be wildly inaccurate.

There is probably some truth in both of these points. On the former I can speak with personal experience. There is a tendency to exaggerate but to what degree? Organisers and reporters get a feel for the size of an event. Rounding up does take place. So if an event ‘feels’, say over twenty thousand you might round up to thirty thousand. Why not fifty or a hundred thousand? Largely I think because of the need to maintain credibility with those participating. Ludicrous exaggeration is damaging to the movement itself.

Of course rounding down takes place too, usually by the law enforcement agencies anxious not to give the demonstrators too much credibility. This may be relevant to the military estimate for 11th October. When it comes to estimates no one is neutral. On the latter point whilst it is true that there could be little or no experience of massive political events citizens of Newcastle would have regularly attended race meetings and fairs. Indeed the rally took place at the Race Course on the Town Moor and one of the estimates relates to previous experience at that spot.

What grabbed my interest was noticing the size reported in the press and the lack of research interest in it by historians. So I decided to pursue it to try to establish the truth of the numbers and to look at how it came about both in terms of political context and organisation.

I started by looking at the press accounts. Newcastle (thirty thousand inhabitants) had three newspapers in 1819. The Times carried a pretty full and not unsympathetic account. The Manchester Observer also followed the event. Of the semi-underground papers only The Black Dwarf covered it and it was also invaluable in reporting pre-demo happenings. The Chairman of the October 11th platform, Eneas McKenzie subsequently wrote an excellent history of Newcastle in which he included a full and lively account. Two pamphlets were produced soon afterwards and one of them included a marvellous engraving of the event on the Moor which provided a lot of iconographical information.

The 1820 General Election Poll Book carries the names, trades and voting choice of 2,500 electors. This is a very large electorate for the unreformed Parliament and a useful source for understanding the social structure.

Home Office and Parliamentary Papers were also trawled and revealed, among other things, that the north east was viewed with intense anxiety in that Autumn. There were more references (September-December) to the area than any other single area including Manchester.

There were also a couple of diaries with useful material. Of course as with most attempts to reconstruct such events there is a frustrating absence of ordinary people’s voices but with the usual reading between lines sense can be made.

Political activity in the present can supply a way of thinking about past situations. One example will suffice. A contemporary journalist helpfully supplied a list of slogans appearing on banners on the day. Having been part of placard making squads before demos over the years it is possible to imagine the situation in the workers lanes and houses ‘the night before’ frantically working out the most telling slogans. The words chosen give clues to the political thoughts of those distant activists and the large movement to which they belonged.

Two further points can be made. The political thought embodied in banner slogans and the sheer volume of support suggest the presence in the area of a long and deeply rooted democratic tradition. Finally the evident success of the event was a very important factor in helping to push forward this tradition in the several radical campaigns of the next two decades in which the people of the north east of England played a vital part.

Writing Socialist Biography (2006)

Writing Socialist Biography

Written By: Ian Birchall
Date: January 2006

Published In LSHG Newsletter  Issue 26: Lent 2006  

I am currently writing the biography of Tony Cliff (Ygael Gluckstein). Cliff, born in Palestine, was the founder of the Socialist Review Group, subsequently the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party, and was the theoretician and driving inspiration of these organisations over fifty years. I outline here some problems of method I am still grappling with.

Socialist Biography
Biography seems alien to the socialist method. But since 1917 biography has made a surprising comeback (Deutscher, Broué, Jean-Jacques Marie, Cliff himself). The Russian events raise the question of the role of the individual, not soluble by Plekhanov’s simplistic formulations. More generally, the question of how individuals become socialists and remain such is of great significance.

(Dis)qualifications as a Biographer
I knew Cliff for thirty-seven years and was enormously influenced by him. But I am writing a biography, not a memoir. [I’m thinking of Richard Ingrams’ recent memoir of Paul Foot (My Friend Footy, Private Eye, 2005). Ingrams writes delightfully and movingly of the Foot he knew, and says nothing false or dishonest - yet totally fails to grasp the centrality of revolutionary socialism to Foot’s life.]
Trotsky’s Preface to The History of the Russian Revolution is a stern reminder of the demands of historical objectivity:
This work will not rely in any degree upon personal recollections. The circumstance that the author was a participant in the events does not free him from the obligation to base his exposition upon strictly verified documents.

Objectivity
There are two fundamental principles for establishing the “objective” nature of any historical work.

• Any assertion, especially one that challenges conventional wisdom, should be backed up by appropriate evidence. Sources should be given so the reader can check the evidence independently.
• Any opposing position should be presented honestly, then argued against, rather than as a caricature that is easily disposed of. Sources should be given.

Oral Sources
I have long been suspicious of oral history. My belief, based on observation and introspection, is that most people’s presentation of their memories is inaccurate, selective and politically biased. [See J Atfield & S Williams (eds), 1939: The Communist Party of Great Britain and the War, Lawrence & Wishart, 1984, for some examples of CP members’ recollections of the Hitler-Stalin Pact distorted by their knowledge of subsequent events.]
Yet I cannot write about Cliff without extensive use of interview material But if oral testimony is to be admissible evidence, where does that place my own memories? It would be absurd to cite other people’s memories, but to refuse to rely on my own. Hence I reject Trotsky’s formulation; I shall cite my own recollections, confirming them by other people’s memories if possible, but if not, labelling them as author’s recollections.
However, written evidence always has priority. If Cliff published an article arguing X, while a comrade recalls that at the time he was arguing Y, then X is the position Cliff wished the world to believe he held. Testimony about Y can never be used to challenge the validity of X.

Childhood
There is little material on the first eighteen years of Cliff’s life, and I am reduced to speculation. As a child he must have become aware of contradictions within Judaism and Zionism, e.g.:

• chosen people v universal religion
• socialism v nationalism
• Jews as victims v Zionists as persecutors

Most of us perceive contradictions in the world but learn to live with them. A few stubborn individuals refuse to accept them and become drawn into a life of intellectual enquiry.

Impact
Cliff had a remarkable ability to influence those from a different generation and culture to his own. This cannot be explained simply by charisma. Nor do I think the loyalty he inspired was akin to that of a cult or sect. He made no concessions to the lifestyle of those he sought to influence. The only answer lies in the content of the politics he put across.
I should be most grateful for any comments on methodological questions, and I should also be pleased to hear from anyone who may have relevant information.

1956 and All That (2006)

1956 and All That

Written By: The Editor
Date: January 2006

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 26: Lent 2006  

1956 was of course where we came in. By 'we' is meant the modern left as recognisable to anyone who has been on any of the Stop the War demonstrations since 2001.

That is why it is worth recalling the 50th anniversary of the events of that year with a conference. At this historical distance some more historical clarity may shed on some of those events. It might also be hoped that in understanding where we came from, we might also gain some insights into what we are now, what we have achieved and what- a lot- remains to be done.

Writing the introduction to David Widgery's The Left in Britain 1956-1968- itself published 30 years ago this year- Peter Sedgewick noted in 'Farewell Grosvenor Square' that 'the story of the British left from the 1956 split in the CP up till the growth and disintegration of the Vietnam Solidarity movement is the record of a political adolescence'.

It is worth recalling some of the main events of 1956. Firstly Khruschev's Secret Speech, on 25th February 1956, detailed the crimes of the Stalin era and started a period of turmoil on the left. A 26,000 word summary was published in the UK in The Observer, then a liberal paper, on 10th June. Secondly Britain, France, and most importantly, Israel, invaded Eqypt, following Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal. Then as now, it was about oil. Unlike now, America did not appreciate the action of the British Prime Minister Eden. After initial support the Labour Party managed a number of demonstrations under the slogan 'Law not War', but the left was behind demos in Trafalgar Square. At the protest in Whitehall on November 4th 1956 there were 27 arrests and The Times reported that amongst the demonstrators there were a 'great many young people, including students'.

While Ben Gurion claimed that Nasser was a 'fascist dictator', Eden argued that he was a 'Communist dupe'. Tory Minister Anthony Nutting, who resigned over Suez, reported that Eden had told him that Nasser had got to go, or he would. These proved to be fateful words.

Then there was Hungary. What happened there is a matter of argument still. There are those who believe that there was a genuine threat of counter-revolution. Fascists there certainly were in Hungary 1956, but the dominant mood was one of a workers council organised revolt against Stalinist rule. The Russian tanks went in and thousands of workers died.

Who said the 1950s were boring?

It didn't end there. 1956 was also the year of the film Rock Around the Clock and the 'rock and roll riots' in cinemas. Youth culture and rebellion that was to provide such a potent source of recruits for the left had arrived. In Cyprus Archbishop Makarios was arrested and the French were in Algeria.
The impact was huge on their side and ours. The British excursion at Suez ended in withdrawal and disaster. The Tory Prime Minister, Eden, found he was ill, and departed. On the left the impact of Khruschev and Hungary on the Communist Party, then a significant organisation, was equally earth shattering.

The CP's Daily Worker correspondent in Hungary, Peter Fryer, told the truth, later captured in Hungarian Tragedy. He was expelled. Separately the historians Edward Thompson and John Saville were producing the dissenting CP bulletin the Reasoner. The final issue, in November 1956, carried an article by Thompson, Through the Smoke of Budapest, which began 'Stalinism has sown the wind and now the whirlwind centres on Hungary’. Thompson and Saville departed the CP and the British New Left was born. The Times reported both developments.

In Cardiff the South Wales miners, representing 100,000 members, met to decide if they should strike over Suez. In the end they decided on protests and found time to pass a resolution demanding self determination for Hungary as well.

The impact on the CP was dramatic. 11 journalists left the Daily Worker. Membership of the Young Communist League declined from 3,500 in 1955 to 1,387 in 1958.

In short a conference about events 50 years ago is obeying the injunction of the old Communist Party Historians group that socialist historians should seek to become historians of the present day too

Revisionism and the New Imperialism (2006)

Revisionism and the New Imperialism

Written By: Neil Faulkner
Date: September 2006

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 28: Autumn 2006  

The ninetieth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme has highlighted the extent to which revisionist academics are rewriting the history of imperialism and war in the twentieth century. The BBC’s drama-documentary shown on 2nd July comprised 50 minutes of fairly conventional description of the slaughter followed by a final, rather bizarre 10-minute homily in which we were assured it was all worthwhile because the British Army learnt the tactics needed to beat the Germans two years later. This represents the popular cutting-edge of a formidable new right-wing consensus among military historians.

Partly in response to this challenge, Pete Glatter and I have begun a major research project: we are working towards a grand narrative account of the global crisis of 1914-1921. Though I am an archaeologist first and historian second, much of my fieldwork is now focused on the archaeology of the First World War. This kind of modern conflict archaeology involves an intimate engagement with historical sources. In any case, as an active socialist and anti-imperialist, my aim would always be to place such archaeological work in a wider historical context. Pete, on the other hand, is an historian first and foremost, and one with a record of first-class work in foreign language sources. His The Russian Revolution of 1905: change through struggle (Revolutionary History, Volume 9, No 1) is a superb collection of, and commentary on, participant testimonies.

We aim to draw on a wide range of sources to produce a comprehensively international history. We plan to weave together traditional political history, military history, and revolutionary history. And we hope to integrate history from above and from below in an effective synthesis. Along the way, we will be asking many colleagues and comrades for help, advice, and criticism. I am sure, moreover, that Pete would be pleased to hear from anyone who feels they may have special knowledge of, or access to, valuable primary material.

What is the nature of the revisionist challenge? There seem to be three main arguments – perhaps best represented in the work of Gary Sheffield (The Somme and, with John Bourne, Douglas Haig: war diaries and letters, 1914-1918)– summarized here in ascending order of importance. First, the First World War generals were not the ‘donkeys’ of popular stereotype, but competent commanders grappling with unprecedented and exceptionally difficult strategic and tactical problems. Second, the conflict was unavoidably a ‘war of attrition’, and that therefore a long struggle involving high casualties and a total-war economy was a matter of ‘necessary sacrifice’. Third, and most important, the war was in essence a struggle between democratic states (Britain and France) and a ‘rogue state’ (Germany) that was militaristic, aggressive and expansionist, such that the ‘balance of power’ and ‘world peace’ were threatened. The war was therefore justified.

The third strand in the argument links First World War revisionism with the right-wing paradigm popularized by Niall Ferguson. The essence of Ferguson’s position – represented in all three major TV series and books (Empire, Colossus, and The War of the World) – is that there are ‘good’ empires and ‘bad’ empires. Good empires are characterized by parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, liberal policies, and a desire to enlighten and improve; their rule is therefore progressive. Bad empires are autocracies that act in especially ruthless, repressive, even murderous ways, and have no mission to advance the interests of their subjects. Britain and America are especially good empires. Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia and Imperial Japan are all bad empires. Ferguson’s arguments, it goes without saying, represent a rewriting of imperial pasts to accommodate the New Imperialism of Blair and Bush. What is now clear is that right-wing revisionism has sunk deep shafts into the historiography of the bloody 20th century. Nothing is secure; no atrocity or insanity too awful not to be a potential candidate for rehabilitation. Suddenly, as living memory dies, battles like Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele, symbols of the horror, waste and futility of imperialist war for almost a century, are being repackaged as democracy’s fields of glory.

There is an obvious link, too, with traditional right-wing approaches to the Bolshevik Revolution. The revolution has, of course, long been caricatured as a coup by a fanatical sect who immediately established a tyrannical regime that culminated in the mass murders of the 1930s. The role of the revolutionary wave of 1917-1921 in both ending the war and showing in practice that another world was possible has become almost invisible in academic and popular accounts of the period. With the dichotomies that the struggles of 1917-1921 represented – between capital and labour, war and revolution, barbarism and socialism – effectively erased, the ground is cleared for the alternative dichotomies of the revisionists – that of good and bad empires, democracies and autocracies, nice people like Churchill as against nasty people like Hitler.

This argument is going to run and run. It is fuelled by three things. First, at the same time as living memory comes to an end, the centenary of the war and revolutions of 1914-1921 is approaching. We can expect a huge outpouring of books, TV shows, exhibitions, and public events. Second, the New Imperialism, though riddled with contradictions, though bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, remains an immensely dangerous global force – a force which could yet unleash the ultimate horror of a war between superpowers. And third, there is the global protest movement against war and neo-liberalism, which constitutes a huge and growing audience for radical interpretations of the past, including a people’s history of war and revolution in 1914-1921, not least for the lessons it can teach for today’s struggles.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 (2005)

The Russian Revolution of 1905

Written By: Pete Glatter
Date: October 2005

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 25: Autumn 2005 

We are living in a time of mass movements which originate outside the dead zone of official politics. The Russian revolution of 1905 was like that. In fact, it was the first such movement. The first time ordinary people were involved in stopping a war. The first general strike in history. The first workers’ councils or Soviets, rivalling the power of the established authorities. In short, it was the first modern revolution. If we can learn anything from history, we can learn something from 1905.

This centenary issue of Revolutionary History is based on a unique range of Russian sources translated here for the first time. The 1905 revolution comes to life through its authentic voices: working men and women, sailors, the non-Russian peoples of the empire, and socialists in the three main left-wing parties. Crucial debates in the St. Petersburg Soviet are taken directly from the pages of the first Izvestiya, its illegally-produced bulletin. There are also first-time translations of writings by Rosa Luxemburg at the time and a special study of the extraordinarily revealing strike statistics.
Perhaps the unique thing about 1905 is the extraordinary clarity with which it shows how working-class consciousness can become radicalised.

This work focuses on three simultaneous and closely-linked processes of change.

The first was the way the centralized tsarist state raised the stakes of the struggle at key points, facing the workers with the choice of either responding or knuckling under. These were conscious choices made by millions of workers in the light of their experience of struggle and the resulting level of confidence and courage. So every step of the struggle involved a change in mass consciousness.
The second was the differentiation of the mass workers’ movement, independently of any political party, between militant and moderate poles.

The third was the development of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, originally factions in the same social-democratic party, into distinct parties which corresponded politically to these two contradictory tendencies inside the mass movement. Historians have sometimes seen parts of this process of change. However, it is usually at the cost of the dynamic relationships between them, hence of the process as a whole.

This is the first major new work in English on the 1905 revolution for 17 years. Overshadowed by the 1917 revolution for many years, 1905 is at last restored to its true importance as the formative experience of a radical age.

When did Japan become an Imperialist Nation? (2005)

When did Japan become an Imperialist Nation?

Written By: Nik Howard
Date: October 2005

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 25: Autumn 2005 

September 2005 marks the centenary of the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), providing an opportunity to look at the controversial beginnings of Japanese imperialism. At one extreme, there is the conspiracy theory view that asserts that even from early Meiji (1868-1912), Japan intended to attack China, annex Korea and then defeat the West, and all Japan’s foreign policy actions can be deduced from this goal of regional-Asian, then global domination. At the other is seen a poor, small, peace-loving country bereft of natural resources and bullied by the Great Powers into simply defending itself. Such apologetics, implicit or overt, is often linked to Pan-Asianism: that Japan fought its wars from Meiji onwards as ongoing struggles for national and Asian liberation.

But does this matter? It surely does, for in a world in which Chinese state capitalism plays an increasingly large and vocal role on the international stage and in which the former Allies still dominate the global capitalist scene including its ideological discourse, socialists have a duty to provide a sophisticated (i.e. non-demonising and anti-racist) analysis of Japanese imperialism, especially as nationalist and military-revivalist forces in Japan are strengthened as I write. In this context, the balanced socialist argument I offer that Japan was an aspirational imperialist nation from early Meiji matters.

In the academic literature, Peter Duus has stated that Japan’s imperialism took off after the defeat of the Russians in 1905. Paul Rodell has claimed that before 1900 Japan was more or less actively sympathetic to Asian liberation from the West, whereas after much less so due to its newly arrived-at imperialist status.

These arguments tend to underplay events in early Meiji, however. Thus, instead of the 1871 Sino-Japanese Treaty of Amity being used to forge an Asian Alliance against Western imperialist incursion (theoretically, it could have been), Michael Auslin argues it was mainly about “the desire to sever Korea from Chinese suzerainty”. Moreover, certain leading Americans in Japan tried to ensure no ‘calamitous’ ‘Oriental alliance’ would develop, and encouraged Japan first to conquer Korea (1873; Japan’s leaders eventually decided against this), and, more significantly, (in terms of active US manipulation), to launch an expedition against Taiwan (1874). They also prompted Japan to assert political hegemony over the Liu-ch’iu (Ryukyu) Islands.

These actions point to an important fact in the formation of Japanese imperialism: the massive impact of the West. From 1853-54, an American Commodore forced open Japan via crude gunboat diplomacy. By the 1860s, a Treaty Port system, including extraterritoriality and loss over tariffs, had been imposed by various Western nations, with Japan a semi-colonised polity till 1911.

Thus Japan’s mimetic imperialism (Robert Eskildsen) developed as a direct counter to the encroachments of imperial Western states. This ‘lesson’ (the ‘civilised’ colonise and ‘barbarians’ are colonised) underpinned the Meiji state’s commitment to ‘modernisation’ and the doctrine of ‘a rich country and a strong military’. With the Treaty of Kanghwa (1876), Japan even used Western-style gunboat diplomacy to impose an unequal treaty on Korea.

The 1880s and 1890s represented an ongoing struggle between China and Japan over Korea. In war (1894-95), Japan vanquished the Chinese, gaining more territory (Taiwan), plus indemnities. This set the stage for Japan’s increasing conflict with Russia, which had intervened to block Japanese control of the strategically located Liaotung Peninsula. The logic of capitalist state antagonisms and imperialist war is that, win or lose, one war leads to another. In no respect was the Sino-Japanese War different, as the Russo-Japanese War a decade on proved.

Japan’s early successes before 1905 in modernisation and development were down to its flexible following of Western (imperial) models, not in the sense of mere imitation, but rather in a way that showed from then on capitalism was no mere Western politico-economic structure but a global system that must be followed or traditional states and their regional systems would be bulldozed from outside, as Japan’s case unerringly attests. For socialists, it is no surprise the new capitalist state on the Asian block failed to consider a viable Oriental alliance with China. Rhetoric about Japanese leadership in an ‘Asia for Asians’ was always bound to degenerate into domination, development and then war, all in Japan’s interests. However, the notion that Japan represented some species of uniquely barbaric or pre-planned imperialist dominion is ridiculous not because Japan was not an incredibly brutal and repressive imperialist regime, both at home and abroad – of course it was – but rather because this kind of argument is often deployed to downplay the brutality and violence of the arguer’s nation’s past or present in comparison, whether the brutality of the Chinese state under Mao (and its undemocratic, repressive structures today), or the global leviathan of brutality (Western imperialism) that viciously exploited and underdeveloped the ‘Third World’ (and then today that occupies Iraq).

Louise Raw on the Bryant and May Strike (2005)

A Match To Fire The Docks: The Bryant And May Strike Reconsidered

Written By: Louise Raw
Date: October 2005 

 Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 25: Autumn 2005 

In the summer of 1888, fourteen hundred matchwomen walked out of the Bryant and May factory in Bow, East London. Their strike, over terrible working conditions, low pay and management bullying, would last less than a fortnight but attract considerable press and public attention.

The matchwomen’s story has an enduring appeal. Almost a century later, historian Sarah Boston found it to be the only generally known example of female militancy in British labour history.

Its enduring fame is perhaps surprising. After all this was a short strike and, according to all sources then and since, not even self-organised: Fabian socialist and journalist Annie Besant, whohad published an emotive exposé of conditions at Bryant and May, is generally believed to have led the women.

The strike is accordingly often seen as little more than a minor harbinger of the more inclusive and political New Unionism movement to come. The Great Dock Strike of 1889, which began a stone’s throw from the match factory, is generally considered the most significant event of New Unionism. Though the matchwomen, too, were ‘unskilled’ casual workers who triumphed over a powerful employer and a year previously, historians like E. H. Hunt have declared them ‘too different’ from the dockers to have influenced them.

It is not, perhaps, surprising that the matchwomen’s contemporaries tended to undervalue the significance of the strike by ascribed it to external influence. This was a period when domestic ideology dominated and, as Anna Clark has written, ‘gender divisions hardened’. The prescriptive literature of the day presented women industrial workers as potentially immoral and lacking in proper feminine virtues.

Signs of female militancy were particularly disturbing to the establishment, and it was simply a more palatable explanation that Besant had begunthe strike. The employers were were more than willing to concur rather than admit that the workorce had genuine grievances. The Victorian press too generally supported this version of events on both sides of the political divide. The Left needed to present the matchwomen sympathetically to a wide audience.We therefore we see both the Times and Besant’s The Link presenting the matchwomen as vulnerable victims, whether of socialism or capitalism: poor ‘little matchgirls’ rather than tough ‘factory women’.

Beyond the ideology, however, there is very little evidence to support this version of events, indeed the primary evidence points to serious flaws in it.

It is clear from my research that Besant was nowhere near the factory when the strike began, and was unprepared for it. Hours after the first walkout she spoke as scheduled at a Fabian meeting on art and socialism - but no mention was made of the matchwomen. No funds had been made available to support the women or meetings prepared.

Besant did not in fact support the principle of strike action by ‘unskilled’ workers like the matchwomen, calling them ‘mobs’ that undermined the organised labour movement. It would have been surprising if she had felt differently:. both the Fabians and mostestablished union leaders believed the organisation of such a powerless group to be unfeasible and not necessarily desirable.

Even if Besant had wanted to do it, it would have been an incredible feat for one woman from a very different background, who had never actually set foot in a match manufactory, to convince 1400 others to strike.

We must then consider why historians continue to accept the myth of her leadership, and all that it implies about the matchwomen themselves (still, incidentally, called ‘matchgirls’ by most, although we know that the women were of varying ages, and some wives and mothers), despite the advances of working-class and gender history.

I believe that one explanation may lie in the very trajectories of those histories.

The feminist and socialist historians who might have rescued the matchwomen from posterity’s ‘enormous condescension’, were in fact subject to some condescension themselves, and accordingly wary of giving further attention to so clichéd and apparently over-inflated an example of women’s action. It was a case, as Anna Davin has put it, of ‘Anything but the bloody matchgirls! ’

Though the matchwomen cannot be said to have ‘hidden from history’, they may therefore have been hidden by it, the orthodox version of their story a curious survival the ‘great individuals’ school of historiography.

However, my research has shown that this version has never been given credence by the matchwomen’s own communities.

I’ve been fortunate in having met people who knew the 1888 strikers, including the small group of women who I believe were the true leaders of the strike, and now know for certain that at least one of them was adamant that she and her friends lead the strike, which primary evidence confirms was one of many.

These appear to have been strong and courageous women, fiercely loyal to their fellow workers, who needed no lessons in practical solidarity. Many were of Irish heritage, placing them within one of the most disaffected, politically active communities in London - along with many of the 1889 dock strikers.

Indeed, far from being unconnected to the dockers they were often, as one of their grandsons put it, ‘the same people - not just neighbours, the same families’.

It would be surprising if their victory had not influenced other groups of workers who were also unskilled, also casually employed, and from the same communities, and there is evidence too that dockers’ leaders never denied the importance of the matchwomen’s victory.

Forty years after the Dock Strike Ernest Bevin wrote individually to surviving strikers.

… you.. have lived and witnessed how, as a result of your banding together, this great movement has grown; how it has spread world-wide; how literally millions of your fellow-men have benefited as a result of that great effort; and how you helped to raise the status of the so-called unskilled workers of the country and make them as proud of themselves today as they were despised

I believe that we must accept that if this was true of the dockers, then equal tribute must be paid to their ‘fellow-women’, the Bryant and May matchworkers.

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture (2005)

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture

Written By: The editor
Date: April 2005

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 24: Summer 2005 

The first-ever Brian Manning Memorial Lecture will be given by Norah Carlin on Saturday 14th May 2005, and is entitled "'For liberties, justice and settlement': petitioning for revolution in 1648-9". It will be held at the Institute of Historical Research and begins at 1pm.

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture is organised by the London Socialist Historians Group and is designed to follow the approach to history followed by the late Brian Manning.

Brian Manning's books and articles were dedicated to the study of England in the 1640s; to the Good Old Cause of republicanism; to Cromwell against King Charles, the Agitators against Cromwell, the Levellers against the New Model Army. He embodied a notion of socialist history with roots outside the academy, as a member of the New Left and CND in the 1950s, and the revolutionary left forty years later.

Each year, the Brian Manning Memorial Lecture will showcase the newest insights and the best research that builds on the same tradition of committed, activist history.

The Brian Manning Memorial Lecture will be followed by the Annual Members’ Meeting of the London Socialist Historians Group. Members of the LSHG are being informed about this separately, but it will be an open meeting and all are welcome to stay and participate.

Taha Sa'ad Uthman (1916-2004) - obituary (2005)

Taha Sa'ad Uthman (1916-2004)

Written By: Anne Alexander
Date: April 2005

Published In LSHG Newsletter Issue 24: Summer 2005  

Taha Sa’ad Uthman, who died in November 2004, combined the role of trade union activist and historian of the workers’ movement throughout most of his life. A pioneer of Egyptian labour history, he also played a central role in building independent trade unions during the 1940s, as president of the militant textile workers’ union in the Cairo suburb of Shubra al-Khaima.

Born in 1916 near Bani Suwayf, south of Cairo, he had a better-than-average level of education having studied at a vocational secondary school, and was first employed in Shubra al-Khaima as a foreman in Henri Pierre’s textile factory. However, although better paid than the other Egyptian workers, the foremen only earned around an eighth as much as their European co-workers, and this injustice convinced him that “struggle is the only way to win your rights”. He saw the power of strike action when workers backed a strike by foremen demanding equal pay with the Europeans. Uthman was quickly drawn into union activities, becoming president of the newly established textile workers’ union in 1937.

This was a period when the trade unions were beginning to break free of the influence of patrons among the nobility and the main nationalist party, the Wafd. A certain level of education – whether formal or self-taught – was crucial to the new generation’s bid for independence, as it reduced the activists’ dependence on non-workers. Taha Sa’ad Uthman was among many trade unionists who used the written word as an organising tool - founding newspapers, writing agitational leaflets and producing pamphlets – a tactic which also depended on a certain level of education among their audience. The new methods of organising were crucial not only to the growth of the trade union movement, but also to its rapid politicisation. Nationalist and left-wing ideas were deeply embedded in the culture of many of the independent unions and the textile workers in particular played a central role in the mass strikes and protests demanding the evacuation of British troops from Egypt between 1945 and 1952.

Taha Sa’ad Uthman’s first books appeared in 1945. He wrote a life of Fadali Abd-al-Jayyid, another of the textile union leaders who stood for parliament with the union’s backing in 1945. The same year he also published a history of the struggles of the mechanised textile workers of Cairo. Although these two works were only the first of many (according to some accounts he had published as many as 80 books and pamphlets by the end of his life), they encapsulate much of Uthman’s approach to history. Besides the three volumes of his memoirs, the main focus for his writing was biographical, recording the lives of his generation of trade union leaders for the benefit of newer activists. For Uthman, writing history was always about equipping future generations with the lessons of the past, as he explains in the introduction to his short pamphlet about the trade union lawyer Yusuf Darwish. “My intention is not to glorify Yusuf Darwish, but I hope to prepare the new generation of militants who are ready to work and sacrifice for the sake of the Egyptian toilers and the Egyptian working class, and for the sake of the future goal which will achieve the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.”

For Uthman, the authenticity of workers’ experience is crucial to writing labour history. Joel Beinin, co-author of Workers on the Nile, one of the key texts in English on Egyptian labour history, recalls Uthman speaking at a conference in Cairo in 1987. Uthman complained that well-meaning intellectuals who wrote about the workers’ movement “missed the spirit of life and the details that might appear insignificant but whose influence is great on the course of events and their outcome and the fighting spirit of the working class”. A genuine history of the Egyptian working class movement could only be written primarily by giving voice to those who actually took part in events. It is for this contribution that Uthman’s work deserves to be celebrated.