Communist Party Historians Group
The Communist Party Historians Group , a grouping within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) from 1946 to 1956, formed an influential group of British Marxist historians who contributed to history from below . Members included leading British historians. In line with their political positions, many members carried out their projects from institutions of adult education rather than from academic institutions. In 1952, some of its members founded the influential socio-historical journal Past and Present .
Known members
- Robert Browning
- Maurice Dobb
- Christopher Hill
- Rodney Hilton
- Charles Hobday
- Eric Hobsbawm
- Victor Kiernan
- John Morris
- AL Morton
- George Rudé
- Raphael Samuel
- John Saville
- Dorothy Thompson
- EP Thompson
- Dona Torr
- Brian Pearce
Goals and Methods
The work of the Communist Party Historians Group was essentially determined by two goals:
- Reconstructing a popular revolutionary tradition that might inspire contemporary activists, and
- to choose a Marxist economic approach that placed more emphasis on social conditions than on the history of "great men".
Marx had already expressed this dualism: "People make their own history, but not under circumstances they choose".
Bringing the actions of the lower classes to bear within the official account of British history required originality and persistence in the research process: it meant looking for marginal voices in texts where they were barely mentioned or portrayed as passive. These techniques also influenced feminist historians and the Subaltern Studies Group .
1956 and later
After 1956, the group lost many prominent members when the uprising in Hungary , Khrushchev's secret speech, and other factors caused a general shift in the opinions of many Marxists. Many of the group's participants became leading members of the New Left , particularly Samuel, Saville, and Thompson.
Other members, including Eric Hobsbawm, did not resign and in 1956 launched the quarterly series of monographs Our History . The CP History Group existed until the dissolution of the CPGB in 1991 and was able to increase the number of its members and its scientific production even after the party was already in the final decline. In 1992 it was re-established as the Socialist History Society (SHS). Membership there is not dependent on membership in a political party.
The SHS publishes its journal Socialist History and a series of monographs under the title Occasional Papers twice a year .
literature
- Bill Schwarz: “The People” in History: The Communist Party Historians' Group, 1946–1956 . In: Richard Johnson et al. (Ed.): Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics . London 1982, pp. 44-95.
- Harvey J. Kaye: The British Marxist Historians . Cambridge 1984.