Sunday 25 May 2014

Review: The People: the Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910-2010 by Selina Todd



"The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present in its own making." E. P.Thompson.

Despite having the word class in the title of Selina Todd's new book does not mean that Todd favours a Marxist theory of the proletariat. 

One only needs to look at a growing number of statements such as the one from  Andre Gortz who bid his  Farewell to the Working Class or John Major that Britain was a "classless society" and Tony Blair trumpeted we are "all middle class now," to see that class is "a fiercely contested concept and is not merely a descriptive taxonomy." Given the tile on Todd's book, it appears that she has adapted to the sentiment expressed in Gortz's book Farewell to the Working Class. 

But things are beginning to change throughout the world, a rising tide of social struggle provoked in part by the COVID 19 crisis has blown apart the proclamations by anti-Marxist intellectuals that the "grand narratives" of working-class struggle and socialist revolution have finished.

The most striking aspect of Todd's book is her adoption of the genre history from below " In fact, the book could almost be seen as a sequel to E P Thompson's classic of the genre The Making of the English Working Class. Selina Todd describes the period covered by the book as a "working-class century, and in 1910, people "who worked with their hands constituted the vast majority of Britons."

Given that the title of the book indicates that she believes that the working class has fallen a premise that is not at all accurate, and implies that nowadays the political and numerical weight of the working class is less.  Of course, it is safe to say that the working class of 1910 is not the same as the working class of 2014, but according to an orthodox Marxist position, it still holds the same fundamental relationship to the means of production. Also, it is in many ways larger now given the fact that many middle-class people have now been so affected by the current economic crisis that they have been forced back into the working class.

In her introduction, Todd claims that the motivation for the book came from an earlier period of her academic career when she found that little work has been done on the type of working-class family she came from. "Eventually, I realized I would have to write this history myself". She continues "the only working-class history on offer was general history — which is great, but it did mean that the only working-class people you ever heard about were those involved in. That was not the full history of working-class life as I knew it from my peers at school and my own family". [1]

I find this very hard to believe given that the last three decades have seen a veritable cottage industry grow up examining different aspects of working-class life. It is also hard to believe that an academic of Todd's standing found it hard to find material.

However, it is not to say that the book is without merit. It is well researched and informative. The book is part oral history, part academic and suitable for the general history reader. Todd vividly describes the oppression faced by the working class and its attempts to challenge capitalist exploitation. The strongest part of the book is Todd's use of oral history.

It is a very thorough and well-researched piece of history.  Todd said "throughout the book, I rely heavily on personal testimonies, gained from interviews and unpublished and published autobiographies. I combed local studies libraries across the country to find the testimonies of over 200 people, and then I added to these by using the archives of some social surveys of working-class life in the 1950s and '60s".

You could say that Todd seeks to rescue the servants, industrial workers; the unemployed and the lower middle class from the condescension of history. According to one reviewer "the book is peppered with anecdotes of real people, from those working in what was little more than domestic servitude in some cases in the early part of the last century, to the militant trade unionists of the 1960s and 1970s, to the consumers of today, is what sets it apart. We learn about those whose lives were changed by fame, fortune and in Vivian's case, the pools (before the greater riches of the National Lottery), to those who became the first property owners under Margaret Thatcher ".

It must be said however that Todd's conception of class like her great predecessor E P Thompson has nothing to do with an orthodox Marxist view of the class. Todd believes as did E P Thompson, that a historical materialist position cannot sufficiently explain the origins of the working class despite professing being influenced by it. She believes that "Class needs to be spoken about in a less determined way".

In his essay on the 'Peculiarities of the English E.P. Thompson gave his theoretical definition of class: "When we speak of a class we are thinking of a very loosely defined body of people who share the same congeries of interests, social experiences, traditions and value-system, who have the disposition to behave as a class, to define themselves in their actions and their consciousness in relation to other groups of people in class ways. But the class itself is not a thing, and it is happening". [2]

It is one thing for Todd to be influenced by historians such as Thompson it is another to be blind to their "Stalinist baggage". Thompson, who was not a political novice, after leaving the British Communist Party in 1956 he founded the magazine the New Reasoner, along with historian John Saville, and Universities and Left Review, edited by Stuart Hall.

Thompson and Saville were hostile to the orthodox Trotskyists represented by the then Socialist Labour League's international revolutionary perspective. His magazine was imbued in what was mistakenly called the "English Marxist" tradition.

New Reasoner was said to advocate a "socialist humanist" version of Marxism. In reality, it had nothing to do with Marxism and was no more than a crude cover for his support of the Stalinist "British Road" advocated by the CPGB.

The New Left movement under the leadership of Thompson and Saville was responsible as Paul Bond for "introducing the nationalist, ethnic and gender-specific theories that have led to so much confusion over the last 30 years, as well as helping the imperialists divert workers and youth along dangerous communal lines in South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East".

The rejection of a historical materialist understanding of the class struggle was and still is, to a certain extent, a hallmark of several historians who professed sympathy with Marxism. It is to be hoped that Todd does not pick up the bad habits of Thompson who like other historians of his generation decided to cherry-pick certain aspects of a Marxist method and leave aside the most important parts such as the relationship between base and superstructure and how it affects the history of the working class.

The Marxist writer Cliff Slaughter put it so well "When we say that political ideas and movements reflect the economic base we should remember that such reflection is a series of conscious acts. Men's consciousness is formed in an environment of social institutions controlled by the ruling class, institutions of repression and institutions for educational conditioning, staffed by people trained to operate these institutions as though they were part of a naturally or divinely ordained system. The majority of labour's own organizations have become tied to this structure of established institutions, and are staffed by the 'labour lieutenants of capitalism. The proletariat's consciousness of its role has to be achieved in a struggle against all these institutional forms and their ideological results. Without the highest degree of centralized organization, these ideological battles cannot be won".[3]

Todd does not see the working class through rose-tinted spectacles, but she believes that most of the working class can do reform capitalism not overthrow it. Also, her attitude towards the "labor lieutenants" is at best weak at worst it borders on glossing over the betrayals of both the Labour Party and the Unions.

Given her reformist proclivities, it is not an accident that the book with over 450 pages does not mention Karl Marx., the Communist Party gets only two mentions.

Perhaps most damagingly is her view of the most important events affecting the English working class. While it is easy to agree that the Second World War and the rise of Thatcherism are important events in the life of the English working-class surely the most important political event of the 20th century concerning the working class did not happen in Britain but in Russia, i.e. the 1917-The Russian revolution. If one event shaped the modern-day English working Class, it was that event. Leaving the Russian Revolution out is tantamount to doing a history of the bible and leaving Jesus out.

Another strange absence is that despite professing her admiration for E P Thompson, the Marxist History Group, which included E.P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill is completely ignored. One does not have to accept everything this group wrote, said or did, but I believe it is not possible to write a history of the English working-class without examining their work. 

As the Marxist writer, Ann Talbot said "Not only was their contribution to the writing of history significant but also they represent a particularly critical phase in British history when Britain lost its world hegemony to the USA, and the class conflict became more intense. They represent a layer of socialist-minded intellectuals who looked in this period of crisis to the Soviet Union and the Russian revolution for a new model of society".

Talbot, in her examination of these historians, especially Christopher Hill, was mindful of their Stalinist influenced politics. She was extremely critical of the People's history genre of which Todd adopts in her book, and she writes "the Communist Party sponsored a form of "People's History", which is typified by A.L. Morton's People's History of England in which the class character of earlier rebels, revolutionaries and popular leaders was obscured by regarding them all as representatives of a national revolutionary tradition. This historical approach reflected the nationalism of the bureaucracy, their hostility to internationalism and their attempts to form an unprincipled alliance with the supposedly democratic capitalists against the fascist Axis countries. People's history was an attempt to give some historical foundation to the policies of Popular Front—the subordination of the working class to supposedly progressive sections of the bourgeoisie and the limiting of political action to the defence of bourgeois democracy—which provided a democratic facade to the systematic murder of thousands of genuine revolutionaries, including Trotsky. It was the approach that Christopher Hill was trained in, along with E.P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm, who were part of the Marxist Historians Group and came under the influence of Maurice Dobb and Dona Torr". [4]

To conclude if Todd has read this review it is hoped that she has shifted her historiography away from the use of culture and gender to explain class relations and bring it closer to a Marxist position on class. The People-The Rise and Fall of the Working Class is a useful guide to certain aspects of working-class life over the last century but should not be seen as a Marxist analysis. It is hoped that Todd's next book attempts these difficult processes.






[1] Interview by Joe Gill http://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/british-historian-selina-todd-interviewed/.  
[2] E.P. Thompson-The Peculiarities of the English-(1965)-From The Socialist Register 1965, pp.311-362. Marxists' Internet Archive.
[3] Cliff Slaughter, What is Revolutionary Leadership? From Labour Review, Vol.5 No.3, October-November 1960, pp.93-96 & 105-111. Published by Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
[4] These the times ... this the man": an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill
By Ann Talbot 25 March 2003 http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.ht

Monday 19 May 2014

To Have no Newes is good Newes


1.    God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660-1720: 13 (Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History) by Brodie Waddell has been published by Boydell & Brewer. A review copy has been given to me by them. Brodie’s blog can be found at http://manyheadedmonster.wordpress.com/

2.       Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism Dirk Wiemann (Author), Gaby Mahlberg (Author) Published by Ashgate.

3.       The history after Hobsbawm conference speeches etc have been published at http://historyafterhobsbawm.wordpress.com/. Recordings of plenary lectures by Gareth Stedman Jones, Chris Wickham, Maxine Berg, Rana Mitter, Peter Bailey, Catherine Hall, and Geoff Eley. Can be found at the Backdoor Broadcasting Corporation website http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/


4.      My next blog article will be a critical review of Selina Todd’s The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010.

5.       Friday 23 May: Birkbeck Early Modern Society presents a lecture by  Dr Angela McShane, V&A, ‘How Happy’s the State where no Discord is Breeding?’: the Politipop of Seventeenth Century England.

6.       Ashgate publishing has just released this important book called Royalists at War in Scotland and Ireland, 16381650 by Barry Robertson. It is clear from even a cursory look this is a much needed piece of research on an underwritten about subject. A review of this book will appear in the not too distant future.

7.       Landlords and Tenants in Britain, 1440-1660: Tawney's Agrarian Problem Revisited (People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History)Jane Whittle (Editor) sorry for the late plug fro this excellent collection of essays. In the not too distant future I will commence some work at the R H Tawney archive held at the London School of Economics

8.       Tom Reilly has produced a follow up book to his previously entitled book Cromwell An Honourable Enermy. His new book is somewhat controversially called  Cromwell Was Framed (Ireland 1649) ISBN 978-1-78279-516-2 April 2014. Chronos Books (An imprint of John Hunt Publishing) the debate has already begun.