E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson (1924-1993) was a prominent British Marxist historian known for his influential works on social and labor history. Born in Oxford to anti-imperialist parents with ties to notable Indian leaders, Thompson joined the Communist Party at a young age and served in World War II. After returning to England, he pursued studies at Cambridge University and became a significant figure in leftist journalism, contributing to several publications, including *New Left Review*. Thompson's seminal work, *The Making of the English Working Class*, published in 1963, is celebrated for its perspective that emphasizes the active role of the working class in history, countering views that depict them merely as victims. His activism included vocal opposition to nuclear armament and military interventions during the Cold War. In 1971, he resigned from Warwick University in protest against its commercialization. Thompson's later works, including *Witness Against the Beast*, explored historical figures like William Blake in the context of social justice. He left a lasting legacy as a scholar who sought to rehabilitate Marxism and illuminate the experiences of the working class in shaping history.
E. P. Thompson
Historian
- Born: February 3, 1924
- Birthplace: Oxford, England
- Died: August 28, 1993
- Place of death: Upper Wick, Worcester, England
Biography
Edward Palmer Thompson was considered by some to be the one of the greatest Marxist historians. He was born in Oxford, England, in 1924 to English missionaries who had spent much time in India. Thompson’s anti-imperialist parents knew Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rabindranath Tagore. Thompson joined the Communist Party in 1942 at age eighteen, and not long after he fought in a British tank brigade in Italy in World War II.
Thompson returned to England in 1946 and studied at Cambridge University. He married Dorothy Towers in 1948. Thompson was an unabashed supporter of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin until the mid- 1950’s, when Nikita S. Khrushchev, then-secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, delivered a a “secret speech” unmasking much of Stalin’s brutal suppressions and revealing that the party leaders had complied with this brutality. In protest of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Thompson disavowed the Communist party.
Thompson helped establish several left-leaning journals. In 1952, he was one of the founders of Past and Present; in 1956, he was a central figure in the launch of Reasoner, an opposition journal within the British Communist Party. With John Saville, Thompson published the New Reasoner, a journal of British Marxist working-class views, in 1957. In 1960, New Reasoner merged with Universities and Left Review to form New Left Review. Thompson parted ways with the new journal due to disagreements with editor Perry Anderson.
Thompson published his first book, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, in 1955. By then, he had been a lecturer at Leeds University since 1948, but had not stuck strictly to academia. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Thompson was a peace activist, protested for nuclear disarmament, and opposed numerous military actions, including the Korean War. He joined the faculty of Warwick University in 1965, but he resigned in protest in 1971 when the university sought to become a commercial enterprise. Thompson did not teach formally again, but he lectured widely, especially in the United States.
Thompson’s signature work was The Making of the English Working Class (1963). The book became a classic of Marxist history, in part for its “bottom up” perspective of how history is made and in part for its claim that the working class was an active force in shaping history, not a passive class of observers who were the victims of history. The Making of the English Working Class also was the book through which Thompson attempted to rehabilitate the warped view of Marxism that many had developed from the taint of Stalinism.
Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law published in 1993, was years in the making. Thompson portrayed how Blake was influenced by opponents of the monarchy at the time of the English civil war. Thompson died on August 28, 1993.