Christopher
Hill
“Thus, as
far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a
materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he
translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism.”
Friedrich
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
This is the
first book-length semi-biography of the Stalinist intellectual A. L. Morton
(1903–1987). It follows hot on the heels of biographies of Raphael Samuel: A Portrait
of a People's Historian (ANU Lives Series in Biography) by Sophie Scott-Brown,
Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History by Sir Richard J. Evans, and, recently, Christopher
Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian by Michael Braddick. All four were
members of the Communist Party Historians Group.
It is
striking that Palgrave has Morton as a pioneer of the study of Utopianism
rather than Marxism. Indeed, Morton was pretty much a pioneer of utopianism,
radical history, and English national identity. However, he is best known for
his works A People's History of England (1938) and The English Utopia (1952). Crossley’s
book is extensively researched, making use of Morton’s archive held at the Marx
Memorial Library in London. His book includes archival work carried out at The
National Archives of recently released secret service files.
It is
undisputed that Morton was one of the most important influences on a whole generation
of historians, both inside and outside the Communist Party. As Eric Hobsbawm relates:
“Our
achievements were not insignificant. First, there is little doubt that the rise
of 'social history' in Britain as a field of study, and especially of 'history
from below' or the 'history of the common people', owes a great deal to the
work of the members of the group (e.g. Hilton, Hill, Rude, E. P. Thompson,
Hobsbawm, Raphael Samuel). In particular, the serious concern with plebeian
ideology—the theory underlying the actions of social movements—is still largely
identified with historians of this provenance, for the social history of ideas was
always (thanks largely to Hill) one of our main preoccupations. Second, the
members of the group contributed very substantially to the development of
labour history.
Third, the
study of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century was largely
transformed by us; and though this is largely due to Hill's 'dominant position
in the field of Revolutionary studies today’, Hill himself would be the first
to agree that the debates among Marxist historians on the Revolution and his
work, from 1940 onwards, played a part in the development of his views. The
historiography of the English Revolution today is by no means predominantly
Marxist; on the other hand, but for the Marxists, it would certainly be very
different. Fourth, members of the group have influenced the general teaching of
history through the often very popular general textbooks which they have
written, as well as through other works. In this respect, A. L. Morton pioneered
the way with his People's History, which still remains the
only Marxist attempt to write the entire history of Britain (or rather
England). Fifth, the journal founded in the worst days of the Cold War by
a group of Marxist historians, Past & Present, has become
one of the leading historical journals in the world. Though it was never
Marxist in the literal sense, and even dropped its sub-title 'a journal of
scientific history' in 1958, the initiative, and to some extent the general
stance of the journal, originally came from the Marxists, and their
contribution to it was therefore crucial, at least in the early years when it
established its standing. These are not negligible achievements. They justify
recalling the ten fruitful years which began with Leslie Morton's desire to
consult other Marxist historians for the second edition of his People's
History. At all events, if no one else reads this memoir with interest or
profit, one thing is certain: it will recall a part of their past to the middle-aged
and ageing survivors of the Historians' Group of 1946-56, wherever their paths
have since taken them. [1]
As Crossly
writes, “A People’s History of England is probably the first Marxist history of
the nation. It explains the transformation from ancient forms of societies
through the rise and fall of feudalism and on to capitalism, the rise of the
working class, and the potential for a new era of socialism. For Morton, these
transformations in England were the product of competing class interests and
technological advances. The book stood in stark contrast to the usual histories
of the nation, focused on its supposed great individuals.”[2]
Morton’s
book is well written and not without merit. Crossley is correct when he says
that Morton’s work was guided by the political needs of the Communist Party's
popular front campaign. But for too long, this work has been labelled Marxist.
As this quote from Raphael Samuel shows, it is not a historical materialist
approach but borders on mysticism at times:
“This
version of people’s history invoked the authority of Marx, but it borrowed
freely from the positivist sociology of Spencer and Comte as well as, in
another direction, from Darwinian biology. Folk-life studies in this period
were conducted in the same spirit, using the comparative method to situate
myths in an evolutionary grid. The deterministic vision is no less apparent in
the ‘folk psychology’ of Wundt – a kind of historical ethnography of mental
characteristics and in those various theories of mass behaviour which make the
individual a compulsive creature of instinct. The most deterministic history of
all was that of human geography, which explained the character of peoples by
reference to geography, climate, and soil.”[3]
Or to put it
more precisely as Ann Talbot does “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
rary 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]
Crossley is
correct to point out Morton’s gifts and range of subjects. However, like other
members of the CPHG, there were two subjects that he could not write about: one
was the Russian Revolution, and the other was the rise of Stalin. A discussion
on the work of the great Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky was also taboo. As Ann
Talbot points out
“ There is
something Jesuitical about the relationship of these historians to Marxism.
They seem to have been capable of partitioning their minds and pursuing a
scientific Marxist approach to history up to the point where the Stalinist
bureaucracy drew the line, like the Jesuit scientists who would pursue their
investigations as far as the Church authorities permitted, but no further. It
was an approach that was further encouraged by the extreme specialisation of
academic life that enabled them to concentrate on very narrow areas of history
that never brought them into direct collision with the bureaucracy on political
questions.”[5]
Eric Hobsbawm
justified their actions saying, “There are several reasons why, by and large,
our work as historians did not suffer more from the contemporary dogmatism.
First, it must always be remembered that even during the most dogmatic
Stalinist period, the authorised versions of Marxist history were concerned
with genuine historical problems, and arguable as serious history, except where
the political authority of the Bolshevik Party and similar matters were
involved. While this patently made it a waste of time to debate, say, the history
of the Soviet Union—except to discover new citations with which to embellish
official truth—it left substantial scope for genuine analysis over the greater
part of the human past. Indeed, the debates of Soviet historians could be
reasonably integrated into such a discussion, and the work of some of them
which survived from earlier periods (such as that of E. A. Kosminsky on feudal
England) or was published during these years (such as B. F. Porshnev's study of
popular risings in France) was respected and influential outside Marxist
circles, even when not accepted. Moreover, communist intellectuals were
encouraged (if they needed any encouragement) to study the texts of Marx and
Engels as well as of Lenin and Stalin; nor was there (according to Stalin
himself) an obligation to accept all of them as literal truth. In brief, the
received orthodoxy both of historical materialism and of historical
interpretation was not, except for some specific topics mainly concerning the
twentieth century, incompatible with genuine historical work. “[6] David
North wrote a reply about Hobsbawm’s craven capitulation, writing:
The Russian
Revolution is dangerous territory for Professor Hobsbawm, for in this field his
scholarship is compromised by his politics. Hobsbawm once confessed that as a
member of the CPGB, he had avoided writing about the Russian Revolution and the
twentieth century, because the political line of his party would have prevented
him from being entirely truthful. Why he chose to remain a member of a party
that would have compelled him to tell lies is a question to which he has never
given a convincing answer. It would have been best for him, and no loss to the
writing of history, had he continued to limit himself to events before 1900.”[7]
Despite Morton’s
criticism of what he called “naïve utopianism” in his book The English Utopia
(1952), Morton was guilty of idealism and could easily be described by Marx if
he were alive today as a Utopian Socialist, not a Marxist. The English
Utopia (1952) traces what Morton believes was an unbroken thread of
radicalism. The book charted the history of utopian thinking and utopian
literature about peasant hopes, the rise of bourgeois thought, and the
emergence of socialism. Just like his book A People's History, Morton’s book on
Utopia continued the CP’s popular front politics and supported the CP’s
reformist British Road to Socialism. Morton saw the CP as the inheritors of
English radicalism. Morton also wrote the book to counteract what he saw as an
attack on England's pure radical tradition from what he termed US Imperialism’s
interference in British history. Crossley writes:
“Morton’s
criticisms of American imperialism were sharp and unambiguous, and that they
turn up in the final editing of The English Utopia meant that Morton wanted
them to be taken seriously. Indeed, we should see such criticisms as part of
the heightening of CPGB criticisms of American imperialism and accompanying
cultural dominance (e.g., through cinema, comics, books, philosophy) as Morton
was finishing off the book.4 In April 1951, the National Cultural Committee of
the CPGB ran a conference on the American threat to British culture, with the
proceedings published in a special edition of Arena. As well as attacking the
malign influence of American culture, an accompanying emphasis in this era was
to promote English and British cultural traditions, radical or otherwise. The
work of the Communist Party Historians’ Group was tied up with this agenda, not
least with its sharp focus on English and British history. In his role as chair
of the Historians’ Group, Rodney Hilton wrote in support of the Cultural
Committee. He suggested that the culture of the ruling class was in “utter decay”
and dependent on the “American imperialists”. He likewise embraced the task of
exposing American bourgeois culture while promoting a progressive patriotism to
oust the “bastard patriotism” of the ruling class.”[8]
To a large
degree, Morton has been largely forgotten by historians. While I am all for
rescuing Historians from what E. P Thompson called “The Condescension of
Posterity”, I am not sure we desperately need to reclaim Morton’s legacy as
Crossley wants to. What is Morton’s legacy? He was undoubtedly a skilled
historian, and most of his books are worth reading, but he was no Marxist. At
best, he was a Utopian socialist and at worst, he was a Stalinist who stayed in
the British Communist Party and slavishly supported and justified every betrayal.
[1]
The Historians' Group of the Communist Party-Eric Hobsbawm-www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/the-historians-group-of-the-communist-party.
[2]labourhub.org.uk/2025/04/02/remembering-a-l-morton-historian-of-english-radicalism/
[3]
An edited excerpt from Workshop of the World: Essays in People's History by Raphael
Samuel, edited by John Merrick
[4]
"These the times ... this the man": an appraisal of historian
Christopher Hill- www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[5]
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html
[6]
The Historians' Group of the Communist Party-Eric
Hobsbawm-www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/the-historians-group-of-the-communist-party.
[7]
Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Socialism in the Twentieth Century: A Reply to
Professor Eric Hobsbawm-
www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/04.html
[8]
A. L. Morton’s English Utopia and the Critical Study of Apocalypticism and
Millenarianism-by James Crossley- https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/11/1339
