History Workshop Journal

Source: History Workshop, No. 1 (Spring, 1976), pp. 1-3

Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288029
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EDITORIALS

History Workshop Journal

This journal comes out of the History Workshops held at Ruskin Colle
over the last ten years. Around these meetings the Workshop developed as a
fluid coalition of worker-students (from Ruskin) and other socialist historians.
Besides holding meetings it published a number of pamphlets (most of them now
out of print); and a series of books based largely on its work have been prepared,
of which the first was published in March I967 and more will appear this year.
By setting up this editorial collective to produce the journal we hope to share the
work of the Workshop more widely, and to give it more regular and permanent
expression. In undertaking it we are setting ourselves a long-term programme of
work. Like the Workshops, like the pamphlets, like the books in the Workshop
series, the journal will be concerned to bring the boundaries of history closer to
people's lives. Like them, it will address itself to the fundamental elements of
social life - work and material culture, class relations and politics, sex divisions
and marriage, family, school and home. In the journal we shall continue to
elaborate these themes, but in a more sustained way, and attempt to coordinate
them within an overall view of capitalism as a historical phenomenon, both as a
mode of production and as a system of social relations. Like the Workshops,
the journal will have a strong grounding in working-class experience, but it will
also speak from the start to the internationality of class experience, and will take
up theoretical questions in history more explicitly.
We are concerned at the narrowing of the influence of history in our society,
and at its progressive withdrawal from the battle of ideas. This shrinking of
stature cannot be ascribed to a decline in popular interest. Throughout British
society a desire for historical understanding continues to exist; and it is only
sometimes fulfilled by the manufacturers of part series, popularizations, television
entertainment, and so forth. 'Serious history' has become a subject reserved for
the specialist. The restriction is comparatively recent. It can be attributed to
the consolidation of the historical profession; to the increasing fragmentation of
the subject, especially as it approaches more modern times; and to the narrowness
of historians' preoccupations, along with the way that research is organized and
shaped. Only academics can be historians, and they have their own territorial
rights and pecking orders. The great bulk of historical writing is never intended
to be read outside the ranks of the profession, and most is written only for the
attention of specialist groups within it. Teaching and research are increasingly
divided, and both divorced from wider or explicit social purposes. In the
journal we shall try to restore a wider context for the study of history, both as a
counter to the scholastic fragmentation of the subject, and with the aim of making
it relevant to ordinary people.

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 2 HISTORY WORKSHOP

The journal is dedicated to making history a more democratic activity and a

more urgent concern. We believe that history is a source of inspiration and
understanding, furnishing not only the means of interpreting the past but also
the best critical vantage point from which to view the present. So we believe
that history should become common property, capable of shaping people's under-
standing of themselves and the society in which they live. We recognize that
an open and democratic scholarship requires more work from the historian, not
less: a more complex understanding of historical process, more caution in hand-
ling the sources, more boldness in extending the boundaries of enquiry, a greater
effort to achieve clarity of presentation. Instead of assuming the dutiful interest
of the reader, we hope that it can be won by the urgency of what is being said
and its relevance to the present. Women in Nazi Germany, for example, is a
case study of the complex relationships and contradictions between state, ideolo
and the sexual division of labour, questions of continuing importance for an
understanding of every phase of capitalism, including today's; or again, the
account of a peasant museum in Emilia poses a fundamental question about the
relationship of dominant and subordinate cultures.
We want the journal to be Workshop in character as well as name, to present
the workings of historical enquiry not just the results, and to encourage readers
in practical criticism, warning them against the automatic acceptance of scholarly
findings or text book readings. We hope to bring together working historians
of whatever background or experience, and offer them solidarity and practical
help, encouraging a collaborative approach to the problems of research. We
would like the journal to be used, not just read, to be a place where difficulties
are acknowledged, problems defined as well as solved, sources examined for their
bias and limitations as well as for the help they may provide, and subjects opened
up rather than closed. The content of much of the back part of the journal is
workshop in character. In Work in Progress readers are invited to discuss their
research. We intend contributions to Archives and Sources to be as much critical
as bibliographical, and perhaps, like David Vaisey's article in this issue, to show
how even a single source (in this case seventeenth century court depositions) can
open up new subject matter. We hope that the workshop character of the journal
will make it useful to those working at all levels of the educational system, by
bringing the worlds of teaching and research closer together, by providing
teaching materials and aids, and by taking up such themes as the sources of
historical imagination (as here in Children's Historical Novels), the reconstruction
of historical reality (as here in History on Stage), and the visual presentation of h
orical material whether through museum collections or illustrations or the medi
A central feature of the journal will be the publication of original texts and
documents. Apart from their intrinsic value, these texts will provide a constant
reminder of the kinds of evidence that the historian must answer to as well as
build from. The catalogues and borrowings from workers' libraries, in Germany
before I9I4 and in I870s inner London, are discussed in the present issue and an
account of those of the South Wales miners will appear in the next. They
provide fascinating evidence of the variety of influences - often contradictory
which go to make up historical consciousness, and contrast with the conventional
geneaology of socialist ideas. Our main document in this issue and the next is
the autobiography of Edward Rymer, the nineteenth century pit agitator, which

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 EDITORIALS 3

we are reproducing a
with an introduction by R. G. Neville, who recently brought it to light. Unlike
many working class memoirs, of the familiar 'Pit to Parliament' class, it is no
success story: the author was as poor when he wrote it, old and with blindness
impending, as he was in childhood. The view of class relations and of workers'
lives therefore escapes that retrospective complacency which falsifies so much
autobiography of the time.
The socialism of this journal, neither prophetic nor exclusive, and certainly
not sectarian, will inform both the content and how it is presented: we want to
be read by people outside the quarantine of formal education, as well as by those
who chafe at its limitations and work to change it from within. That is why we
shall stress clarity and accessibility in what we publish, both in texts and in
footnotes. Our socialism determines our concern with the common people in
the past, their life and work and thought and individuality, as well as the context
and shaping causes of their class experience. Equally it determines the atten-
tion we shall pay to capitalism: we are publishing in this issue a contribution from
Rodney Hilton on the transition between feudalism and capitalism in Europe,
and in our next a major study of capitalism on the South African Rand. Our
socialism will also demand the discussion and development of theoretical issues
in history. It will make us attack vigorously those types of historical and
sociological enquiries which reinforce the structures of power and inequality
our society, and will bring us into critical and constructive debate with bourge
scholars. We have come together as editors because our various commitments
to the cause of socialism lie at the root of our discontent with the present state o
history, and at the root of our belief that a different kind of history is possible.
We hope to interest and be useful to people who do not share our political com-
mitments but have felt some of the same discontents; we would like the journal
to be of service to the reform of history in polytechnics and colleges, and to the
cause of history in the schools.
Democratic scholarship means a two-way relationship between writer and
reader, and we hope that in the pages of this journal there will be collaboration
and understanding between them. We would prefer an active readership not an
armchair one, and we want the journal to be a point of contact, a place where
experiences are shared, projects encouraged, theoretical issues broached. In
particular we hope the journal will reach the many historians who work on their
own, often in their spare time, without acknowledgement because they are out-
side institutions, and we hope that they in turn will write for us. Because this i
our first issue there are no letters or contributions from readers. But we want
people to write in, not only with critical responses to articles in the journal, but
also to reach one another and discuss issues raised by their own work. Our
columns (not only in the letter section but also in Noticeboard and Calendar) can
be used to ask for information, to make contacts, to publicize meetings and
publications. Far too much research which would be enriched by historical
companionship is carried on in conditions of competitive individualism or lonely
isolation; too many teachers have to fight an uphill fight unaided. This journal
aims to be both critical and supportive, by offering solidarity to the working
historian and by exploring the needs of the wider constituency which exists
for historical work.
Editorial Collective

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