A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), from 1946-1956 the Communist Party Historians Group formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below." Famous members included such leading lights of 20th-century British history as Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Raphael Samuel and E.P. Thompson, as well as important non-academics like A. L. Morton and Brian Pearce.
In keeping with their standing positions, many of the members carried out their projects from adult education institutions, rather than the academy. In 1952 several of the members founded the influential social history journal Past and Present.
Read more about Communist Party Historians Group: Aims and Methods, 1956 and After, Socialist History Society, Notable Members
Famous quotes containing the words communist, party, historians and/or group:
“The terrible thing is that one cannot be a Communist and not let oneself in for the shameful act of recantation. One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one’s personal integrity.”
—Milovan Djilas (b. 1911)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.”
—William Stafford (1914–1941)