E.P. Thompson: The Politics Of Peace

Abstract

E.P. Thompson has the double distinction of being the leading labour historian in the English language and the best-known English-speaking peace activist. Scholar and political activist, he has always insisted that social commitment and scholarly pursuits are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive. Thompson's voluminous history of British workers between 1790 and 1832, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), is regarded as a classic attempt to bring to life the voices of those whom history usually leaves silent. Unlike much previous labour history, its concentration was on the ideas, aspirations, and activities of ordinary workers rather than on the activities of trade unions. In the 1970s Thompson, a founder of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), became a key spokesperson of the European Nuclear Disarmament movement (END). Both as a peace activist and as a labour historian, he has stressed the conflict between the interests of ordinary people and of the elites which govern them and, in many cases, purport to represent them.