Creativities in Contexts: E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.

Edward Thompson'sThe Making of the English Working Class(London: Gollancz, 1963) was a creative work in both substance and methodology. The insistence on recovering the neglected experience of a class through history from below was complemented by a methodological commitment. The latter agenda was elaborated briefly and assertively in the Preface and subsequently practised throughout the richly detailed text. Actors must be understood in context as acting creatively within constraints. Their assessments of shared experience provide a basis for shared consciousness, organisation and collective action. This methodological agenda is critically assessed through an examination of the propositions within the Preface. The analysis is linked to a consideration of the agenda's previous employment in Thompson's essay ‘Homage to Tom Maguire’ (InEssays in Labour History, edited by Asa Briggs, and John Saville. London: Macmillan, 1960). Thompson's creativity is itself located within the constraints within which he worked. These were intellectual and political Marxism and a-historical sociology, earlier experiences in the Communist Party and the hopes and frustrations of the New Left. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]