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Anti-Hegemony: The Legacy of William Blake

“This has been a long, and perhaps strange, way into William Blake. On one matter I am impenitent. Blake can’t have dreamed up a whole vocabulary of symbolism, which touches at so many points the traditions which I have discussed, for himself ab novo. Nor can he have . . .” read more

The Ends of Cold War

“While I sympathize with Fred Halliday’s intentions in his article on ‘The Ends of Cold War’, I must disagree sharply both with its method and execution. No doubt he has been trapped by the pressure to make instant commentary (his lecture on the events of October to December . . .” read more

Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization

“Comrades, we need a cogent theoretical and class analysis of the present war crisis. Yes. But to structure an analysis in a consecutive rational manner may be, at the same time, to impose a consequential rationality upon the object of analysis. What if the object is irrational? What . . .” read more

Reply to Willard Wolfe

“Edward Thompson replies: I did not ‘attack’ Willard Wolfe’s book, but cited it in passing as an example of the facility and confusion to be found in references to William Morris’s political thought in ‘reputable’ academic circles. I could no doubt have found elsewhere a dozen examples equally . . .” read more

Romanticism, Utopianism and Moralism: The Case of William Morris

“Over the past two decades, my study of William Morris has come to be recognized as a ‘quarry’ of information, although in one or two instances it appears that it was a suspect quarry, to be worked surreptitiously for doctoral advancement. One ought not to object to this: . . .” read more

The Free-Born Englishman

“A chapter from a book shortly to be published by Gollancz on the formation of the working class.” read more

The Long Revolution (Part II)

“to pass from a “way of conflict” to a “way of life” is to pass out of the main line of the socialist intellectual tradition. I don’t mean that Raymond Williams has “broken” with socialism: at many points he has a more constructive insight into the possibilities . . .” read more

The Long Revolution (Part I)

“Raymond Williams’ new book, The Long Revolution (Chatto & Windus, 30s.), develops the important themes of Culture & Society—the study of the theory of culture, and an analysis of the stage reached in the development of a “common culture”. This is the first of a two-part review of . . .” read more

Revolution Again!

““Under which King’ Besonian?”” read more

Countermarching to Armageddon

“long before the custard-pies started to fly around at the Summit, the preparations for the Countermarch were well in hand. The 100,000 Easter demonstrators had scarcely drifted away from Trafalgar Square before the Top People’s CND (Committee for Natopolitan Defence) was in session, getting everything ready for . . .” read more

Revolution

“This is the final Chapter of Out Of Apathy , a collection of New Left Essays, edited by E. P. Thompson, and the first of a series of books to be published by us. Out Of Apathy will be out at the end of May. The . . .” read more

The Point of Production

““the danger is,” writes our colleague Alasdair MacIntyre, in a reproof to the New Left in the current Labour Review, “that one will fight a series of guerrilla engagements on cultural questions which will dissipate socialist energy and lead nowhere. What one hopes is that opening up . . .” read more