Editing Labor history (section)

==Marxist influence==
{{Further|Historiography of the United Kingdom#Marxist historians}}

In the 1950s to 1970s, labor history was redefined and expanded in focus by a number of historians, amongst whom the most prominent and influential figures were [[E. P. Thompson]] and [[Eric Hobsbawm]]. The motivation came from current left-wing politics in Britain and the United States and reached red-hot intensity. [[Kenneth O. Morgan]], a more traditional liberal historian, explains the dynamic:
:the ferocity of argument owed more to current politics, the unions' [[winter of discontent]] [in 1979], and rise of a hard-left militant tendency within the world of academic history as well as within the [[History of the Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]]. The new history was often strongly Marxist, which fed through the work of brilliant evangelists like [[Raphael Samuel]] into the ''[[New Left Review]]'', a famous journal like [[Past & Present (journal)|''Past and Present'']], the Society of Labour History and the work of a large number of younger scholars engaged in the field. Non-scholars like [[Tony Benn]] joined in. The new influence of Marxism upon Labour studies came to affect the study of history as a whole.<ref>Kenneth O. Morgan, ''My Histories'' (University of Wales Press, 2015) p. 85.</ref>

Morgan sees benefits: 
:In many ways, this was highly beneficial: it encouraged the study of the dynamics of social history rather than a narrow formal institutional view of labor and the history of the Labour Party; it sought to place the experience of working people within a wider technical and ideological context; it encouraged a more adventurous range of sources, [[People's history|'history from below' so-called]], and rescued them from what Thompson memorably called the 'condescension of posterity'; it brought the idea of class centre-stage in the treatment of working-class history, where I had always felt it belonged; it shed new light on the poor and dispossessed for whom the source materials were far more scrappy than those for the bourgeoisie, and made original use of popular evidence like oral history, not much used before.<ref>Morgan, ''My Histories'' (2015) p. 86.</ref>
Morgan tells of the downside as well:
: But the Marxist – or sometimes Trotskyist – emphasis in Labour studies was too often doctrinaire and intolerant of non-Marxist dissent{{snd}}it was also too often plain wrong, distorting the evidence within a narrow doctrinaire framework. I felt it incumbent upon me to help rescue it. But this was not always fun. I recall addressing a history meeting in Cardiff... when, for the only time in my life, I was subjected to an incoherent series of attacks of a highly personal kind, playing the man not the ball, focusing on my accent, my being at Oxford and the supposedly reactionary tendencies of my empiricist colleagues.<ref>Morgan, ''My Histories'' (2015), p. 86. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt17w8h53.9.pdf?_=1467168515247 online].</ref>

Thompson and Hobsbawm were Marxists who were critical of the existing labor movement in Britain. They were concerned to approach history "from below" and to explore the agency and activity of working people at the workplace, in protest movements and in social and cultural activities. Thompson's seminal study ''[[The Making of the English Working Class]]''<ref>E.P. Thompson, ''The Making of the English Working Class,'' Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1963. {{ISBN|0-14-013603-7}}.</ref> was particularly influential in setting a new agenda for labor historians and locating the importance of the study of labor for [[social history]] in general. Also in the 1950s and 1960s, historians began to give serious attention to groups who had previously been largely neglected, such as women and non-caucasian ethnic groups. Some historians situated their studies of gender and race within a class analysis: for example, [[C. L. R. James]], a [[Marxism|Marxist]] who wrote about the struggles of blacks in the [[Haitian Revolution]]. Others questioned whether class was a more important social category than gender or race and pointed to racism, patriarchy and other examples of division and oppression ''within'' the working class.

Labor history remains centered on two fundamental sets of interest: institutional histories of workers' organizations, and the "history from below" approach of the Marxist historians.

Despite the influence of the Marxists, many labor historians rejected the revolutionary implications implicit in the work of Thompson, Hobsbawm et al. In the 1980s, the importance of [[social class|class]] itself, as an historical social relationship and explanatory concept, began to be widely challenged. Some notable labor historians turned from Marxism to embrace a [[Postmodernism|postmodernist]] approach, emphasizing the importance of language and questioning whether classes could be so considered if they did not use a "language of class". Other historians emphasized the weaknesses and moderation of the historic labor movement, arguing that social development had been characterized more by accommodation, acceptance of the social order and cross-class collaboration than by conflict and dramatic change.