E P Thompson Memorial Lecture

The E P Thompson Memorial Lecture was relaunched last Wednesday (7 October 2009) with considerable success. Seventy people, a mixed audience of sixth formers and members of the public, heard Professor Fred Inglis praise E P Thompson for always seeing the connection between his academic pursuits and the needs of the world around him. He did not live in an ivory tower, although his academic success was considerable. In a lecture entitled 'The Necessary Englishman - the moral importance of E P Thompson', it was claimed that Kingswood had helped to educate one of the really great historians of the twentieth century, a man who wanted history to be about ordinary men and women, rather than just Kings and Queens and the wealthy minority; his book 'The Making of the English Working Class' was a real landmark in the development of History as an academic discipline.

Professor Inglis talked about why E P Thompson joined the Communist Party at the beginning of the Second World War, and spoke of his heroic war record as a tank commander in Italy. It was not just because of opposition to Fascism that he joined, but because he believed that the Capitalist system was morally bankrupt, and this belief remained with him throughout his life, and after his departure from the Communist Party as a result of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. He resigned his academic post at Warwick University because he felt that local industrialists were having too much of a say in the running of the university, and devoted the rest of his life to writing, mainly journalism,and campaigning for a better world; he was particularly prominent in the Peace Movement and was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

It was a delight to have Dorothy Thompson (E P's wife) in the audience and a lively discussion ensued, followed by more talk over refreshments.

This Memorial Lecture is well and truly back in the School's annual programme and next year it will be held on Thursday November 18th, and the speaker will be Professor Merfyn Jones, Vice Chancellor of Bangor University, who was one of E P's doctoral students.