1947 London bus and tube maps.
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@radicalmuseumworkers
1947 London bus and tube maps.
Postcards showing photographs of the German Revolution.
250 and 1000 roubles dated to 1917.
Probably the short lived ‘Kerensky roubles’.
Two sets of political badges from the 1980s. The first set predominantly covers the London borough of Lambeth, notably the rate-capping rebellion and issues around housing, but also contains anti-fascist, anti-militarist and anti-police brutality badges. The second set contains badges produced during the miner's strike.
Albrecht Dürer’s Monument to the Vanquished Peasants following the 1525 German Peasants’ War
Image source: http://thecityasaproject.org/2012/07/the-measure-of-turmoil-durers-monument-to-the-vanquished-peasants/
Reclaim public history
The struggle for radical historians is in representing the past in the present and in particular, the focus upon certain moments and ideas. There is the constant battle for giving a voice to the masses of people usually ignored by conventional histories (this sparked the academic trends of social history, history from below, particularly the work of History Workshop). There is also the battle of ideas, on how we perceive of the past. Ideology is entrenched in history writing, we see this in the 19th century nationalist, Whig historians who wrote state and diplomatic histories, glorifying ‘great men’* to validate imperial domination and expansion. The radical historians in postwar Britain took from Marx’s historical materialism not just a structuralist approach but a focus on class struggle and revolution.
This battle is played out amongst historians but also more publicly. Museums and libraries can form a middle-ground between academics who may not have a large numerical reach and the general public consuming popular history. Television and radio shows also play a part. Yet the funding of these through national bodies ensures that the conservative forces of the state and non-state institutions enable or disable various projects of public history.
Two years ago the Women’s Library moved from London Metropolitan University to LSE following government cuts to higher education - it was set to be cut altogether but a huge campaign saved it. The People’s History Museum in Manchester too is under threat.
Now, it turns out that a museum that received planning permission as a museum of working-class women on Cable Street, East London, is opening as a Jack the Ripper Museum, sensationalising violence against working-class women.
Instead of restoring agency to women as it was granted planning permission to do, this museum seeks to present women as the objects of historical intrigue. The story is of the (unknown) man who is nevertheless named ‘Jack’; the (known) women unnamed as crime statistics and splattered red paint across the gift shop merchandise.
The fact that this transformation of a working-class women’s museum into, at best, a tourist-trap, and at worst, the glorification of violence against women, is sited in Cable Street adds to the anger. Cable Street was the location of an infamous fascist demonstration in 1936, enabled by the London Metropolitan police, successfully blocked and beaten by East End antifascists and communists. Close to the Thames and the docks, it is located in a traditionally working-class area, and also near the site of the 1986 Wapping dispute which involved the picketing of the Murdoch printworks. Just around the corner from Cable Street is Sidney Street, where the Sidney Street siege took place in 1911 in which a group of anarchist bankrobbers staved off the London Metropolitan police during a six-hour gun battle (Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, let the anarchists burn to death).
We have to fight to tell the histories that inform our present. When people argue that fascist groups such as EDL, Britain First & BNP have a right to be listened to, a visit to the Cable Street mural and the history of the Spanish Civil War can help us to oppose the appeasement of fascists. The story of the Peterloo Massacre, told at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, explains the brutality of state violence against what was then seen as a dissident, subversive threat of the crowd and is now seen as popular, peaceful assembly.
Working-class history, the history of the crowd, these are all things that can help to rediscover the power of the masses - the 1926 general strike was a failure, but it brought out thousands of workers in solidarity with miners; the 1984-5 miners strike was defeated, but the force used by the state was revenge for the successes of the 1972 and 1974 strikes. As E. P. Thompson wrote, the working-class made itself as much as it was made. The agency of the working-class in their making must be reclaimed. What better place to start than in East London.
There is a demo this Wednesday at 6pm outside the museum.
*see F. Engels Letters on Historical Materialism ‘Here we must treat of the so-called great man. That a certain particular man and no other emerges at a definite time in a given country is naturally pure chance. But even if we eliminate him, there is always a need for a substitute, and the substitute is found tant bien que mal‘
Time & Timepieces: Historical artefacts and what they tell us about labour history
A relative of mine* posted a photo on Facebook of a Gledhill clock in/clock out device. She told me that her son discovered a cache of letters from 1925-1945 between members of the Gledhill family. Apparently, the machines were so reliable that the company went out of business because they never needed replacing. This caught my interest as a confrontation between two types of historically illuminating artefacts.
The letters found will provide, no doubt, interesting social history. Though not the typical object of an historical archive, they are nonetheless a traditional source of historical enquiry. Conversely, the clocking in and out machine discovered by the relative in a junk shop is invested with great importance as a cog in the workings of the capitalist economy. I've worked in jobs that require clocking on & off, albeit on more modern machines, and I can vouch for the widespread cheating of the machine's attempted omniscience. Many of the Gledhill's machines, apparently, have kinks at the bottom where employees have attempted to jolt the hours forward, wishing the hours away.
In 'Time, Work & Industrial Capitalism', E. P. Thompson questions how shifts in time-sense instigated by mechanisation influenced inward comprehension of time, in relation to the restructuring of working habits during the Industrial Revolution. Thompson discusses work carried out by anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu (whose theory of Habitus greatly influenced social and cultural historians) and I particularly enjoyed his discovery of Algerian Kabyle peasants description of a clock as "the devil's mill" (Thompson p. 59).
Thompson relates how daily life in pre-Industrial societies was contingent upon nature - tidal patterns, daylight and wind direction. Since social intercourse and labour intermingled, there was less of a demarcation between work and leisure. The broad thrust is that industrialisation led to the monetisation of time: employees started to experience a distinction between their employer's time and their "own" time, as the value of time became more important than the task at hand.
From the 14th Century onwards, the reliance on public bellringing for timekeeping also reminded men of their judgement - for whom the bell tolls. Transport for London have recently introduced a clock on their buses' digital display, which has the effect of constantly reminding the common commuter of their proximity or otherwise to 09:00. My first sighting of one on a weekday morning a few weeks ago instantly reminded me of E. P. Thompson - the clock was constantly reminding me of my 9am judgement, and though not at work, I not only felt my fate getting closer by the minute but was forced to countenance the countdown.
The invention of the pendulum in 1658 advanced household clocks, and grandfather clocks spread from the 1660s, though minute hands didn't spread until well after this. Pitt the Younger's clock and watch tax, lasting just 9 months during 1797, indicated their perception as a luxury - recorded time belonged to the gentry, the masters, and the farmers.
It wasn't until the economic developments of the Industrial Revolution necessitated a greater synchronisation of labour that there occurred a further diffusion of timepieces across different classes of society. Yet Thompson later points out that in workplaces where time was most rigorously imposed, such as textile mills, workers were forbidden to have watches, lest time be disputed and conflict break out between the employers and workforce.
Working patterns became one of "alternate bouts of intense labour and of idleness" (Thompson p. 73). Moral judgement was cast through these prisms; the tea table seen as a "devourer of Time and Money", as is "that slothful spending the Morning in Bed" (Thompson p. 83). Early rising on the other hand was an antidote to the danger of midnight revels.
The introduction of leisure time amongst the working classes concerned the leisured classes greatly - "in what manner is this precious time expended by those of no mental cultivation?" asked one 19th century moralist.
These days most work and leisure time is not distinguished by clocking in and out machines, and many workers find the distinction blurred. Just as the public bell-ringing and Church clock has been privatised to the wristwatch and mobile phone, the decision on how early or late we clock off is often left dubiously to the employee. Yet the decision is not really with the worker - although there is no clock to record whether I leave at 5pm or stay late, there is the watchful eye of the boss and the pressure to impress, not codified in a contract but obligatory nonetheless. Twenty-First century labour is such that an order does not have to be verbally given for it to be apparent, indeed mandatory.
Objects such as the Gledhill can help to illuminate the historical significance of historians such as E. P. Thompson, and to reflect on how our own working conditions have been affected by the technological progress of something as commonplace and generic as a watch or clock. The heritage sector may focus on National Trust properties and objects of artistic value but for most of us, the lowly clock has had a much more significant presence in the formation of our daily life; the public tolling of bells, the grandfather clock, the Gledhill and now the illuminated clock on all London buses marking our time, work, leisure or somewhere inbetween.
*indebted to my father's cousin for the image and backstory - her blog can be found here.
Questions From a Worker Who Reads by Bertolt Brecht
Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the name of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished. Who raised it up so many times? In what houses Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished Did the masons go? Great Rome Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis The night the ocean engulfed it The drowning still bawled for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Did he not have even a cook with him? Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down. Was he the only one to weep? Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War. Who else won it?
Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors? Every ten years a great man. Who paid the bill?
So many reports. So many questions.