A. L. Morton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Arthur Leslie Morton (1903-07-04)4 July 1903 |
| Died | 23 October 1987(1987-10-23) (aged 84) The Old Chapel,Clare, Suffolk |
| Education | Peterhouse,Cambridge University |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist for theDaily Worker. Bookseller. Teacher atSummerhill School |
| Known for | Communist activism, founding member of theWilliam Morris Society |
| Notable work | A People's History of England (1938) |
| Political party | Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) |
| Spouse | Vivien Jackson |
Arthur Leslie Morton (4 July 1903 – 23 October 1987) was an EnglishMarxist historian. He worked as anindependent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of theHistorians Group of theCommunist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He is best known forA People's History of England, but he also did valuable work onWilliam Blake and theRanters, and for the studyThe English Utopia.
Morton was born inSuffolk, the son of a Yorkshire farmer.[1] He had two siblings, a sister Kathleen and a brother Max. He attended school inBury St Edmunds until he was 16 and then at boarding school inEastbourne. He then studied the English tripos atPeterhouse, Cambridge, from 1921 to 1924, graduating with a third-class degree.[2] While at Cambridge, he developed friends from within theuniversity Labour club, includingAllen Hutt who became a typographer andIvor Montagu who was later active in the film industry. He encountered socialist ideas, moving towards thecommunist group at the university aroundMaurice Dobb.[1][3]
After college he taught atSteyning Grammar School in Sussex, where under his influence, most of the staff supported theGeneral Strike in 1926. Dismissed as a consequence, he taught for a year atA.S. Neill's progressive school,Summerhill at that time inLyme Regis. He then moved to London to write and run a bookshop inFinsbury Circus. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and along with his wife, Vivien, remained a member for the rest of his life. Vivien was the daughter of the socialistThomas A. Jackson.[3]
Morton belonged to a group of London left-wing intellectuals of the 1930s, while working as a journalist for theDaily Worker. He served on the editorial board of the paper. His friends at that time includedA.L. Lloyd andMaurice Cornforth; he assistedVictor B. Neuburg. In 1932 and 1933, he was involved in a debate withF. R. Leavis, in the pages ofScrutiny.[3] He participated in theHunger marches of 1934.
His 1938A People's History of England, published by theLeft Book Club, was adopted quasi-officially as the CPGB national history, and later editions were issued on that basis.[3]
During the early part of the Second World War, he was the full-time district organiser of the Communist Party's East Anglia district and became chair of the district committee for many years.[3]
Morton spent most of the 1939–45World War in the Royal Artillery labouring on construction sites in the Isle of Sheppey.[1]
He was part of the group of leading communist historians invited to Moscow in 1954/5, withChristopher Hill,Eric Hobsbawm, and theByzantine historianRobert Browning. Morton was a founding member of theWilliam Morris Society in 1955.[1]
His devotion to William Morris contrasts with his almost visceral hostility to such "ignoble" authors as Aldous Huxley and especially George Orwell.
In his 1952 work'The English Utopia', for example, he characterises Orwell'sNineteen Eighty-Four as representing "the lowest depths to which the newgenre of anti-utopias could fall" and which plays on "the lowest fears and prejudices engendered by bourgeois society in dissolution" and in which Orwell is said to resort to "no slander... too gross, no device too filthy."
"Nineteen Eighty-Four is, for this country at least, the last word to date in counter-revolutionary apologetics," he wrote.
Of Huxley'sApe and Essence, Morton says of the author, "It is significant that he never indulges in a general diatribe without adding a specific sneer directed against Communism and the Soviet Union."
Of the Soviet Union itself, Morton in hisThe English Utopia wrote:"We can see today in the building of socialism a transformation of men and of nature on a scale never before attempted. The fantasies ofCokaygne, the projects of Bacon, the anticipations ofErnest Jones are in effect being translated into facts in the plans which are now (1952) beginning to change the face and climate of the U.S.S.R and other socialist countries."
Morton participated in the People's March for Jobs in the early 1980s, a demonstration of 500 anti-unemployment protesters who marched to London from Northern England.
Morton died in 1987 at his home in The Old Chapel atClare in Suffolk, aged 84.
A.L. Morton bequeathed his library to the university library ofRostock University inRostock,Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany (which was then in theGerman Democratic Republic and named Wilhelm-Pieck-University after the GDR's first and only president,Wilhelm Pieck). The collection comprises more than 3,900 volumes, including all foreign-language editions ofA People's History of England, many contain hand-written comments by Morton.
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