Ralph Miliband | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Adolphe Miliband (1924-01-07)7 January 1924 Brussels, Belgium |
| Died | 21 May 1994(1994-05-21) (aged 70) London, England |
| Citizenship |
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| Political party | Labour (1951–1964) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | London School of Economics |
| Thesis | Popular Thought in the French Revolution, 1789–1794 (1957) |
| Doctoral advisor | Harold Laski |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Sociology |
| Sub-discipline | Political sociology |
| School or tradition | |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral students | Leo Panitch[1][2] |
| Notable students | |
| Notable works | The State in Capitalist Society (1969) |
| Influenced | |
| Military career | |
| Service | Royal Navy |
| Service years | 1943–1946 |
| Rank | Chief petty officer |
Ralph Miliband (bornAdolphe Miliband; 7 January 1924 – 21 May 1994) was a Britishsociologist. He has been described as "one of the best known academicMarxists of his generation", in this manner being compared withE. P. Thompson,Eric Hobsbawm andPerry Anderson.[8]
Miliband was born in Belgium to working-classPolish Jewish immigrants. He fled to Britain in 1940 with his father, to avoid persecution whenNazi Germany invaded Belgium. Learning to speak English and enrolling at theLondon School of Economics, he became involved inleft-wing politics and made a personal commitment to the cause of socialism at the grave ofKarl Marx. After serving in theRoyal Navy during the Second World War, he settled in London in 1946 and naturalised as a British subject in 1948.
By the 1960s, he was a prominent member of theNew Left movement in Britain, which was critical of established socialist governments in theSoviet Union and Central Europe (theEastern Bloc). He published several books onMarxist theory and thecriticism of capitalism, such asParliamentary Socialism (1961),The State in Capitalist Society (1969), andMarxism and Politics (1977), and he edited the Writings of the Left series (Jonathan Cape and Grove Press, 1972–1973).[9][10]
Both of his sons,David andEd Miliband, went on to become senior members of theLabour Party following their father's death. David was the BritishForeign Secretary from 2007 to 2010. Ed wasEnergy Secretary from 2008 to 2010, and has served in the same office since 2024. Both contested the2010 Labour leadership election; Ed won narrowly and served asLeader of the Opposition from 2010 to 2015.
Miliband's parents grew up in the impoverished Jewish quarter ofWarsaw, Poland. His father Samuel Miliband (1895–1966) was a member of the socialistJewish Labour Bund in Warsaw.[11]
In 1922, Miliband's parents were among the Polish Jews who migrated westward, toBrussels in Belgium, after theFirst World War.[12] It was here that Miliband's parents first met, and they married in 1923.[11] His father, was a skilled craftsman who made leather goods, and his mother, Renia (or Renée, née Steinlauf 1901–1975), travelled around selling women's hats.[11] She was embarrassed by having to work in this profession, hiding it from her neighbours, but required the extra income due to the economic troubles of theGreat Depression during the 1930s.[citation needed] Renia spoke Polish fluently, but her husband had only had a very basic education and, as such, probably only spokeYiddish, but he taught himself French by reading newspapers.[13] Their son, Adolphe, was born in Brussels on 7 January 1924.
He grew up in the working-class community ofSaint-Gilles, and in 1939, aged 15, he became a member ofHashomer Hatzair ("Young Guard"), a socialist-Zionist youth group.[11] In May 1940, following the outbreak of theSecond World War, the armies ofNazi Germany invaded Belgium, and the Miliband family, being Jewish, decided to flee the country from theantisemitic Nazi authorities. They missed the train to Paris and, although Adolphe – who was then sixteen – wanted to walk to the border, the family recognised that his younger sister Anna Hélène, who was only twelve, was too young for such a trek. It was decided that Renia and Anna Hélène would stay in Brussels, while Sam and Ralph would go ahead and make the journey to Paris. However, along the way Sam decided to change the plan and went with his son toOstend, where they caught the last boat to Britain. They arrived there on 19 May 1940.[13]
In London, Miliband abandoned the name Adolphe due to its connection with Nazi leaderAdolf Hitler and instead began calling himself Ralph. He and his father gained work in theChiswick area removing furniture from houses bombed inthe Blitz and, after six weeks, were able to send news to Renia and Anne-Marie that they were in London. Discovering that the Jews of Belgium were being rounded up by the Nazis to be sent to extermination camps inthe Holocaust, Renia and Anne-Marie managed to escape to a rural farm, where they were hidden by a French family until after the end of the war, when they were reunited with Sam and Ralph.[13] However, several of Miliband's relatives and his best friend, Maurice Tan, were killed in the Holocaust.[11]
To his dismay, the teenage Miliband came across antisemitism in London. In a diary entry made shortly after he arrived in Britain, he wrote:
The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world ... When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent in general and for the French in particular. They didn't like the French before the defeat ... Since the defeat, they have the greatest contempt for the French Army ... England first. This slogan is taken for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose theirempire would be the worst possible humiliation.[14]
Learning to speak English, Ralph gained a place atActon Technical College (nowBrunel University)[15] in west London with the help of theLeague of Nations'Commission for Refugees in January 1941. After completing his course there, he gained the help of theBelgian government in exile to study at theLondon School of Economics (LSE). He had become interested inMarxism andrevolutionary socialism, and visited the grave of Marxism's founderKarl Marx inHighgate Cemetery in north London, to swear an oath to "the workers' cause".[8] Meanwhile, with the constantaerial bombing of London by theLuftwaffe, the LSE was evacuated to the premises ofPeterhouse, Cambridge.Harold Laski, the historian and socialist theorist, was a dominant figure in the LSE at this time. Miliband studied under Laski, and was considerably influenced by him politically.[13]
Miliband volunteered to be sent to Belgium to assist theresistance movement, and passed his medical in January 1942, but as a Polish national he was not allowed to join until thePolish authorities gave consent. He asked Laski for help in joining the services, and shortly afterwardsA. V. Alexander,First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote advising him to "go and see a vice-admiral at the Admiralty, who would fix it up". Miliband joined theRoyal Navy in June 1943.[14] He served for three years in theBelgian Section of the Royal Navy, achieving the rank ofchief petty officer.[12] He served on several warships as a German speaking radio intelligence officer in theMediterranean, tasked with intercepting German radio communications.[11][16] His initial exhilaration soon wore off as months passed without seeing action, then in June 1944 he took part in supporting theNormandy landings which he wrote was "the biggest operation in history" and he "would not miss it for anything". He saw further action at theToulon landings.[14]
After the war, Miliband resumed his studies at the LSE in 1946, and graduated with a first-class degree in 1947.[11] He began a doctorate onPopular Thought in the French Revolution, 1789–1794 in 1947, but did not complete his thesis until 1956.[11] After obtaining aLeverhulme research scholarship to continue his studies at the LSE, Miliband taught at the Roosevelt College (nowRoosevelt University) in Chicago. He became anaturalisedBritish subject on 28 September 1948.[17] In 1949 he was offered an assistant lectureship inpolitical science at the LSE.[11]
Miliband joined the Labour Party in 1951, and was a reluctantBevanite in the early 1950s. He joined the BritishNew Left, alongside the likes ofE. P. Thompson andJohn Saville, at theNew Reasoner in 1958, which became theNew Left Review in 1960.
Miliband published his first book,Parliamentary Socialism, in 1961, which examined the role that the Labour Party played in British politics and society from a Marxist position, finding it wanting for a lack of radicalism.[16] Paul Blackledge would later claim that it was "arguably Miliband's finest work".[8] He ended his membership of the Labour Party in the mid-1960s, and subsequently remained independent of formal political affiliation.[12] He began arguing that socialists in Britain had to start working towards building a viable alternative that would be genuinely revolutionary socialist in its positions.[8]
He also set up theSocialist Register with Saville in 1964 and was influenced by the American sociologistC. Wright Mills, of whom he had been a friend. He publishedThe State in Capitalist Society in 1969, a study in Marxistpolitical sociology, rejecting the idea that pluralism spread political power, and maintaining that power in Western democracies was concentrated in the hands of a dominant class.[11]
Miliband was passionately opposed toAmerican involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1967 he wrote in theSocialist Register that "the US has over ... a period of years been engaged ... in the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, the maiming of many more" and that the United States' "catalogue of horrors" against the Vietnamese people was being done "in the name of an enormous lie". In the same article, he attackedHarold Wilson for his defence of the United States' action in Vietnam, describing it as being the "most shameful chapter in thehistory of the Labour Party". He went on to say that the US government "made no secret of the political and diplomatic importance it attached to the unwavering support of a British Labour Government".[18]
He left the LSE in 1972, having found himself torn by the controversies which had beleaguered the institution over the preceding few years, particularly the LSE's responses to student protests in the late 1960s. He took up the post of Professor of Politics at theUniversity of Leeds. The time at Leeds was an unhappy period for Miliband. He suffered a heart attack soon after the move, and did not enjoy the administrative responsibilities as a head of department.[11] He resigned in 1978, and subsequently chose to assume several posts in Canada and the USA.[11] He took a Professorship atBrandeis University in 1977, and also lectured at other universities in North America, includingYork University in Toronto and theCity University of New York,[16] although he remained based in London.[16] He publishedMarxism and Politics in 1977, andCapitalist Democracy in Britain in 1982. By now Miliband was active in theSocialist Society with friends such asTariq Ali andHilary Wainwright.[19][20]
In 1985, his essay "The New Revisionism in Britain" appeared in the 25th anniversary issue of theNew Left Review[21] in which he responds to writers associated with theMarxism Today magazine such asEric Hobsbawm andStuart Hall.[22] Despite their differences, Hobsbawm had been a long-standing friend of Miliband.
He suffered from cardiac problems in later life, and had abypass operation in 1991. He died 21 May 1994.[23] aged 70, survived by his wife and sons. He is buried inHighgate Cemetery, close toKarl Marx.[24] His last book,Socialism for a Sceptical Age, was published in 1994, after his death.[12]
Ralph married Polish-bornMarion Kozak in September 1961.[25] She was the daughter of a steel manufacturer, David Kozak, with a Polish Jewish heritage, and also one of his former students at the LSE. They made a home inPrimrose Hill, and later in Bolton Gardens, South Kensington, and had two sons, David in 1965 and Edward in 1969.
His two sons both became Labour Party politicians, and in 2007 they became the first siblings to serve together ascabinet ministers since 1938. His elder son,David, was Labour MP forSouth Shields from 2001 to 2013. From 2005 to 2010 he served in the cabinet, latterly (from 2007) asForeign Secretary. His younger son,Ed, was elected a Labour MP for theDoncaster North seat in 2005. From 2007 to 2008 he served as Minister for the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office and drafted Labour's manifesto for the 2010 general election. In October 2008 Ed was promoted to the position of Secretary of the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). On 25 September 2010,[26] he became the20th leader of the Labour Party[26] following aleadership contest in which David had also run. David would step down from politics in 2013, but Ed would later serve asSecretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero inKeir Starmer's Cabinet, following a stint as a backbencher in the aftermath of the2015 General Election and during the leadership ofJeremy Corbyn.[27]
The journalistAndy McSmith ofThe Independent, in comparing the lives of Ralph, David and Ed, said that the elder figure had a "nobility and a drama" that was lacking in his sons' "steady, pragmatic political careers".[13] On 27 September 2013, theDaily Mail published an article disputing Ralph Miliband's patriotism with the headline "The man who hated Britain". Three days later after negotiations the paper published a response byEd Miliband describing his father's life, and saying theDaily Mail's article was character assassination. At the same time as publishing this response, the newspaper reiterated its assertion and published an editorial refusing to apologise.[28] The Labour leader's office responded:
[Ed Miliband] wanted the Daily Mail to treat his late father's reputation fairly. Rather than acknowledge it has smeared his father, the newspaper has repeated its original claim. This simply diminishes the Daily Mail further. It will be for people to judge whether this newspaper's treatment of a war veteran, Jewish refugee from the Nazis and distinguished academic reflects the values and decency we should all expect in our political debate.[29]
Ed Miliband's response gained support from across the political spectrum, and was endorsed by the Conservative Prime MinisterDavid Cameron. When it was found that aMail on Sunday reporter had intruded on the private funeral ofEd Miliband's uncle, the newspaper group's proprietorLord Rothermere and the Sunday paper's editor apologised for this.[30][31]
In 1974 Miliband's friend, Michael Lipman, established the Lipman Trust as a progressive funding body for socialist education. Miliband would serve as the Trust's first chair, until his death. Miliband invited both John Saville, his wife Marion, and other notable scholars, academics, and experts in socialist education, such asHilary Wainwright andDoreen Massey to the Trust. Following Miliband's death, the Trust became the Lipman-Miliband Trust, in recognition of Miliband's many years of work.
The Trust remains an important funding body for socialist education and provides regular grants for a variety of educational projects.[32]
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