Royden John Harrison (3 March 1927 – 30 June 2002) was a British labour

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

.Michael Barratt Brown and John Halstead,
Obituary: Royden Harrison
, ''The Guardian'' (3 July 2002), retrieved 9 December 2019. He was born in London and educated at King Alfred's School, Hampstead, before being evacuated to Canada and Australia because of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

.John L. Halstead, 'Royden John Harrison (1927-2002)', ''History Workshop Journal'', No. 55 (Spring, 2003), pp. 283-286. He attended a progressive school in Australia, where he was tutored in logic and philosophy by an Austrian-Jewish refugee. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at

St Catherine's College, Oxford St Catherine's College (colloquially called St Catz or Catz) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford and is the newest college admitting both undergraduate and graduate students. Tracing its roots back to 1868 (although t ...

, after he won an ex-servicemen's scholarship.Jim Hagan, 'Royden Harrison (03.03.1927-30.06.2002)', ''Labour History'', No. 83 (Nov., 2002), pp. 209-210. Here he was tutored by G. D. H. Cole, who also oversaw Harrison's doctorate in English

Positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. ...

. While at Oxford he met his future wife, Pauline Cowan, who was a molecular biologist. After they were both awarded PhDs, they took up posts at

Sheffield University , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

, where he became a lecturer in 1955. It was here, with Kenneth Alexander and John Hughes, that he founded day-release educational courses for miners from Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Harrison also represented the

National Union of Public Employees The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) was a British trade union which existed between 1908 and 1993. It represented public sector workers in local government, the Health Service, universities, and water authorities. History The union ...

on Sheffield's trades and labour council. Harrison was a member of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

until 1956, when he joined the Labour Party. In 1960 he helped found the Society of the Study of Labour History and became editor of its bulletin (which was later renamed the ''Labour History Journal''). In 1965 he was appointed senior lecturer at

Bernard Crick Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008) was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views can be summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as ...

's Department of Political Theory and Institutions at Sheffield before he became reader in 1969. In 1971 he succeeded

E. P. Thompson Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in ...

as Professor and Director of

Warwick University The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

's Centre for the Study of Social History. Here he oversaw the founding of the modern records centre for storing the papers of the

Trades Union Congress The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in England and Wales, representing the majority of trade unions. There are 48 affiliated unions, with a total of about 5.5 million members. Frances O ...

and the

Confederation of British Industry The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is a UK business organisation, which in total claims to speak for 190,000 businesses, this is made up of around 1,500 direct members and 188,500 non-members. The non members are represented through the 1 ...

, as well as those of other unions and businesses. Harrison also created a research programme in which he adapted methods used in the natural sciences, which he had learnt from his wife. Harrison contributed an essay to the first volume of ''Essays in Labour History'' in 1960. In his first book, ''Before the Socialists'' (1965), he employed a "

history from below A people's history, or history from below, is a type of historical narrative which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people rather than leaders. There is an emphasis on disenfranchised, the oppressed, the ...

" perspective to study the relationship between labour and politics during 1861–1881. He also edited a collection of essays from what he called his "student collective" at Warwick: ''The Independent Collier'' was published in 1978 and, according to John Halstead, it "transformed the study of the miners". ''Divisions of Labour'' (1985) focused on the "

labour aristocracy Labor aristocracy or labour aristocracy (also aristocracy of labor) has at least four meanings: (1) as a term with Marxist theoretical underpinnings; (2) as a specific type of trade unionism; (3) as a shorthand description by revolutionary indu ...

Works

*''Before The Socialists: Studies in Labour and Politics, 1861–1881'' (Routledge: 1965; 2nd edn, Gregg Revivals, 1994). *(editor), ''The English Defence of the Commune'' (Merlin, 1971). *(editor), ''The Independent Collier: The Coal Miner as Archetypal Proletarian Reconsidered'' (Harvester, 1978). *(editor with J. Zeitlin), ''Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century Britain'' (Harvester, 1985). *''The Life and Times of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1858-1905: The Formative Years'' (Macmillan, 1999).

Works

Notes

Further reading