Arthur Leslie Morton (4 July 1903 – 23 October 1987) was an English

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group 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 ...

(CPGB). He is best known for ''A People's History of England'', but he also did valuable work on

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

and the Ranters, and for the study ''The English Utopia''.

Life

Morton was born in

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

, the son of a Yorkshire farmer."R. W." {23 February 2014
"A.L.Morton,1903-1987" (obituary)
''Morris Society''. Accessed: February 2014 He had two siblings, a sister Kathleen and a brother Max. He attended school in

Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as ''Bury,'' is a cathedral as well as market town and civil parish in the West Suffolk District, West Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St. Edmunds an ...

until he was 16 and then at boarding school in

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. It is also a non-metropolitan district, local government district with Borough status in the United Kingdom, bor ...

. He then studied the English tripos at Peterhouse, Cambridge, from 1921 to 1924, graduating with a third-class degree.Staff (19 June 1924) "University News" ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' While at Cambridge, he developed friends from within the university Labour club, including Allen Hutt who became a typographer and Ivor Montagu who was later active in the film industry. He encountered socialist ideas, moving towards the

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

group at the university around Maurice Dobb.Stevenson, Graham (19 September 2008
"Morton A L"
''Compendium of Communist Biographies''. Accessed: February 2014 After college he taught at

Steyning Grammar School Steyning Grammar School is a coeducational comprehensive day and boarding, senior school and sixth form, located in Steyning, West Sussex, England. The school has two lower school sites catering for Years 7 and 8. The original site was located ...

in Sussex, where under his influence, most of the staff supported the

General Strike A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions ...

in 1926. Dismissed as a consequence, he taught for a year at A.S. Neill's progressive school, Summerhill at that time in Lyme Regis. He then moved to London to write and run a bookshop in Finsbury 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 socialist Thomas A. Jackson. Morton belonged to a group of London left-wing intellectuals of the 1930s, while working as a journalist for the '' Daily Worker''. He served on the editorial board of the paper. His friends at that time included A.L. Lloyd and Maurice Cornforth; he assisted Victor B. Neuburg. In 1932 and 1933, he was involved in a debate with F. R. Leavis, in the pages of '' Scrutiny''. He participated in the Hunger marches of 1934. His 1938 ''A People's History of England'', published by the Left Book Club, was adopted quasi-officially as the CPGB national history, and later editions were issued on that basis. 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. Morton spent most of the 1939–45

World War A world war is an international War, conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World War I ...

in the Royal Artillery labouring on construction sites in the Isle of Sheppey. He was part of the group of leading communist historians invited to Moscow in 1954/5, with Christopher Hill,

Eric Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called the "long 19th century" (''Th ...

, and the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

historian

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian literature, Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentar ...

. Morton was a founding member of the William Morris Society in 1955. He 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 at Clare in Suffolk, aged 84.

Library

A.L. Morton bequeathed his library to the university library of Rostock University in

Rostock Rostock (; Polabian language, Polabian: ''Roztoc''), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (), is the largest city in the German States of Germany, state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the sta ...

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV; ; ), also known by its Anglicisation, anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a Federated state, state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's States of Germany, sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpom ...

, Germany (which was then in the

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

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 of ''A People's History of England'', many contain hand-written comments by Morton.

Works

''A People's History Of England ''(1938)
*
Language of Men
' (1945) essays *''The Story of the English Revolution ''(1949), Communist Party pamphlet *
The English Utopia
' (1952) *
The British Labour Movement, 1770-1920
' (1956) with George Tate *''The Everlasting Gospel: A Study in the Sources of William Blake'' (1958) *
The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen
' (1962) *
The Matter of Britain: Essays in a Living Culture
' (1966) *''The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution'' (1970) *''Political Writings of William Morris'' (1973) editor *
Freedom in Arms: A Selection of Leveller Writings
' (1975) editor *''Collected poems'' (1976) *''Three Works By William Morris'' (1977) editor *
1688: How Glorious was the Revolution?
' (1988) *''History and the Imagination: Selected Writings of A.L. Morton'' (1990) edited by Margot Heinemann and Willie Thompson

References

Notes Bibliography * Calladine, Amy (May 30, 2010
"History from Below"
''New Histories'' v.1, n.7 * Cornforth, Maurice ed. (Winter 1980/81)) ''Rebels & Their Causes: Essays in Honour of A. L. Morton'' Science & Society v.44, n.4, pp. 501–503 * Simkin, John (September 1997
"A. L. Morton"
Spartacus Educational Further reading * Heinemann, Margot and Thompson, Willie eds.(1990) ''History and the Imagination: Selected Writings of A.L. Morton''/ London: Lawrence & Wishart. * Hogsbjerg, Christian (2020) "A.L. Morton and the Poetics of People's History", ''

Socialist History The Socialist History Society (SHS) is a British-based organisation which publishes a twice-yearly History Journal, journal (''Socialist History'') mainly about the history of the socialist and labour movement, labour movements in Britain. It also ...

'', v.58 * Crossley, James (2025) ''A. L. Morton and the Radical Tradition'' London: Palgrave Macmillan.

External links

AL Morton archive
at Marxists.org
A. L. Morton's Library
in the Catalogue of Rostock University Library
A. L. Morton and the English Radical Tradition
resources on the life and work of A. L. Morton {{DEFAULTSORT:Morton, A. L. 1903 births 1987 deaths Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge British communists British male journalists British Marxist historians British Marxists Communist Party of Great Britain members Communist Party Historians Group members Marxist journalists 20th-century British historians