Alec Stuart "Al" Richardson (20 December 1941 – 22 November 2003) was a British

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

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 species; as well as the ...

and activist.

Biography

Born in Woolley Colliery, a pit village near

Barnsley Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It is the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. The town's population was 71,422 in 2021, while the wider boroug ...

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

, Richardson studied

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

at the

University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hu ...

before becoming a lecturer at the

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of ...

. He joined 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 ...

, but left after reading

Isaac Deutscher Isaac Deutscher (; 3 April 1907 – 19 August 1967) was a Polish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom before the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph S ...

's biography of

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

. Convinced of

Trotskyism Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

, Richardson joined the

Socialist Labour League The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name. The Club The WRP grew out of the faction Ger ...

(SLL), and resigned from the faculty at Exeter to become a history teacher at Forest Hill School,

South London South London is the southern part of Greater London, England, south of the River Thames. The region consists of the Districts of England, boroughs, in whole or in part, of London Borough of Bexley, Bexley, London Borough of Bromley, Bromley, Lon ...

. He soon quit the SLL to join the rival

International Marxist Group The International Marxist Group (IMG) was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1968 and 1982. It was the British Section of the Fourth International. It had around 1,000 members and supporters in the late 1970s. In 1980, it had 682 members; by ...

(IMG), and became prominent in the

Vietnam Solidarity Campaign The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) was originally set up in 1966 by activists around the International Group with the personal and financial support of Bertrand Russell. Ralph Schoenman acted both as Director of the Vietnam Solidarity Camp ...

. Despite having hitchhiked to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

to join the events of May 1968, Richardson was part of a small group that rejected the IMG's turn away from

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

s and the

labour movement The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considere ...

to work in the

student movement Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. In addition to education, student groups often play central roles in democratization and winning civil rights. Modern stu ...

. He became a founding member of the breakaway Revolutionary Communist League and was elected to its leadership, but in 1973 he left the League. Around this time he co-founded the '' Chartist'' magazine, and remained one of its influential figures. From the mid-1970s, Richardson focused his attention on recording the history of Trotskyism in Britain. He began interviewing veterans of the movement and, with Sam Bornstein, published three books on the topic through their Socialist Platform publishing house. In 1988, they founded the journal '' Revolutionary History'', dedicated to the history of the

anti-Stalinist left The anti-Stalinist left encompasses various kinds of Left-wing politics, left-wing political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, neo-Stalinism and the History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), system of governance that Stalin impleme ...

. The editor of '' Socialist Appeal'' described Richardson as "the first to publish a serious account of the History of British Trotskyism". Richardson also published under the pen name of Richard Stephenson. Richardson worked with various Trotskyist groups, in particular Workers Liberty, Workers Action and the

Militant tendency The Militant tendency, or Militant, was a Trotskyist group in the British Labour Party, organised around the ''Militant'' newspaper, which launched in 1964. In 1975, there was widespread press coverage of a Labour Party report on the infiltrat ...

, whose approaches he felt were closest to his own. However, in contrast to these groups, he opposed campaigns on the basis of race, gender or sexuality, believing that they were popular frontist. He never abandoned work inside the Labour Party, because he believed that any future revolutionary party can emerge only from within a mass working-class party.

Death

Richardson continued teaching and writing until his unexpected death on 22 November 2003. His funeral at Mortlake Crematorium was attended by 150 friends and former pupils, who draped his coffin in the flag of the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...

Personal life

Richardson was born into a family tied to the local mining industry; his grandfather had once lost his job after supporting a strike at the mine he was foreman of. The son of a colliery worker, Richardson was raised in a religious household. Although he failed his

eleven-plus The eleven-plus (11+) is a standardised examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academi ...

, he was able to continue his education up to university level. He later came to reject labour history as it was studied in universities, believing that the left needed to record its own history. As such he amassed a large personal archive of the socialist movement in Britain. As a keen

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...

Richardson was a member of the Egypt Exploration Society, and was fluent in

Egyptian hieroglyphics Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.I ...

Geʽez Geez ( or ; , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgical langu ...

, third century

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, and French.

Legacy

From the 1960s on, Richardson organised the first Karl Marx Memorial Pub Crawl, a tradition that has since been continued by various organised groups. Papers left by Richardson and Jim Higgins have been deposited in the Library of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

, which is in the university's Senate House.

Selected bibliography

* * * * * Richardson, Al. "Introduction". In * * * *

References

External links

"Al Richardson / Jim Higgins papers"
at Senate House Libraries, University of London. *John McIlroy

''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 24 January 2004. *Richard Price, , Workers Action, Number 24, January 2004. *Bruce Robinson
"Al Richardson: An 'Unorthodox Orthodox' Trotskyist"
Workers Liberty, 8 December 2003.
Remembering an Activist and a Scholar"
LabourNet, 8 December 2003. {{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Al 1941 births 2003 deaths Academics of the University of Exeter Alumni of the University of Hull British Marxist historians British Marxist writers British Trotskyists Communist Party of Great Britain members English Trotskyists Historians of communism International Marxist Group members People from South Yorkshire People from the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley Workers Revolutionary Party (UK) members