Radical Histories

In 2016 it was twenty years since the death of Raphael Samuel, historian and inspiration for History Workshop. To mark his memory the Centre for History named after him, together with History Workshop Journal, devised a conference in which the project of radical history in our own times could be debated. In the same spirit, Felix Driver has brought together a special virtual issue of History Workshop Journal comprised of Samuel's contributions to the journal for the first twenty years of its life (http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/history-workshop-journal-virtual-special-issue-raphael-samuel/). How is the radicalness of 'radical' history to be determined? Where, today, are radical histories located? Several hundred people gathered at Queen Mary University of London in July 2016 to discuss these questions. In the event, not for the first time, history moved faster than we did. The Brexit vote had just occurred. Indeed, as it turned out, the bulk of the editorial work for this issue of HWJ was undertaken in the period between the EU referendum, in June, and the election of Trump, in November. Each in its way can be perceived as a resurgence of a certain radical sensibility. But not in the way that we'd imagined. History looks significantly different at the end of the year than it did at the start. The crisis in the old political order, in Europe and in North America, is deepening; illiberalism in India, the world's largest democracy, points toward right-wing, nationalist, populist sentiment. New dangers press in close. Reflection on where we are historically calls for sustained work.

To this end we republish Jane Caplan's assessment of the US election and of the historical analogies which have been called upon to make sense of it. This brief reflection first appeared in HW online. As she explains here the piece was written at speed, in the immediate aftermath of the election. It was drafted for the moment, breaking off from writing about National Socialism. It is necessarily unfinished, a response to the pressing question – how might historical thinking help us to comprehend our own anxious, fearful times? It stands as an invitation for others to join the conversation. To paraphrase Walter Benjamin, in order to think historically we need to seize hold of memories of the past as they flash up in moments of danger.

In Britain the Brexit crisis is of a different order, yet it too illuminates the degree to which the inherited systems of political representation have weakened dramatically. There is something mesmerizing about witnessing close up the collapse of a political settlement, like watching in slow motion the destruction of old high-rise blocks of flats which belong to another age. In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote there was scarcely a politician who knew how to proceed. Since then, May's historic compromise with the anti-EU cadres has gathered force while the Labour Party is paralyzed by its contending factions.

It seems now as if this was a collapse waiting to happen. The current crisis has deep historical roots, which need to be disinterred. We need to ask what are the long, multiple histories which shape our political conjuncture. This could be a first step towards broadening historical analysis such that it feeds into public narrative, carrying as well a popular reach. And slowly, with luck, such an outcome might eventually converge with the emergence of a new democratic politics. If history is a way of knowing the world which can work as an antidote to catastrophic thought then there may be virtue in the fact that – most often – historical knowledge necessarily moves slowly. It is slow thought.

A number of contributors in this issue were close to Raphael Samuel (Alison Light, Gareth Stedman Jones, Jerry White, Cora Kaplan, Jane Caplan); for them the promise of radical history is bound up with intimate memories, in which his thought still lives. This is part of the process of remembering and working through. Raphael Samuel understood history and memory as a continuum. In these times, historical memoir brings alive moments from the...