Page 32 - Introducing Cultural Studies

.P. Thompson:
Understanding
Class

A dedicated peace
campaigner and Vice-
President of the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament (CND),
E.P. Thompson was a radical
historian who changed the
perception of British history. In
his seminal work, The Making
of the English Working Class
(1978), he sought to
demonstrate the coming-into-
being of the English working
class in a specific historical
period and thereby to recover
the agency, concerns and
experience of the mass of the
English population ignored by
the dominant tradition of
conventional history.

Class is not a thing - it is
something which in fact
happens (and can be shown
to have happened) in human
relationships.

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