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'People of a Special Mould?' Conference, Manchester, April 2001
Historians of communism and communist parties from around the world gathered in Manchester in April 2001 for the three-day ‘People of a Special Mould?’ communist biographical and prosopographical conference. Below Jeremy Tranmer reports on his experiences of the conference. Kerry Taylor's conference report can be found here.
This three-day conference, held in the plush surroundings of the University of Manchester conference centre, brought together specialists on communism from throughout the world. The participants included not only academics, but also some former communists, particularly some ex-members of the British CP.
More than 25 workshops and two witness seminars were held during the weekend, and over 50 papers were given. The papers covered different periods of time, spanning the twentieth century. Nevertheless, most dwelled on the first half of the century. They concerned communism in various areas including South Africa (Allison Drew), New Zealand (Kerry Taylor) and Scandinavia (Åsmund Egge), the emphasis being clearly on countries where communists had not been in power. Great Britain was the country which received the most attention, while Asia was not mentioned.
The biographical and prosopographical approach was followed by most paper-givers, avoiding the potential danger of eclecticism. The lives and roles of leading communists, such as Karl Radek (Jean-François Fayet) and Clara Zetkin (Tania Unludag) were presented, as well as the activities of lesser-known communists like James Desmond Buckle (Hakim Adi). Other categories of party-members, including school children (Margaret Schrevel), families (Kevin Morgan) and women (Karen Hunt), were also analysed.
As was to be expected, the witness seminar about reactions within the British CP to the happenings of 1956 was one of the liveliest debates and led to some interesting exchanges. The participants, Alison Macleod, Bill Moore, John Saville and Dennis Ogden, defended their version of events with vigour, suggesting that it was possible to return to a subject already dealt with elsewhere and still shed new light on it. This session alone proved the usefulness of the biographical approach and showed the impossibility of a definitive version of history. Consequently, it is a shame that it was not recorded.
One of the many thought-provoking papers was Jason Heppell's about the relations between Jews and British communism, and in particular about why there was a greater proportion of Jews in the CP than in the overall British population. Heppell went beyond the usual explanations based on the anti-fascist appeal of the CP and the socialist heritage of British Jews provided by East European immigrants. Concentrating on the latter point and using biographical material, he argued convincingly that few direct family links existed between British and east european marxists and that Jewish CPers were just as likely to have had non-communist or non-socialist parents as left-wing parents. Moreover, the relatively extensive integration in British society of Jews resulted in the absence of a Yiddish-based culture able to support a specifically Jewish version of socialism. Heppell concluded that involvement with the CP represented a break with their parent community for second and third generation Jewish people.
The quality and quantity of the papers given will be difficult for future conferences on similar subjects to match. The constant choice between three workshops made for difficult decisions and the frustrating impression that something interesting would be missed no matter what decision was made. Given the range of papers, it was unfortunate that no formal attempt was made to start the difficult tasks of comparing the experiences of communists from different times and places and drawing overall conclusions. Nevertheless, participants had ample opportunity to discuss such matters outside workshops in the course of the weekend.
