A century after his birth, EP Thompson’s empathy with those facing scorn and condescension is more relevant than ever. The first paragraph starts: “The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.”
The authors challenge the popular view of Leave voters as those left behind educationally and financially. They explain why it is individuals from an intermediate class, whose financial position has been declining, that represent an important section of the Brexit vote.
Historians of the bourgeois persuasion tend to focus on the doings of major figures in history. Less emphasis is placed by them on the role of working people, often nameless and ill-remembered. Edward Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class was a methodological breakthrough in showing how a working class made itself. The book under review follows that precedent, charting how ordinary Europeans from the Middle Ages to post-Soviet Europe made their own history.
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