A. L. Morton

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(Arthur) Leslie Morton (1903 - 1987) was a prolific English Marxist historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He is best known for his classic A People's History of England , but he also did valuable work on William Blake and the Ranters, and for the study The English Utopia.

He was born in Suffolk, and studied at the University of Cambridge from 1921-1924. There he encountered socialist ideas, possibly from the communist group that formed around Maurice Dobb. Later he taught at A. S. Neill's school Summerhill.

He belonged to a group of London left-wing intellectuals of the 1930s, while working as a journalist for the Daily Worker. His friends at that time included Albert. L. Lloyd and Maurice Cornforth; he assisted Victor B. Neuburg. In 1932 and 1933 he was involved in a debate with F. R. Leavis, in the pages of Scrutiny.

His 1938 A People's History Of England was adopted quasi-officially as the CPGB national history, and went through later editions on that basis.

He was part of the group of leading communist historians invited to Moscow in 1954/5, with Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, and the Byzantine historian Robert Browning.

[edit] Works

A People's History Of England (1938)
Language of Men (1945) essays
The story of the English revolution (1949) Communist Party pamphlet
The English Utopia (1952)
The British Labour Movement, 1770-1920 (1956) with George Tate
The Everlasting Gospel: A Study in the Sources of William Blake (1958)
The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen (1962)
The matter of Britain: essays in a living culture (1966)
The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution (1970)
Political Writings of William Morris (1973) editor
Freedom in Arms A selection of Leveller writings (1975) editor
Collected poems (1976)
Three Works By William Morris (1977) editor
History and the Imagination: Selected Writings of A.L. Morton (1990) edited by Margot Heinemann and Willie Thompson