Radicals

After failing his 11-plus and leaving school at 16, Geoff Andrews worked for several years before taking up a place at Ruskin College and entering higher education. He has spent most of his time since in adult education, teaching for The Open University and Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education. He is the author of several books on twentieth century British history, including three political biographies, and has written widely on the left and labour movement for Prospect, the New Statesman and Marxism Today.

“An engrossing and broad-ranging study which should provoke debate.”—Brian Hanley, Irish Times“A stirring book that brings back into view forgotten figures. . . . For many on the Left, this will be a necessary and revitalising work.”—Unseen Histories“If Labour is to recapture its new lost millions, the universalist values of the 19th- and 20th-century labour movement - “fraternity, mutuality, fair treatment and individual self-fulfilment" - are not, as Geoff Andrews argues, a bad place to start.”—David Edger, New Statesman“Radicals covers a vast amount of British working class and socialist history, from Chartism to the New Left, via George Orwell and Nye Bevan, and on to the Open University.”—Mike Phipps, Labour Hub“Wide-ranging, lucid and very readable, the book is a fresh account of the political left over two centuries.”—Chris Wrigley, author of British Trade Unions since 1933“A brilliant, erudite and engaged history of the intersection of Britain’s working classes and its radical traditions in all their depth and many-sidedness. Whether or not you agree with all of Andrews’s conclusions, Radicals should be required reading for everyone interested in the past, present and the future of the British left.”—John Merrick, editor of Raphael Samuel’s Workshop of the World“Geoff Andrews’ succinct retelling of the story of the British Left focuses on radical ideas and cultures rather than party politics. He shows how the working class, its emerging ethos and its struggle for self-education, helped to shape British society across more than a century.”—Tom Buchanan, University of Oxford“Geoff Andrews tells two centuries of working-class history in an informed, lucid style that is always engaging and often poignant. Radicals reminds us that the British working-classes were never dogmatic about socialist doctrine. British socialism developed out of working-class cultures that valued loyalty, mutualism, co-operation, fraternity, self-reliance, and self-improvement.”—Richard Johnson, Queen Mary University of London“Radicals is a marvellous and timely affirmation of the ideas and intellects which made, maintained, and sustained the British labour movement. Andrews makes a powerful, essential case for why historians and today’s progressive voices—indeed all of us—should pay far greater attention to adult educators, autodidacts, creatives, feminists, and working people. This is an outstanding contribution to the history of our times.”—Daryl Leeworthy, author of Labour Country