Martin Wainwright: History is in the telling by ordinary folk
Famously, everyone has a story to tell, but it is thanks to a poem and a letter in the New Statesman that we know how brilliantly "ordinary" people can turn into historians. Seventy years ago, contributions to Kingsley Martin's magazine by Tom Harrisson (the poem) and Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings (the joint letter) started the enormous "people's chronicle" called Mass Observation (MO).
It was comical to begin with, as London intellectuals eavesdropped in the north-east, although even at that stage they made rich social discoveries. Once the name of the project became true, as masses of people sent in regular observations, the power of the idea was overwhelming.
Look in any history of Britain since 1937 and you will see the importance of the archive; the index of The People's War, by Angus Calder, for instance, has many more index references to MO than to Adolf Hitler. Only Winston Churchill does better, but remember that he wrote: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
The muscle and flow of Churchillian prose is typical of history from the top, which is naturally interesting but often flawed by artifice. Much less so the pencil-scribbled diaries of a housewife in the Blitz, or today's email and audio records of mass observers whose work continues to evolve.
In 1981, the original concept was revived by Sussex University after a lapse of 25 years, and this week MO celebrates with a 70th anniversary conference. It can point happily to much of that sincerest form of flattery - imitation. For example, the BBC's modern Domesday project or this month's British Library launch of a national email archive, a million "ordinary" emails as a snapshot of Britain (send to email@email.britain.co.uk).
The delight is in the detail, and the honesty of recorders whose behaviour on paper, screen or recorder is the equivalent of most citizens' contributions in court. Anyone who has attended a trial knows the difference between the stilted, procedure-conscious accounts given by police of their interviews - which sometimes seem to be conducted in Martian - and the fresh contribution of the man or woman in person....
Read entire article at Guardian
It was comical to begin with, as London intellectuals eavesdropped in the north-east, although even at that stage they made rich social discoveries. Once the name of the project became true, as masses of people sent in regular observations, the power of the idea was overwhelming.
Look in any history of Britain since 1937 and you will see the importance of the archive; the index of The People's War, by Angus Calder, for instance, has many more index references to MO than to Adolf Hitler. Only Winston Churchill does better, but remember that he wrote: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
The muscle and flow of Churchillian prose is typical of history from the top, which is naturally interesting but often flawed by artifice. Much less so the pencil-scribbled diaries of a housewife in the Blitz, or today's email and audio records of mass observers whose work continues to evolve.
In 1981, the original concept was revived by Sussex University after a lapse of 25 years, and this week MO celebrates with a 70th anniversary conference. It can point happily to much of that sincerest form of flattery - imitation. For example, the BBC's modern Domesday project or this month's British Library launch of a national email archive, a million "ordinary" emails as a snapshot of Britain (send to email@email.britain.co.uk).
The delight is in the detail, and the honesty of recorders whose behaviour on paper, screen or recorder is the equivalent of most citizens' contributions in court. Anyone who has attended a trial knows the difference between the stilted, procedure-conscious accounts given by police of their interviews - which sometimes seem to be conducted in Martian - and the fresh contribution of the man or woman in person....