Wars of Position: Communism and Civil Society

Coinciding with the centenary of the October revolution, this project takes a new look at Communism in the West. The traditional focus of historians has been the failure of Parties to seize states. Drawing on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, this project instead analyses Parties' sporadic and divisive struggles to transform civil society (media, education, science, culture). The project catalogues, opens and analyses significant archive material about Communist 'wars of position' across civil society and the internal ruptures within Parties that this emphasis caused. It commissions new interdisciplinary scholarship, much of it from emerging researchers, which reconstructs and compares the activities of Communists internationally. The project's events and publications foreground and scrutinise Communists who advocated approaches rooted in civil society. Two exhibitions at Manchester's People's History Museum defamiliarise British Communism for the general public by showcasing the range of its cultural concerns. A three-day international conference and edited book bring together for the first time historians of Communism and political philosophers currently debating what form Communism's fundamental idea--that exploitation of labour by capital is not inevitable--might take in the future. On one hand historically focussed, the project asks whether those currents of Communism angled at the transformation of civil society remain of relevance today, when so much of twentieth-century Communism has passed into history.

The project will impact on the career of the PAA to whom the PI will transfer knowledge. The PAA will develop expertise in the collections, in web-page / database management, information handling (catalogues), events management (co-organising the conference), communicating with academic and non-academic audiences (talks, tours at day-school and conference), and in working on exhibitions. The project will create in the PAA expertise uniquely placed to assist the PHM and PI with follow-on projects around the CPGB holdings. The project will create valuable work-experience for three PHM volunteers / placement students, who will gain experience in working with primary materials on the pop-up exhibition, expanding their skill-base and enhancing their own employability and well-being; they will subsequently spread knowledge of the PHM's materials through the sector. The project will impact upon two students from the University of Manchester's MA in Conference Interpreting, who will enhance their CVs and experience working at the conference alongside a more experienced interpreter.
The CPGB archive will be positively impacted, as the catalogued section of its total archive (1383boxes) will increase by 4% (55 boxes). The LHASC will benefit in having its biggest collection (CPGB) substantially augmented (32% of the total LHASC collection). By expanding archive holdings and raising their profile, the project will support the LHASC's work of providing material for press stories, making more likely high-impact uses of the collection by the media (the LHASC's archive of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners recently informed research and media coverage for the film Pride). The project will support the LHASC's own 'impact' indicators, which include hosting four public-facing conferences / seminars per annum (the project adds two), four archive tours (the project adds two), and furnishing material for two exhibitions (the project adds two). The project and its two events (day-school, conference, combined attendance 130) will impact significantly on the LHASC's current visitor number (1300 visitors per year) and support its target of doubling that number by 2017.
The LHASC is housed in the PHM, a museum accredited by the Arts Council with a Designated Collection whose previous collaborations with academics are commended in the AHRC's 2011/12 Annual Report. This project's events will raise revenue for the PHM (catering, shop) which will in turn support the PHM's broader activities, including work in its Textile Conservation Studio. The project's events will contribute to the PHM's target of increasing visitor numbers to 100,000 per annum by 2017, while the international conference will entrench existing links with institutions overseas and open new connections. The project impacts upon, engages and amplifies the PHM's central mission statement that there 'have always been ideas worth fighting for.' The project will deepen the PHM's own knowledge of its specialist collections, thereby strengthening future PHM projects (such as the cataloguing and displaying of material from the archive of Communist artist Clifford Rowe), and enabling it to make more of its internationally significant CPGB collection, now and in the future. The pop-up exhibition will create impact in strengthening collaboration with a partner organisation, the WCML. It will strengthen links internally between the PHM's archive and exhibitions team, leaving a legacy of collaboration beyond the project's life. In revising and sharpening the Communist section of the museum's permanent display, the centrepiece of a museum which attracts 80,000 visitors per annum (12000 from overseas), the project will bolster the PHM's work of developing educational, social and cultural benefits for visitors, of enhancing the quality of life of its users, and of helping visitors to think differently about local, national and international history and their place in it.