Bad History CHRISTOPHER HARVIE `No enemy but time' In 2004, there was a spat between two TV historians over whether one had thieved the other's story about Harlech Castle in Wales. Days later there was another over some Victorian incident, conducted roughly on the same level as the coughing business on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? By this time `historian' was acquiring the timbre of `student', maybe even heading south towards `footballer'. Were dope, drink and three-in-a-bed romps only days away? Not implausible. Remember the bile-®lled fountain pens of Angus Wilson's medievalists in Anglo-Saxon Attitudes? Kingsley Amis' dysfunctional Jim Dixon, terror of the madrigal parties? The real agony of worldly old A. J. P. Taylor, cuckolded by Dylan Thomas? Alan Bennett, who started his career by doing Taylor imitationsÐa splendid spoof Roy Jenkins biopic called `Lloyd George Knew my Father' a zillion years ago on BBC 2 is still treasurableÐis said to have modelled the repellent master in The History Boys on two prize right-wing historians. Hobsbawm Macaulay was until 1999 a PR out®t run partly by Mrs Gordon Brown. Three decades ago, it would have meant the Great Whig being worked over by Eric the Red. For Hobsbawm's Anglo-Marxists, who bestrode the scene for so many years, history was a collective eort, provoking collective responses, whether positive or hostile: Past and Pres- ent, Raphael Samuel's History Work- shops, Llafur in Wales and a host of joint eorts such as People and Society in Scotland. Collectivity wasn't always en- couraging. Labour History Society meet- ings back in the 1970s sometimes had the air of a Central Committee sessionÐBut without this, would operations such as the Open University ever have been pos- sible? For the old guard, however, only one sealed train is waiting. The beginning of the opening para- graph seemed an appropriate ¯ourish. Yet as I wrote I began to perceive, beyond the problems of the discipline, a combina- tion of the market and politics that led back to the tactics of our ruling diarchy. History isn't suering from marginalisa- tion, but from being too damn relevant. Let me try to convince you. `History speaking . . .' The unit of history, 1945±2000, was the university department, a collective peopled by inge Ânues, careerists, plod- ders, lechers, geniuses and old maidsÐ and, after the mid-1960s, enlivened by girls with legs that went on and on, for the distraction of long-haired males. The departments were examples of what ad- miring Germans called englisches Selbst- verwaltung. Some were disastrous, while others sensibly obeyed Antony Jay's pre- cepts in Management and Machiavelli and generated synergy by keeping the opera- tive strength around twelve, enforcing cooperation and delegating authority to someone who could manage the politics while letting the rest get on with their teaching and research. This also presup- posed students who were interested in politics, society and so on, with history the successor to the classical curriculum of Oxbridge and the philosophy of the Scots. The only slightly older academics # The Author 2006. Journal compilation # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2006 Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 439 The Political Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 4, October±December 2006

Harvie - Bad History

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Christopher Harvie, "Bad History"

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