There follows an extract from the blog of Matthew Caygill, found at
http://badmatthew.blogspot.com/2007/09/london-socialist-historians-group.html

Friday, September 28, 2007
London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter Autumn 2007
The latest Newsletter from the London Socialist Historians Group is available here. It's worth having a look. Mostly reviews, including Keith Flett being bland about Alastair Campbell's Diary, Keith Flett himself on Malcom Chase's Chartism, Dave Renton on another meoir from Harry Ratner and Ian Birchall on the LSHG collletion edited by Keith Flett on 1956 and All That. So far so incestuously familiar, but there's also a review of Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages and a report on a research project about realist literature and the First World War hailing from Australia. Some interesting points, but dreadfully crude in its equation of realism with Marxism, socialism and the working class, and, it seems modernism with the bourgeoisie. It's a useful project and their narrowness can't be blamed on themselves - they are trying!

The Editor responds:

All criticism of the Newsletter is genuinely welcome, after all the LSHG exists to encourage robust debate, although it should perhaps be added not really the kind of thing that passes for this in the blogosphere. I have in mind more the cut and thrust of fraternal debate in the seminar room.

Matthew’s comment raises the question of what the Newsletter should be. Should it be mainly review based? Should it be polemical? Should it, indeed, contain any signed articles by the Editor!

To an extent the Newsletter is whatever those who read it and then send material in want it to be. But if that was the case to the nth degree it would not really be a Newsletter but a socialist history blog and there are already some of those.

So it might be useful to set out the parameters that I am working to. Firstly the Newsletter is about carrying research updates from active socialist historians which after all is one of the main raison d’etres of the LSHG. Secondly it is about carrying as many notices of events and activities that appear to be broadly related to socialist history as I can gather and are appropriate to the issue deadline. Thirdly it is about carrying reports of events and seminars [we haven’t done much of that in the past] and polemics related to research.

So, for example, in terms of Matthew’s criticism, it is true that my piece about the Alistair Campbell diaries is bland and deliberately so. It is not a polemic about Mr Campbell, of which there are already plenty, but a first attempt to try and understand how useful the Diaries might be to socialist historians. I tend to think that research should in general be quite low key with qualifications and questions. Isn’t that really part of what historical research is about, a sort of Sherlock Holmes of the archives approach?

Anyway what do readers think? The address for correspondence is on the back page and I am forever available should you wish to harangue me in person and find yourself in London or Cardiff.