From Warwick to Pittsburgh: Shaping the New Labor Historians

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It was at Warwick that I first met David. I was an MA student in Comparative British and American Labour and Social History during the academic year 1968–1969. David's genuinely honest, open, and down-to-earth approach to his students and teaching and learning in general appealed to many like myself who had been raised in solid, respectable, independent, and self-respecting working-class households. He treated me fairly and squarely, without any hint of those patronizing and condescending attitudes, which sometimes characterize middle-class academics in their treatment of working-class students. Montgomery, like Edward Thompson, expected us to work hard and would have no truck with those self-indulgent students who regarded political activism as a valid substitute for academic study. True to his 1950s past, David kept regular “factory” hours. He strongly disapproved of lateness or absence in the submission of work and attendance at lectures and seminars. As “apprentices,” we, the MA postgraduates, were to be rigorously instructed in the rules and methods of the trade by Montgomery and the other “master craftsmen” at Warwick. As part of our training, we were subjected to full critical gaze of these masters when we presented our papers and research findings to them at three-hour combined postgraduate and staff seminars on Friday afternoons. Escape and a mixture of relief and reward were found immediately afterward in the student bar.