Reflections on Racism,Class and the Racialized Outsider

Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider offers a sympathetic yet critical and scholarly re-examination of historical working-class politics through a detailed analysis of ‘race’. It follows the historiographical and theoretical trail of previous radical scholars, like Nairn on English nationalism and the groundbreaking but ‘race-blind’ work of heavyweight socialist labour historians like Hobsbawm and Thompson. While there have been many seminal studies of the English working class, this book points to the failure of such histories to explore the significance of class as articulated through the lens of race. In revisiting and reworking these influential works, the book critically appraises the significant part played by racialized elements of the working class, including Irish Catholics and Jews who are shown to have occupied centre stage, forming the vanguard of early socialist movements and labour organizations. This was no accident and fed into subsequent multiracial and socialist internationalist movements.