A. L. Morton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Arthur Leslie Morton 4 July 1903 |
| Died | 23 October 1987 (aged 84) The Old Chapel, Clare, Suffolk |
| Education | Peterhouse, Cambridge University |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist for the Daily Worker. Bookseller. Teacher at Summerhill School |
| Known for | Communist activism, founding member of the William Morris Society |
| Notable work | A People's History of England (1938) |
| Political party | Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) |
| Spouse | Vivien |
Arthur Leslie Morton (4 July 1903 – 23 October 1987) was an English Marxist historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He is best known for A People's History of England, but he also did valuable work on William Blake and the Ranters, and for the study The English Utopia.
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Why does ice float in water? - George Zaidan and Charles Morton
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Burnout Prevention | Master Class # 3 ft. Kati Morton
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Why is My Mental Illness So Competitive? | Kati Morton
Transcription
Water is the liquid of life. We drink it, we bathe in it, we farm, cook, and clean with it. It's the most abundant molecule in our bodies. In fact, every life form we know of would die without it. But most importantly, without water, we wouldn't have iced tea. Mmmm, iced tea. Why do these ice cubes float? If these were cubes of solid argon in a cup of liquid argon, they would sink. And the same goes for most other substances. But solid water, a.k.a. ice, is somehow less dense than liquid water. How's that possible? You already know that every water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. Let's look at a few of the molecules in a drop of water, and let's say the temperature is 25 degrees Celcius. The molecules are bending, stretching, spinning, and moving through space. Now, let's lower the temperature, which will reduce the amount of kinetic energy each of these molecules has so they'll bend, stretch, spin, and move less. And that means that on average, they'll take up less space. Now, you'd think that as the liquid water starts to freeze, the molecules would just pack together more and more closely, but that's not what happens. Water has a special kind of interaction between molecules that most other substances don't have, and it's called a hydrogen bond. Now, remember that in a covalent bond two electrons are shared, usually unequally, between atoms. In a hydrogen bond, a hydrogen atom is shared, also unequally, between atoms. One hydrogen bond looks like this. Two look like this. Here's three and four and five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, I could go on. In a single drop of water, hydrogen bonds form extended networks between hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions of molecules, and these bonds are constantly breaking and reforming. Now, back to our water as it cools down. Above 4 degrees Celcius, the kinetic energy of the water molecules keeps their interactions with each other short. Hydrogen bonds form and break like high school relationships, that is to say, quickly. But below 4 degrees, the kinetic energy of the water molecules starts to fall below the energy of the hydrogen bonds. So, hydrogen bonds form much more frequently than they break and beautiful structures start to emerge from the chaos. This is what solid water, ice, looks like on the molecular level. Notice that the ordered, hexagonal structure is less dense than the disordered structure of liquid water. And you know that if an object is less dense than the fluid it's in, it will float. So, ice floats on water, so what? Well, let's consider a world without floating ice. The coldest part of the ocean would be the pitch-black ocean floor, once frozen, always frozen. Forget lobster rolls since crustaceans would lose their habitats, or sushi since kelp forests wouldn't grow. What would Canadian kids do in winter without pond hockey or ice fishing? And forget James Cameron's Oscar because the Titanic totally would have made it. Say goodbye to the white polar ice caps reflecting sunlight that would otherwise bake the planet. In fact, forget the oceans as we know them, which at over 70% of the Earth's surface area, regulate the atmosphere of the whole planet. But worst of all, there would be no iced tea. Mmmmm, iced tea.
Life
Morton was born in Suffolk, the son of a Yorkshire farmer.[1] He had two siblings, a sister Kathleen and a brother Max. He attended school in Bury St Edmunds until he was 16 and then at boarding school in Eastbourne. He then studied the English tripos at Peterhouse, Cambridge, from 1921 to 1924, graduating with a third-class degree.[2] While at Cambridge, he developed friends from within the university Labour club, including Allen Hutt who became a typographer and Ivor Montagu who was later active in the film industry. He encountered socialist ideas, moving towards the communist group at the university around Maurice Dobb.[1][3]
After college he taught at Steyning Grammar School in Sussex, where under his influence, most of the staff supported the General Strike in 1926. Dismissed as a consequence, he taught for a year at A.S. Neill's progressive school, Summerhill at that time in Lyme Regis. He then moved to London to write and run a bookshop in Finsbury Circus. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and along with his wife, Vivien, remained a member for the rest of his life. Vivien was the daughter of the socialist Thomas A. Jackson.[3]
Morton belonged to a group of London left-wing intellectuals of the 1930s, while working as a journalist for the Daily Worker. He served on the editorial board of the paper. His friends at that time included A.L. Lloyd and Maurice Cornforth; he assisted Victor B. Neuburg. In 1932 and 1933, he was involved in a debate with F. R. Leavis, in the pages of Scrutiny.[3] He participated in the Hunger marches of 1934.
His 1938 A People's History of England, published by the Left Book Club, was adopted quasi-officially as the CPGB national history, and later editions were issued on that basis.[3]
During the early part of the Second World War, he was the full-time district organiser of the Communist Party's East Anglia district and became chair of the district committee for many years.[3]
Morton spent most of the 1939–45 World War in the Royal Artillery labouring on construction sites in the Isle of Sheppey.[1]
He was part of the group of leading communist historians invited to Moscow in 1954/5, with Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, and the Byzantine historian Robert Browning. Morton was a founding member of the William Morris Society in 1955.[1] He participated in the People's March for Jobs in the early 1980s, a demonstration of 500 anti-unemployment protesters who marched to London from Northern England.
Morton died in 1987 at his home in The Old Chapel at Clare in Suffolk, aged 84.
Library
A.L. Morton bequeathed his library to the university library of Rostock University in Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany (which was then in the German Democratic Republic and named Wilhelm-Pieck-University after the GDR's first and only president, Wilhelm Pieck). The collection comprises more than 3,900 volumes, including all foreign-language editions of A People's History of England, many contain hand-written comments by Morton.
Works
- A People's History Of England (1938)
- Language of Men (1945) essays
- The story of the English revolution (1949), Communist Party pamphlet
- The English Utopia (1952)
- The British Labour Movement, 1770-1920 (1956) with George Tate
- The Everlasting Gospel: A Study in the Sources of William Blake (1958)
- The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen (1962)
- The Matter of Britain: Essays in a Living Culture (1966)
- The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution (1970)
- Political Writings of William Morris (1973) editor
- Freedom in Arms: A Selection of Leveller Writings (1975) editor
- Collected poems (1976)
- Three Works By William Morris (1977) editor
- 1688: How Glorious was the Revolution? (1988)
- History and the Imagination: Selected Writings of A.L. Morton (1990) edited by Margot Heinemann and Willie Thompson
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Calladine, Amy (May 30, 2010) "History from Below" New Histories v.1, n.7
- Cornforth, Maurice ed. (Winter 1980/81)) Rebels & Their Causes: Essays in Honour of A. L. Morton Science & Society v.44, n.4, pp. 501–503
- Simkin, John (September 1997) "A. L. Morton" Spartacus Educational
Further reading
- Heinemann, Margot and Thompson, Willie eds.(1990) History and the Imagination: Selected Writings of A.L. Morton/ London: Lawrence & Wishart. ISBN 9780853157199
- Hogsbjerg, Christian (2020) "A.L. Morton and the Poetics of People's History", Socialist History, v.58
External links
- AL Morton archive at Marxists.org
- A. L. Morton's Library in the Catalogue of Rostock University Library
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This page was last edited on 20 January 2024, at 23:45