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Okay. All right. Good evening everybody. I hope you can all hear me. Okay.
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Wherever you are, greetings and it's still a sunny knowledge at the moment very wet this morning. And we had a tremendous hailstorm halfway through the afternoon but the moment it's quite a pleasant Sunday evening
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so welcome from me and greetings from the East of England.
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And so, I do have a particular interest in Raymond Williams which has been there for all best part of 20 years or so and so Hi I'm a founder trustee of the Raymond Williams foundation.
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And
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it's not simply a matter of an interest in Raymond Williams that I have. But I found him very influential in the way that I approach my teaching, and my experiences.
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And this group that does this body that I'm a trustee of the raven Williams foundation.
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Before the pandemic, we would have regular residential weekends, every year.
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maybe we've had guests speakers talking to us about.
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And we will spend the small groups and we will discuss them between us, and then report back to the main session.
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And I found after a couple of years that that this this began to influence to a very large extent, how I approach my own teaching.
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So as a web a tutor.
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What I like to do is to use a lot of discussion.
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So if I'm teaching face to face.
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If I'm in a big enough room without necessarily telling the students what I'm doing. I might split the room into different groups or put groups of chairs out so that at some point I can say what okay you're going to that group you're, and I want you to
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discuss amongst yourselves, this because I don't want people just listening to me for a whole 90 minutes so I want people to talk to each other.
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And it's been very interesting over the last you know two years using zoom.
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That of course now I'm not just talking to people in Norwich but I got people from all over the country.
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In front of me. So I can split you I'm going to do this tonight, by the way, but I could split you into breakout rooms and get you talking to each other.
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So, to me, this is a very important aspect of the way that the WVA were and indeed adult education or to work.
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And so I'm just introducing this because this is something which has very much come out of my studying of Raymond Williams and being involved with other people who actually studied or supervised by Raymond Williams himself.
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So it's all part of this ongoing process so it's actually a very important piece of my attitude to teach it.
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And I'll come back to say a bit more about this a little bit later on but I suppose, first of all, I should say.
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Why, Raymond Williams.
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And it's.
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It is sometimes slightly alarming in that the people that I am familiar with and the people I work with and so on and other members of the foundation.
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We're all very familiar with Raymond Williams.
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And when I was doing my, my first degree I hadn't have a tutor who was very interested in my moon so I've actually been familiar with him since 19 7071.
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And so we can all talk to each other about this person, Raymond Williams, and we know what we're talking about. I hope.
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But very often, you know I can mention his name to other people, and they sort of look at me a bit of scars and say, No here snooker player. And that's one of the comments I have recently.
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So, to some extent I feel as if I have to go back to basics, sometime to explain just to run with Williams walls.
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Now, the reason that I've been talking about him so much over the last year, is that he was born in July of 1921. So last year. We were celebrating his centenary, and there were lots of activities going on around it.
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Say I'm involved with the red moons Foundation, we completely revised our website for the centurion rates are celebrated.
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And it's not finished.
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There are still various activities carrying on until April of this year but that was the sort of stimulus to do a lot of extra work on him.
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So on the one hand it's been a matter of trying to explain to people who just who he was.
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But also, and of course in the sense of this evening, I haven't got that much time to tell you everything about him whatsoever. But I'm going to give a bit of a plug, at the end to a course, who was running about Robin Williams, but it's also this question
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of who he wants.
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And there are an awful lot of very interesting points about Raymond would say have an interesting life anyway.
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But he was one of the most significant figures in what became known as the new left in Britain in the 1950s 1960s and 70s that into the 1970s.
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And he came from a background which was strongly socialist he did become very briefly involved with the Communist Party in Great Britain.
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Although I would say he was always a bit of a semi detached a member of the Communist Party.
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But after the Second World War, as you get into the 50s and 60s. He was very much one of the the leading figures.
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Within this field that included people like Stuart Hall Eric Hobsbawm Edward Thompson and some.
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He was part of that and he became one of the most influential thinkers and writers within that New Left movement as it became known.
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He was a very prolific thinker, and writer, but use a huge number of works, which is quite difficult for me to deal with in, in many ways, because I even in a five week course.
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I can't cover everything that he talked about, and everything. he dealt with there's almost too much information there.
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But he was enormously influential figure.
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And he was often regarded as being the father of what became known as cultural studies.
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Now this point if you, you know, think, Oh, good. And another Disney type courses that you have. The way I first got involved with rainbow warriors was was through someone who has studied with him.
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day or of idea of cultural studies. Now, I'm going to go on a bit later on to explain a little bit of what I mean about cultural studies and what culture meant to Raymond Williams because it's a very very significant part of his thinking, and it's a very
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important part of his thinking, but I'll come back to that little bit later on. And he was also an extraordinarily prescient writer as well he could very often see what he thought would trends developing within society and within politics, especially
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he was outline, sometimes he would warn you about, and to a surprising degree, some of those things have come to pass that he was warnings about but again, I'm going to come back to that a little bit later on.
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But to begin with, I'm going to show you some illustrations shortly.
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And in many ways. Well, the most important things about Robbie Williams was that he was born in Wales in the border country.
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He was born in a small village called Pandy, which is about six, seven miles north of Abergavenny in the shadow of the black mountains, so not far away from the Welsh valance avail Murtha that area, not too far away from the Brecon Beacons either not too
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far away from Hereford on the English side, but that area of the border country was very, very important to him, and he would go on, eventually to write five novels, so he's not just a theoretician, he's not just a political philosopher, he always wanted
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to be a writer of fiction and indeed his life was based around English literature in many ways.
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But he wrote five novels, and they are all set in that area around the black mountains, very very significant to him. He always maintained during his life that his background was very important.
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And he came from a very working class background his father was signalman for Great Western our at the local station. His mother was a domestic worker, in effect, but he always said that he got his sense of community from living in this small Welsh village.
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And more importantly, he got a sense of solidarity from it.
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Now he was born in 1921, so he was only five years old when the general strike happened.
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His father, as a railway signal one, and an active trade you need to stand a moderate support of the Labour Party was very heavily involved with the general strike.
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And of course South Wales, especially the values you know it was an area.
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Very very strongly affected by the general strike of 1926 so what it was was aware of this, as he was growing up and he always took this with him.
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And he always maintained that it was his background, and that area, which actually developed, most of his adult thinking. And suddenly, His socialism came from that background.
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I would love to ask me this point if you've got any questions.
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We'll keep them for for later.
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So his backgrounds in the wash borders is hugely important to him and he sees constantly referring to him as he was growing up, he was regarded as quite a brilliant scholar, coming from that sort of backgrounds, and he won a county scholarship to go to
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the grammar school in Abergavenny while he was there, he excelled in everything you did he was, he was very keen sportsman as well and from there.
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He won a national scholarship to go to Cambridge to study English literature as he's growing up in the 1930s, and at that point he's very much a pacifist.
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And he's involved with the peace pledge union. And in the August of 1937. He is sent by the, the junior branch of the peace pleasure to attend an international conference in Geneva.
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And this was looking at you know the rise of fascism and what was happening in Europe.
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So he attended as a delegate this youth conference in Geneva on the way back returning to England he managed in Paris.
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to find enough time to get off the train.
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And to attend the International Exhibition that was being held in Paris, of that time. This is the international International Exhibition that featured Guernica the painted by Picasso, that everyone is familiar with.
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He doesn't make any reference to whether he went to the Spanish privileged to see it or not. But the one thing he did make sure he did was to visit the Soviet Pavilion.
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And when he was there, he bought himself a copy of the Communist Manifesto. And so for the first time at the age of 16. He started reading about marks and angles and getting involved in that sort of aspect.
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So, in October 1939 he wants to stay scholarship to attend Trinity College, Cambridge to study English. Now, I haven't got to that point I'm not just going to come out, briefly, and show you a few illustrations, if I may.
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Now, I have some issues with the way that I can show my presentations. So I'm using this particular format, and I hope you can all see it. Okay. That's the first slide just to remind you, who we all are.
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And we will come back to that again. Now, this is a very well known portraits of Raymond Williams taken in the 1970s.
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is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing bear that in mind so I'm going to come back to that in just a moment. Now, I hope you can all see this nice and clear.
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There are relatively speaking, very few illustrations of whims himself. They tend to always show me to check shirt and smoking a pipe read lots of books behind him but you very quickly realized that there aren't a great many different illustrations on
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this another one from slightly later in his life so you get an idea, at least at this point of what he looked like. Now, I hope you can see this well enough because I thought it was important to show you and give you a little social of the areas in which
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he was brought up now. Handy I hope you can see my cursor moving here, handy. The village he was brought up it is here, and is just about six miles up the valley from our government.
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OK, so the English border is about 10 miles. This way to the right, to the east, with Herefords just off at Brecon and the Brecon Beacons is just off the picture up here, the values of avail mother Ted Ville are just down here to the bottom left, but
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here are the black mountains and he often refers to living in the shadow of the black mountains. So this is the border country that he grew up in, and was very important to him, and was enormously influential on his later think if we need to, we can always
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And if we need to, we can always come back to some of these slides at the end, I hope we've got time. I put this one in, it's just Raymond Williams in his teenage years, We are trying at Pandora station in the mid 1930s.
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This is significant, say his his father was a railway signal for the Great Western Railway, and he had a very great affection for his father nothing his father went through.
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And when he was a teenager.
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And he thought that, probably, this is what he was going to do. He had no ideas of going into academia or anything that probably he would he would follow his father into a job on the runways that was sort of what was expected and you know what he anticipated
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by here is 1939, ready to actually go off to Cambridge, having won this scholarship to Trinity College,
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he met his wife, joy, while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, they got married in 1942. During the war, and this is them with their family Murdock, the youngest one in the middle of the melon, and a Darren in front of them.
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Very very well.
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Notice, of course. So this was actually they use this photo for a Christmas card in 1951, as you can see at the bottom. So this was his home life. That was his family.
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This is him addressing a meeting in the early 1960s. Now I'm pretty certain that this was a cnd meeting. I'm not 100% sure about it but I am pretty certain, it is.
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But yeah, he was a very well known figure on the left, he was very active in cnd amongst other things, so I think by the time you get to that periods of the 96 is this this would have been a pretty typical picture of Raymond Williams addressing a meeting.
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This is him at Cambridge. Nice Nice one, I will say a bit more about with Frank commodes literary critic commentator fellow member of the Communist Party who then left in much the same way that the Williams has.
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And so this is just to I'll just put this in just to show that this is what he was, he was doing during this period.
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Okay, Now that's a blank one I'm going to come out I've got one more leverage I'm going to show you at the end.
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So now I would love to say at this point or ask you. Have you got any comments or questions but if you have, please post them in chat. And then we'll get back to you at the end.
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Now you're going to have to excuse me for one second because I'm up in my attic here is getting dark so I've got to put the light on.
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Right. Hopefully that's the human touch that comes in to these things.
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Okay, so he's had this so very brilliant academic career as a teenager when he goes up to Cambridge.
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And he becomes a member of the Communist Party. Yeah, That was the way to go at the time as were all his friends were going.
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He has very little to say in the 1930s about for instance what he thought about the Spanish Civil War. And what was happening there.
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But by the time he is undergraduate, Cambridge. That is the way that has gotten has been very influenced by reading the Communist Manifesto.
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There's a wonderful essay that he wrote a couple of decades later called. You're a Marxist aren't you, and he answers that question.
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And he says, in that essay that well, sort of, but not fully.
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He says that the person who had the most influence upon his thinking was undoubtedly Karl Marx, but he never saw himself as a dogmatic Marxist.
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He was a member of the Communist Party.
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Briefly, but he was always something of describing as a fellow traveller but someone who was sort of a semi detached member of that community.
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Certainly as an undergraduate and then later, when he did, enter, academia himself.
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Yes, I mean, a very large number of his colleagues were Communist Party members, save his clothes for Eric Hobsbawm AP Thompson's do a whole song.
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But he was always sort of semi detached in the sense that he could be quite critical, certainly of dogmatic Marxism.
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And in this essay he wrote your Marxist, aren't you, he answers that by saying that he's not sure if he is or not, but he wants to make it quite clear that he is very happy to have been influenced by that line of thinking.
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And he is very happy to be regarded as a member of the Marxist tradition that carries on that questioning of society what it's about proposing different ideas and different approach in some.
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So that's the way that he sort of couches, his views. So, not a dogmatic Marxist at all, and I'm gonna come back so something a bit more about that in the moment.
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The reason I say he was never a full time member of the Communist Party was that in July of 1940, having served and done. So, one year as an undergraduate at Cambridge, he enlisted for the army, which was strictly against Communist Party guidelines, at
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the time.
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So he says he never left the Communist Party, he was never expelled from the Communist Party. It just sort of disappeared in that respect.
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But he did join the Armed Forces he served as a tank commander after DJ.
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And he describes in some detail moving from Normandy up into Germany.
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He says he was absolutely appalled.
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When he reached Hamburg, because everything that he has been told was that Hamburg was just attacked by bombing as a military target, and when when he arrived in haven't spoken Hamburg, he saw that clearly wasn't true that there were various, you know,
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very large areas of the civilian part of Hamburg, which had been destroyed by Allied bombing, so the other.
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Anyway, when he came back, so he's married in 1940 to start the family with his wife joy.
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And he was given an early discharge from the army so that he could complete his studies. Okay, which which he did, he completed the tripods and graduated with first class honors in English.
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Now at that point he was offered a senior research fellowship at Trinity College, but he refused it, and that was it would have been financially you know to his advantage but he refused it, because at that point, he did not want so he is what 21 of the
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time.
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And he didn't want to go into academia that.
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And, and what do you want to do instead was, was to actually meet with what he called me up real people.
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So he left Cambridge, and he joined what was then known as the Oxford delicacy. This was in effect the extra mural, Department of Oxford University.
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And at that point, 1940s.
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The Oxford delicacy actually offered education but almost the whole of Southeast England.
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They were in charge of it.
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And he was appointed a book, as a lecturer.
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for the southeast region.
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And he went to live, various, various times in seafoods in a Sussex, and in Hastings.
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And he was covering in the area as a tutor of most of that parts of southeast, England.
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And although he was working for what was called the Oxford delicacy effect almost all of the current classes that he was teaching were organized through the WA, because that was the existing setup.
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Now, I want to just give you a quote this is from a series of lectures that he gave many years later, looking back on his life lot largely autobiographical.
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It says about this decision.
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So the main reason was that I could not see the point I was quite clear now that I've got a hell of a lot of writing to do, and I really wanted to get on with it.
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I particularly wanted to write a novel.
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It may sound odd in relation to the sense of being deeply blocked, that I was describing but I was still attempting to maintain the productive cultural emphasis of the 30 years.
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Then I and my friends will thank you rich and Clifford Collins, we're going to run a journal. We were convinced we were going to be able to build up a periodical and a press.
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One of the other things I was going to do was to write a documentary script for Michael RM, who was by then, and the assistant director with rotter. So we were going to make a film, we were going to start a magazine, there seemed much more exciting projects,
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than doing a thesis, the shape of the immediate years was the one would take WVA classes to support oneself, through them interesting approach, but it's very clear for what he says that at that point, someone talking about 1946.
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He wanted to be a writer.
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That was helping out so you don't degree in English is made interest was in English teacher and he wants to be a writer.
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So he came up with this regime, which he followed for many years, which was that he would write in the morning, in the afternoon he would read to back up what he was writing about, and in the evening.
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He would teach web eight classes, and it was the classroom, which were for workers, then so that's why they were evening classes.
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And that was how we would support himself, but he also felt very strongly that he wanted to connect with ordinary people. And this was what adult education came very very strongly to mean to you.
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Now, another quote about working with the WPA.
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He said, when I got my job in the extra middle of delicacy at Oxford, which control the scattered region extend from Staffordshire in the north to suspect in the south.
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I was appointed to a Sussex and went to live in Seaford.
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The social character my classes, was extremely mixed.
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At one level. There was the class law event in Hastings, essentially with the local Trades Council, which was called public expression and simply involves specific training in public writing and public speaking.
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There seemed little point in teaching the writing of essays. I taught the writing of reports, minutes memoranda and committee speaking, and all reports skills relevant to their work.
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At the other extreme, you will get a class of commuter housewives in Hey was thief who wanted to read some literature.
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Perfectly serious and their interest, but an entirely different social composition.
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Then I had a fair number, in which there was a mixture of the two elements including of course the substantial number of wagers one discovers the third or fourth meeting produce their novel or autobiography, their short stories or poems, an enormous amount
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of unknown writing of this sort goes on. It was a mixture. I could live with. So this is his attitude to adult education.
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And it's something which is very, very important.
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And it's something that will stay with him really for the rest of his life and this is why he is so influential in terms of looking at the history of the Wi Fi because those of you who might be familiar with the original foundation that who nice know
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three.
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It was very much about bringing a university type education to people who had not had the chance to go to university. So it was very much based on lectures and tutorials and some and Raymond wins or what was one of the first people to really go against
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that and to actually say that adult education has to be a shared experience is something that the tutor must learn from. As much as the student loans from, and he is really one of the first to begin to follow this path.
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And then to emphasize it.
00:30:51.000 --> 00:31:06.000
Now, he was a tutor for the WVA from 1946 to 1961, so for 15 years, very significant part of his adult life.
00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:09.000
He was a wa tutor.
00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:25.000
And when he left in 1961 he was finally offered a position as a senior lecturer in English literature at Cambridge University. By that time he was ready for academia, and you saw that that was the way he wanted to go.
00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:40.000
So, 1961 his life changes, fundamentally, and in that year, he published this, which I've got a copy of it, an open letter to WVA tutors.
00:31:40.000 --> 00:32:00.000
And this is we did actually make this available on the the web a website a couple of years ago. I've got no idea if it's still there or not, but he said some very interesting things in this, this was written as a web a tutor to other web a chooses the
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:15.000
important or most significant statement, he makes his he says within it. I've often defined my own social purpose as the creation of an educated and pass it, and participating democracy.
00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:28.000
So that's what he saw he was doing. He was involved in trying to get people through the means of adult education to take a more active role in democracy their part in society.
00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:47.000
And so, I'm having said that, I've just remembered something which is one of the things I alluded to earlier on, I meant to draw your attention but I didn't forgot I showed you that slide, saying that to be truly radical, is to make hope possible rather
00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:55.000
than to spare convincing. What I meant to share with you was, don't worry I'm like ideas.
00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:57.000
I've got the T shirt.
00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:02.000
So they are philosophy football you can buy your own copy of it but they will, so that's anyway.
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:07.000
I wore that especially for your benefit this evening so
00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:21.000
he goes on in this essay. So, this is worth repeating in the 1960s. When many people would tell you that the WA is historic mission is over.
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:40.000
with the coming of better opportunities in the schools, the exceptional mind in the poor family is spotted young and is given a real chance. Yes, but this was never the heart of the web is purpose, of course, the exceptional minds must get their chance.
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.000
But what about everyone else.
00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:48.000
I'm towards the end of this open letter he says.
00:33:48.000 --> 00:34:09.000
This may but it's been a challenge to new and imaginative teaching is constant. This may be a new methods in an experience class, or the profoundly important work with new kinds of students who have never before made such contact with for education.
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:27.000
In recent years, I have discussed d h Lawrence with working minors discussed methods of arguments with building workers. Discuss newspapers, with young trade unionists discuss television with apprentices in training.
00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:40.000
To me, these have been formative experiences, and I have learned as much as I have taught a whole world of work is waiting have many kinds. For all who are ready to try it.
00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:54.000
The next few years may see a transformation in trade union education, which is a vital social importance. The development of work with women's organizations and young workers is also extremely promising.
00:34:54.000 --> 00:35:09.000
All this of course, in addition to the familiar work in tutorial classes and residential courses were experiment in teaching is often just as important, but none of us can sit back and wait for this to happen.
00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:16.000
It will only happen as widely as it needs to. If we all get in and work.
00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:29.000
So that's part of this letter that he addressed to other who chooses. And I would, I mean I've I've been a web a true to myself for 25 years now.
00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:42.000
And apart from taking this idea of discussion from Raymond Williams very largely and trying to use it in my own courses.
00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:57.000
And I think much of what he has to say is, is still, you know every betters as relevant so I would argue that Raymond Williams is a very profound representative of what had our education, really ought to be like and I hope I'm seeing loads of questions
00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:09.000
coming through chats now about about that. Now when he. The other thing I just want to go through this so very quickly release, make sure we've got time for a few questions at the end.
00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:24.000
And when he returns to Cambridge in 1961. So having spent 15 years working in adult education largely through the web a.
00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:49.000
In the late 50s early 60s he begins to produce a series of what became a very very significant and important books, and I've got a couple of them down here, and 1958, a published culture is ordinary 1961 he follows it with the loan revolution.
00:36:49.000 --> 00:37:08.000
And if any of you are interested, you know the end I mean I can hope it through Fiona produce a reading list for this if you if you want to follow any of this, but he started generating this idea of culture, which is why I said that when he.
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:15.000
Yeah, one of the things he's famous for is soon as I got my pile of books and the next thing.
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:20.000
He is regarded as the father of cultural studies.
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:23.000
What happened was, during the 50s.
00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:38.000
He began to have some arguments with his comrades within the Communist Party. Although, as I've said he was always a semi detached member about the insistence on cars and class conflict.
00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:57.000
Now although he says, the biggest influence on his thinking was Karl Marx, there are certain aspects of this that he disagreed with and he thought what was more important was rather than looking at this very narrow issue of class and class conflict was
00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:04.000
something that he began to describe as culture.
00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:24.000
And what he meant by this was that it is actually, it's not the class that you are born into. Or you grow up in. It's your whole life experience. This is the important aspect and this is what will form your adult views, your opinions, your politics, so
00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:46.000
he expands from just looking at class into this idea of culture, and that is what he calls it, and that is what he begins to emphasize, and I just wanted to give you a couple of quotes from culture is all know so i mean this is this is 1958.
00:38:46.000 --> 00:39:02.000
Having said that, I'm going to lost my, my quote.
00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:06.000
now I've got this disappeared somewhere.
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:12.000
What is talking about is, it's actually your entire experience which which forms you.
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:25.000
And that is what gives you your background, in effect, and that is actually the most important thing that acts upon you. And what he's mainly interested in.
00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:43.000
Is that what he brings to called culture is not just a single aspect is what he describes as a process. This is something that you develops what you grew up with is what you develop is what influences you in the end.
00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:48.000
And as for no sweat during the 50s while his formulating this.
00:39:48.000 --> 00:40:00.000
He, we know that he was reading a lot of Antonio Gramsci the Italian Marxist who talks about I mean he's, best known for talking about, Hey gamma.
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:23.000
And what grams she meant by her gamma is not just how you are ruled or leadership, but it's how you maintain that a gram she was arguing that those who are in positions of ruling, a country, he's writing in Fascist Italy and 1930s.
00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:33.000
And, but it's how they maintain so how are they the ruling class convince you that what they're doing is the right way of doing things.
00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:52.000
And what Graham she argued, was that it was now up to the working class to have more sense of their own confidence, their own culture, so that they could build up their own money give themselves a position of strength to attack the state and eventually
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:54.000
lead to revolution.
00:40:54.000 --> 00:41:13.000
This was very influential on landlines. And this is where his, his arguments really developed the what you've got to do is to recognize this this whole aspects of culture, which lies behind it, that there is a thing which is a working class culture.
00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:31.000
This is what is the basic thesis in his the long revolution, published in 1961, which you could almost say is the same as Edward Thompson was working on at the time in terms of class consciousness.
00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:41.000
They're both saying that, after the Industrial Revolution, the working class began to realize that they had more in common with each other and with their offices.
00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:54.000
That's the beginnings of class consciousness which would lead to the development of socialism and so, so, Robin Williams is looking into exactly the same thing, exactly the same process.
00:41:54.000 --> 00:42:15.000
But he's opening it up into a bigger experience of what your life, tells you, this is really what he is is all about. And you can see the connection between his ideas about culture and his ideas about adult education.
00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:28.000
Yeah, to to back each other up they reinforce each other so you can see the general sort of drift that he's moving in. Throughout this period. So he's looking at this development of working class culture.
00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:42.000
He's doing it, when he's at Cambridge is a lecturer in English literature, he will eventually become the first, Professor of drama. At Cambridge University so he's very much writing from an English literature perspective.
00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:51.000
And he wrote numerous books about English literature, Marxism and literature and you know, you name it, he wrote about it.
00:42:51.000 --> 00:43:10.000
And one of the interesting ideas that he came came up with, which I know a lot of people have found this very influential, as in the long revolution he comes up with something that he calls a structure of feeling.
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:13.000
And this is how he describes it, he said.
00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:18.000
The term I was suggested describe it is a structure of feeling.
00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:26.000
It says as firm and definite as structure suggests. Yes, it operates in the most delicate and least tangible parts about activity.
00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:37.000
In one sense the structure of feeling is the culture of a period is just a particular living result of all the elements in the general organization.
00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:48.000
And it says in this respect to the arts of a period, taking these to include characteristic approaches and tones in arguments are of major importance for here.
00:43:48.000 --> 00:44:09.000
If anywhere. This characteristic is likely to be expressed often not consciously, but by the fact that here in the only examples we have of recorded communication that outlives its barrows, the actual living sense the deep community, that makes the communication
00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:24.000
possible is naturally drawn upon. I do not mean that the structure of feeling any more than the social character is possessed. In the same way by the many individuals in the community, but I think it is a very deep and very wide possession.
00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:43.000
In all actual communities, precisely because it is on it that communication depends what is particularly interesting is that it does not seem to be in any formal sense, learned one generation may train, its successor, with reasonable success, and the
00:44:43.000 --> 00:45:00.000
social character or the general cultural pattern. But the new generation will have his own structure of feeling, which will not appear to have come from anywhere for him most distinctly, the changing organization is enacted in the organism.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:14.000
The new generation responsive its own ways to the unique world, it is inherited, taking up many continuity is that can be traced and reproducing many aspects of the organization, which can be separately described yet feeling his whole life in certain
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:22.000
ways, differently, and shaping his creative response into a new structure of feeling.
00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:38.000
And so, I've had a lot of people say to me that that is one of the most influential things that they've ever come across. And so this is why two very large extent say he is known as the father of cultural studies, because he comes up with this idea of
00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:40.000
culture.
00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:49.000
Your life experience, forming you and forming your political views and everything else about you and how you respond to everything.
00:45:49.000 --> 00:46:00.000
And this was something which he was really at the forefront of developing. And you can see that adult education is an absolutely central part of it.
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:06.000
That point keeping an eye on the clock I think I rest my case right Fiona.
00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:14.000
Thank you very much. That was really really enlightening and a really great insight into how Williams influence teaching at the WEA.
00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:21.000
And, which we can still see to do so. And let's, we've got some questions chat. So, from the top and we'll get through as many as many as we possibly can.
00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:34.000
From the top and we'll get through as many as many as we possibly can. No question from sue you were talking about, Williams as well Fritz and was he well speaking.
00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:55.000
No, he wasn't, and he was familiar with a lot of wealth and a lot of well sayings, but no he wasn't, and he's a bit ambivalent, much later in the 1970s which is actually the, I worked in Mid Wales for five years and in the mid 19 late 1970s.
00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:04.000
And he was actually very ambivalent with the way that the Welsh language society was going at the time and the, the bombings of second homes and so on.
00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:23.000
And so he felt that that was a bit of a narrow distraction. Most of the time, but he did emphasize that the sense of historical culture that you have is something you mustn't lose, and you must hold on to it.
00:47:23.000 --> 00:47:30.000
Thank you very much. No, and questions from Barbara, no cuts kind of two sides to this.
00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:40.000
What do you think, Williams would have thought of Corbin and Starmer. And what were his views on Stalin.
00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:55.000
Right now, first thing is always keep people in their historical context and never put words into their mouth, and given I'm installing there's actually quite a live issue for me because I've been teaching courses on the Spanish Civil War.
00:47:55.000 --> 00:48:06.000
Recently, which is another one of my, my main interests, and in that essay, I refer to your a Marxist Aren't you call your mom.
00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:22.000
He's very very interesting because he has this strangely ambivalent view of the labour movement as a whole because he says that, On the one hand, you've got the revolutionaries.
00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:33.000
And on the other extreme, you've got the Fabians those who believe in the evolutionary slow growth, working you know by convincing people of your, your arguments.
00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:50.000
And he said this was in the 1970s, he was writing this. He said he's always been struck, that the labour movement has always been in the middle somewhere and it, sometimes it goes one way and somebody goes the other way and it comes back in the middle
00:48:50.000 --> 00:49:00.000
and it goes the other way and the labour movement in Britain can never seem to make his mind up, whether he wants to be revolutionary, or he wants to be evolutionary.
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:19.000
And I think his conclusion is that he would generally be more favourable to the revolutionary side because he felt that something needed to be done and you could just spend far too much time talking about things without doing anything.
00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:26.000
And so I think in terms of the original question, I mean I don't.
00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:38.000
Don't tell anyone I said this or next I don't want to be quoted on this, but I think he would have been very much in favour of Jeremy Corbyn very anti care storm, but that's just my view.
00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:43.000
All right, but you know just that's if I leave it there
00:49:43.000 --> 00:49:53.000
is a comment here from Brian I don't know if you saw it culture in the Communist Party and Putin would seem very relevant at the present time given current events.
00:49:53.000 --> 00:49:58.000
Okay, let's move on. Here's a question from Paul.
00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:08.000
And was it Williams ever associated with the Cambridge five Donald McLean, Dave Burgess etc etc.
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:14.000
Partly. He certainly new Anthony blunt.
00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:23.000
And I'm not sure if it was McLean that he knew, but he. Yes, he was aware of them.
00:50:23.000 --> 00:50:33.000
But I don't think he was ever aware of just how much they were involved with Soviet communism.
00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:39.000
And because say, Raymond Williams, always.
00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:47.000
It was reasonably how to describe yourself as a Marxist but I'd say it was always a rather semi detached and slightly critical member certainly of communist dogma.
00:50:47.000 --> 00:51:04.000
So, at Cambridge, that that group was very very lively was very active. He knew a number of the people involved say he was a he was a lifelong friend of Eric HubSpot as well.
00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:16.000
And so who knew what was going on within the communist circles in Cambridge, but he was never sort of actively connected with the more actively involved with him.
00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:18.000
Okay, interesting.
00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:36.000
Right. What do we got next. This is a question from Andrew said that that Williams was a pacifist in the late 70s busted in 1940, any special reason for this change was a sort of dancing conversion or more gradual.
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:45.000
No, I think it was much more simply, a recognition that the most important thing to do was to fight fascism.
00:51:45.000 --> 00:52:01.000
So say Williams doesn't really say anything about the Spanish Civil War, which I find that as a slightly odd omission. Really. And so it's not until after that, that he makes many comments about the threat of fascism.
00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:09.000
But I think that once you know the war started about the same time that he started his first year as an undergraduate.
00:52:09.000 --> 00:52:18.000
And I think by the time he got to the end of that year he realized that actually, you know, being being an undergraduate is not as important as fighting fascism.
00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:31.000
So it was that sort of drive I think which which caused him to enlist, but he is, I mean I just refer to his comments about Hamburg, and
00:52:31.000 --> 00:52:48.000
he wrote very critically about the conduct of the Second World War, and there's this one particular incident when he's in Normandy, and he's leading. He's a tank commander and he's leading a group of six tanks, and they come up against a group of German
00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:50.000
tanks.
00:52:50.000 --> 00:53:05.000
And he said, luckily for him. These were all fair marks SS tanks. So they were commanded by, you know, people you could recognize as being Nazis.
00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:23.000
Whereas if he'd have come up against a group of regular German Army tanks which will probably being driven by German workers. He would have been very much into Myers, whether to shoot at them or not, but because this was a fascist, an openly fascist group
00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:31.000
of tanks, he was quite happy to attack them. So he comes up you know with a lot of these interesting comments about the conduct of them.
00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:36.000
I think that was just like us it was being an anti fascist which drove me into it.
00:53:36.000 --> 00:53:38.000
See, okay.
00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:47.000
Right. And this is a question from john was Williams, and connected with the Open University in any way.
00:53:47.000 --> 00:54:01.000
I'm not directly but he did do a lot of work for the Open University, and especially given that one of his closest friends was still at home, who was very active in the Open University.
00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:22.000
If you look on YouTube, I there's not it There's a wonderful clip, it's about 16 minutes long, which was produced in 1984 appropriately and it's a program about George Orwell and Raymond Williams wrote a lot about George Orwell, and the program is fronted
00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:36.000
by Stuart Hall, but the main interview is with Raymond Williams and you can find the same, you know, just go to YouTube and look for Raymond Williams on George Orwell, but, and, but it's it's a really really interesting video.
00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:47.000
And so, Williams had connections with university he did deliver quite a lot of lectures, but he wasn't involved with the foundation of it on the running of it.
00:54:47.000 --> 00:54:54.000
Okay, okay. Hope that answers your question john. And now here's an interesting question from Sue.
00:54:54.000 --> 00:55:00.000
What do you think Williams would make of social media.
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:03.000
Go to think.
00:55:03.000 --> 00:55:24.000
I think he would probably absolutely hate most of it. And I think the interesting thing about Raymond Williams is that he can be extremely funny. Yeah, music, at times, and quite cynical, and the way he writes, he has not overly serious.
00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:29.000
Although he does take his issues very seriously.
00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:37.000
And I my first connection with with him was in 1970 when I was an undergraduate, And I had to do.
00:55:37.000 --> 00:55:45.000
General Studies, as part of my degree and my, my tutor had been a student with Raymond Williams and.
00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:49.000
And he had just published his book called communications.
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:56.000
And we did the experiments, based on what Raymond Williams are done, which was looking at the media.
00:55:56.000 --> 00:56:14.000
And so there's the print media which all the time so does a group of us we all had one newspaper, to look at each, and we had to read it for two weeks, and we had to analyze the number of column inches between the new sport fashion, all the different
00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:29.000
categories. And then we brought it all together, which is exactly what Williams had done himself in this book, communications, and my to show got us doing it as their own experiment, which came out with some really interesting results, actually.
00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:37.000
So, he was very aware of the media as it was in his day.
00:56:37.000 --> 00:56:46.000
He was very aware and warned against the ownership of media, becoming a dominant feature.
00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:54.000
And he died nice and ICA before the advent really off, you know, the computer.
00:56:54.000 --> 00:57:13.000
And so, again, it's rather difficult. I think to try to put words in his mouth, but I think you know what I know about Raymond Williams. I don't think he'd have been very fond of social media and I think that's the most, I can say about it, especially as
00:57:13.000 --> 00:57:22.000
nastiness. Yeah, well, and Okay, question from Barbara you were talking about the structure feeling.
00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:32.000
was asking, is the structure of feeling a general thing for a whole generation, for example hippies were different from the parents, or would it be different for each individual.
00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:42.000
You know what he's saying is, he was trying to move the debate, beyond just a class basis.
00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:57.000
And he was saying there's something much bigger than that. So, what he is identifying as culture is much more a reflection on how you as an individual relate to your life experiences.
00:57:57.000 --> 00:58:06.000
And those life experiences well affects the way that you then interact with other people in the way you develop your political thinking and and all the rest of it.
00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:26.000
So, it's not rigid, when he talks about it being a structure, what he's really referring to is that it does tend to move from one generation to another, so that the experiences that you have growing up in your generation may well be different from the
00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:42.000
experiences your parents had and the expense that your children will have, but they are all the same thing, basically. So what you've got to do is be open minded about taking what you can from these experiences.
00:58:42.000 --> 00:59:01.000
And, you know, being reasonable being logical about it. Some weighing up the evidence and and that's how you come to your own conclusions. And what he was arguing was that it's this this this sense of life experience, which is actually far more important
00:59:01.000 --> 00:59:17.000
than the class that you are born into. That's where the argument comes from. So you can be born into a very working class environment but you those attitudes may not save, stay with you.
00:59:17.000 --> 00:59:33.000
And it's the attitudes that you take with you, which are the more important reflection, even though you probably would never forget the attitudes that you felt that you were brought up in and and born with and this is, I think this is a direct relation
00:59:33.000 --> 00:59:51.000
to his upbringing in the world's borders that that sense of community, and solidarity, never left him there was always an absolutely you know fundamental part of his of his life and that's really what is informing is as all views on society and the way
00:59:51.000 --> 00:59:53.000
that it functions.
01:02:28.000 --> 01:02:40.000
Right. I think that's probably us so do you want to show us that final picture that you can, yes, if I can find it again.
01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:52.000
Right. Okay, if you can see that, okay I don't make it any bigger than what is happening is that I taught a course last term.
01:02:52.000 --> 01:02:58.000
Just a free session course about Raymond Williams as part of the centenary celebrations.
01:02:58.000 --> 01:03:06.000
And we decided to run it again but what we're doing is it's now going to become a five session course because as the tutor.
01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:17.000
I found very quickly that there just wasn't enough time to cover everything because he was such a prolific such wide ranging thinker, and writer.
01:03:17.000 --> 01:03:27.000
So we've got a new course coming up which will be advertised nationally and I think on the eastern region website.
01:03:27.000 --> 01:03:39.000
And so this is it, it's called creating an educated democracy, and to do to a 656 is the course ID for it so if you want to look it up that's where to go.
01:03:39.000 --> 01:03:49.000
It's on five Wednesday evening. So starting 20th of April, 7pm, to 8:30pm.
01:03:49.000 --> 01:04:06.000
So if you would like to know a bit more about Williams and being a five session course, it allows me to expand a lot more to talk about some of these other works and some of these other ideas and some give you a much more complete picture of him.
01:04:06.000 --> 01:04:24.000
And indeed, you know what I'm interested in which is trying to explain to you what he meant by creating an educated democracy, because that's what I feel actually informs my attention with the W right that's what I'm trying to do, which is why I run so
01:04:24.000 --> 01:04:28.000
many courses ionic ism but that's another, that's another message.
01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:43.000
And, but that's it, that's the course so make a note if you're interested, see 2228656 go for that. Look for it. The, the Course Information shooting everything has been published.
01:04:43.000 --> 01:04:56.000
So enrollments are now open. And I will be working on producing the canvas to back that up shortly. So, no thank you Chad, so I can. Thanks very much for that.
