ABSTRACT
The emphasis on struggle and polemics which dominated his intellectual contribution to a 'history from below' played a major role in his political activities and came to distinguish him as one of the most outspoken and influential English socialists. Edward Thompson's defence of the politics of liberty constituted one aspect of class struggle analysis which could be traced throughout his work. The very nature of political discourse and the practices of democratic politics had, over successive decades of the Cold War, been shaped and distorted under the dominance of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the interests of the United States. The growth of the campaign for European Nuclear Disarmament and the revival of the peace movement in the 1980s brought to Thompson a more optimistic impression of radical resistance throughout Europe. Thompson, unusually careful in his interpretation, refused to speculate to much on future developments in Europe, and with tact refused to acknowledge these right-wing tendencies as agents of change.
