Henry Pelling

Henry Mathison Pelling was a British historian best known for his works on the history of the British Labour Party.

Life

Pelling was born in Prenton, Wirral, the son of a wealthy stockbroker. He was educated at Birkenhead School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained firsts in Part I of the Classical tripos and Part II of the Historical tripos prior to completing a PhD in 1950. He began his career as a fellow at Queen's College, Oxford, where he remained until his return to St John's in 1966. He was Reader in British History at Cambridge from 1976 to 1980, at which point he decided to retire from university teaching. Doing so, however, led St John's to terminate his college fellowship as well, much to his chagrin, and it was only after a great deal of protest that he was reinstated. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992. Pelling's collection of British left-wing political pamphlets is held at Senate House Library, while his papers are lodged with St John's College.

Publications

Pelling's main contributions to the study of the Labour Party were as follows:

The Origins of the Labour Party and
A Short History of the Labour Party

He was also a pioneer of the serious study of twentieth-century electoral and party politics, and wrote such other works as:

Modern Britain 1885-1955
Social Geography of British Elections: 1885-1910
Winston Churchill
Britain and the Marshall Plan
American Labor
A History of British Trade Unionism, London, 1963
America and the British left: from Bright to Bevan
The British Communist Party: a historical profile
The 1945 General Election Reconsidered
Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain
Britain and the Second World War
''The Labour Governments 1945-51''