Ralph Miliband

Ralph Miliband (born Adolphe Miliband; 7 January 1924 – 21 May 1994) was a British sociologist. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", in this manner being compared with E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and Perry Anderson.

Miliband was born in Belgium to working-class Polish Jewish immigrants. He fled to Britain in 1940 with his father, to avoid persecution when Nazi Germany invaded Belgium. Learning to speak English and enrolling at the London School of Economics, he became involved in left-wing politics and made a personal commitment to the cause of socialism at the grave of Karl Marx. After serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, he settled in London in 1946 and naturalised as a British subject in 1948.

By the 1960s, he was a prominent member of the New Left movement in Britain, which was critical of established socialist governments in the Soviet Union and Central Europe (the Eastern Bloc). He published several books on Marxist theory and the criticism of capitalism, such as Parliamentary Socialism (1961), The State in Capitalist Society (1969), and Marxism and Politics (1977), and he edited the Writings of the Left series (Jonathan Cape and Grove Press, 1972–1973).

Both of his sons, David and Ed Miliband, went on to become senior members of the Labour Party following their father's death. David was the British foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010. Ed was Energy Secretary from 2008 to 2010, and has served in the same office since 2024. Both contested the 2010 Labour leadership election; Ed won narrowly and served as Leader of the Opposition from 2010 to 2015.

Life and career

Early life: 1924–1940

Miliband's parents grew up in the impoverished Jewish quarter of Warsaw, Poland. His father Samuel Miliband (1895–1966) was a member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Warsaw.

In 1922, Miliband's parents were among the Polish Jews who migrated westward, to Brussels in Belgium, after the First World War. It was here that Miliband's parents first met, and they married in 1923. Their son, Adolphe, was born in Brussels on 7 January 1924.

He grew up in the working-class community of Saint-Gilles, and in 1939, aged 15, he became a member of Hashomer Hatzair ("Young Guard"), a socialist-Zionist youth group.</blockquote>

Learning to speak English, Ralph gained a place at Acton Technical College (now Brunel University) in west London with the help of the League of Nations' Commission for Refugees in January 1941. After completing his course there, he gained the help of the Belgian government in exile to study at the London School of Economics (LSE). He had become interested in Marxism and revolutionary socialism, and visited the grave of Marxism's founder Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in north London, to swear an oath to "the workers' cause". His initial exhilaration soon wore off as months passed without seeing action, then in June 1944 he took part in supporting the Normandy landings which he wrote was "the biggest operation in history" and he "would not miss it for anything". He saw further action at the Toulon landings. In 1949 he was offered an assistant lectureship in political science at the LSE.

He left the LSE in 1972, having found himself torn by the controversies which had beleaguered the institution over the preceding few years, particularly the LSE's responses to student protests in the late 1960s. He took up the post of Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds. The time at Leeds was an unhappy period for Miliband. He suffered a heart attack soon after the move, and did not enjoy the administrative responsibilities as a head of department.

In 1985, his essay "The New Revisionism in Britain" appeared in the 25th anniversary issue of the New Left Review in which he responds to writers associated with the Marxism Today magazine such as Eric Hobsbawm and Stuart Hall. Despite their differences, Hobsbawm had been a long-standing friend of Miliband.

thumb|Miliband's grave in [[Highgate Cemetery]]

He suffered from cardiac problems in later life, and had a bypass operation in 1991. He died 21 May 1994. aged 70, survived by his wife and sons. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery, close to Karl Marx. His last book, Socialism for a Sceptical Age, was published in 1994, after his death. She was the daughter of a steel manufacturer, David Kozak, with a Polish Jewish heritage, and also one of his former students at the LSE. They made a home in Primrose Hill, and later in Bolton Gardens, South Kensington, and had two sons, David in 1965 and Edward in 1969.

David and Ed Miliband

His two sons both became Labour Party politicians, and in 2007 they became the first siblings to serve together as cabinet ministers since 1938. His elder son, David, was Labour MP for South Shields from 2001 to 2013. From 2005 to 2010 he served in the cabinet, latterly (from 2007) as Foreign Secretary. His younger son, Ed, was elected a Labour MP for the Doncaster North seat in 2005. From 2007 to 2008 he served as Minister for the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office and drafted Labour's manifesto for the 2010 general election. In October 2008 Ed was promoted to the position of Secretary of the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). On 25 September 2010, he became the 20th leader of the Labour Party

The journalist Andy McSmith of The Independent, in comparing the lives of Ralph, David and Ed, said that the elder figure had a "nobility and a drama" that was lacking in his sons' "steady, pragmatic political careers". The Labour leader's office responded:<blockquote>[Ed Miliband] wanted the Daily Mail to treat his late father's reputation fairly. Rather than acknowledge it has smeared his father, the newspaper has repeated its original claim. This simply diminishes the Daily Mail further. It will be for people to judge whether this newspaper's treatment of a war veteran, Jewish refugee from the Nazis and distinguished academic reflects the values and decency we should all expect in our political debate.</blockquote>Ed Miliband's response gained support from across the political spectrum, and was endorsed by the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. When it was found that a Mail on Sunday reporter had intruded on the private funeral of Ed Miliband's uncle, the newspaper group's proprietor Lord Rothermere and the Sunday paper's editor apologised for this.

The Lipman-Miliband Trust

In 1974 Miliband's friend, Michael Lipman, established the Lipman Trust as a progressive funding body for socialist education. Miliband would serve as the Trust's first chair, until his death. Miliband invited both John Saville, his wife Marion, and other notable scholars, academics, and experts in socialist education, such as Hilary Wainwright and Doreen Massey to the Trust. Following Miliband's death, the Trust became the Lipman-Miliband Trust, in recognition of Miliband's many years of work.

The Trust remains an important funding body for socialist education and provides regular grants for a variety of educational projects.

Bibliography

Parliamentary Socialism: A Study of the Politics of Labour (1961). .
The State in Capitalist Society (1969),
Marxism and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
Capitalist Democracy in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982),
Class Power and State Power (London: Verso, 1983) ISBN 0-86091-073-3 (cloth), 0-86091-773-8 (pbk)
Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (1989)
Socialism for a Sceptical Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) ISBN 0-7456-1426-4 (bound), 0-7456-1427-2 (pbk.)

References

Works cited

External links

Ralph Miliband Archive at marxists.org
Bibliography of Miliband at marxists.org
Lipman-Miliband Trust
Archival material at
Socialist Register