Professor Malcolm Sherwin Chase (1957–2020)

Malcolm Chase was a brilliant and inspirational historian, a specialist in nineteenth-century radical politics and popular protest. The tributes paid after he died in February are testament to the respect and admiration in which he was held around the world, for his ground-breaking research and huge command of his subject, and equally for his kindness, good humour and generosity. The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal was fortunate indeed to have had Malcolm as its History Editor, from 2015 until his death.

Malcolm was born in Grays, Essex, his father Sherwin Chase a building surveyor, and mother Elizabeth a bank clerk. He was educated at Palmer’s Boys School, and took a history degree at York University in 1978. From there he went on to Sussex University for his master’s in modern social history (1979) and then a DPhil in 1984. He took inspiration from his supervisor, J.F.C. Harrison, and also from the History Workshop Movement that flourished from the 1970s, encouraging a dialogue with local historians and others working outside the academic world.

He was generous with his time, speaking at local societies, schools and museums, and – what is even more unusual for someone of his eminence – going out of his way to listen to others at local events. He arrived unheralded to sit among the audience for an entire Saturday at a small conference I helped organize in Whitby.

Malcolm’s own work was similarly based on respect for other people, as an historian, a colleague and a teacher. He joined the University of Leeds in 1982, in the department of adult education which itself had a proud tradition in labour history. He taught in centres around Leeds and Middlesbrough, later becoming head of what had become the School of Continuing Education. He moved to the School of History in 2005 and was promoted to a Chair in Social History in 2009.

Malcolm’s doctoral thesis acknowledged the ‘integral dignity’ of labour and of working on the land. While he will be remembered above all for his work on Chartism, other significant publications reflect his interests in land, trade unionism, and the victims and consequences of the Peterloo massacre. Notable are The People's Farm: English Radical Agrarianism 1775–1840 (Breviary Stuff Publications, 1988), which explored the connection between ‘land consciousness’ and early socialism; the longer history of worker organization from the seventeenth century, Early Trade Unionism: Fraternity, Skill and the Politics of Labour (Routledge, 2000); and 1820: Disorder and Stability in the United Kingdom, on the fall-out from Peterloo (Manchester U.P., 2013).

Chartism: A New History (Manchester U.P., 2007) was Malcolm’s definitive study on that subject, a synthesis of his life’s work which confirmed him as Chartism’s leading authority. He saw the Chartist vision of a more equitable society as ‘of enduring significance and a reference point for future generations’, and ended his book with a quote from Bobby Kennedy: Chartism had moved society ‘closer to the recognition of a profound truth, that our essential humanity and dignity are protected and preserved only where government answers not merely to the propertied and wealthy but to all people’.

Malcolm was president of the Society for the Study of Labour History (2005–07), chair of the Social History Society (2011–14), and chaired the management committee for Northern History. He made numerous appearances on television and radio series, including Who Do You Think You Are? and Britain’s Secret Houses. And he continued to be closely engaged across the wider historical community, with local historians, enthusiasts and the public at large. His last, unfinished, project was on the radical Sir Francis Burdett.

Malcolm’s untimely death, at the age of 63, came eighteen months after a brain tumour was diagnosed. He continued to edit the YAJ while undergoing arduous medical treatment. We who knew him as a friend and colleague feel a profound loss, that he has gone so soon, with so much still to offer and to enjoy. The greatest loss is to Malcolm’s wife, Shirley, and to his daughter and granddaughter. He met Shirley as a fellow postgraduate historian at Sussex, and they married in 1983. The importance of Shirley’s support to his intellectual achievement, he very readily acknowledged.

Gillian Cookson
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