Colin Holmes (historian)

Colin Holmes (born August 1938 in South Normanton, Derbyshire, England) is a British author, scholar, and historian. He retired in 1998 and is now an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sheffield.

Academic career

After attending Tupton Hall Grammar School Holmes entered the University of Nottingham in 1957 as a County Major Scholar to read History. After two years he changed courses and graduated in 1960 in Economic and Social History. He subsequently received a Revis postgraduate scholarship to begin work with Professor J. D. Chambers, an authority on Britain's industrialisation in the 18th and 19th centuries, and wrote a thesis on the life and work of H. S. Tremenheere.

In 1963 Holmes was appointed to an assistant lectureship at the University of Sheffield in the Department of Economic and Social History under Sidney Pollard, then a rising star in the field of Economic History. During the 1970s the two worked closely together producing several volumes of documents covering European Economic History in the modern period. These books were: The Process of Industrialization (1968); Industrial Power and National Rivalry (1972) and The End of the Old Europe (1973). Holmes and Pollard also edited Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire (1977 reprinted 1979). Together with Alan Booth, in 1991 Holmes edited and contributed to a "festschrift" for Pollard called Economy and Society. European Industrialisation and its Social Consequences. On Pollard's death in 1988 Holmes became his literary executor and also edited for publication Pollard's Essays on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (2000).

However, Holmes is best known for his work on British antisemitism, migration and fascism. His first major contribution to this field was an edited volume, "Immigrants and Minorities in British Society" to which he contributed an essay on "J.A.Hobson and the Jews". In 1979 Holmes wrote Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876–1939, which proved to be an inspiration for the growth of research into the area of fascism and antisemitism in the interwar period. He also wrote influential articles on the British editions of the notorious Protocols of Zion. Holmes jointly founded the journal Immigrants and Minorities in 1981 and served as joint editor until 2012. He currently serves on its advisory panel.

In 1998 he wrote "John Bull's Island: Immigration & British Society, 1871–1971", which is widely regarded as an authoritative text on the history of migration. It focused on a wide range of groups that entered Britain in these years, their contributions to society and the varied responses they encountered. A similar but smaller study, "A Tolerant Country? Immigrants, Refugees and Minorities in Britain", appeared in 1991. Holmes's interest in migrant groups was also evident in his contribution, "The Chinese Connection" which appeared in Outsiders and Outcasts. Essays in honour of William J Fishman (1983) which he edited jointly with Geoffrey Alderman, and his two volumes of edited source material in Migration in European History.

Following his appointment as assistant lecturer Holmes later became lecturer (1965), senior lecturer (1972) and reader (1980) before being appointed to a personal professorship in the Department of History in 1989. He retired in 1998 and is now an Emeritus Professor of History in the University. During his career Holmes supervised a large number of postgraduate students, some of whom have subsequently been appointed to Chairs in British Universities, and who are often referred to as the "Sheffield School" (see Welsh History Review, June 1990. vol. 50. no. 1. p. 138). Following his retirement, in 2002 he held a Parkes Fellowship at the University of Southampton.

Holmes continues with his research interests. He contributed on British Government Policy Towards War Time Refugees in M. Conway and J Gotovitch Europe in Exile. European Exile Communities in Britain, 1940–1945 (2001). In 2008 The Burton Book co-written by Geoffrey Alderman appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 2015 his chapter William Joyce and the German Connection will come out in Ian Wallace (ed.) Voices from Exile. Much of his time recently has been consumed by working on his long-awaited political biography of William Joyce: Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce that was published by Routledge in 2016.

In 2017 together with Anne Kershen he edited An East End Legacy. Essays in Memory of William J. Fishman which was published by Routledge.

In 2018 at the Migration Museum in London he was presented with a Festschrift entitled Migrant Britain: Histories and Historiographies: Essays in Honour of Colin Holmes (Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics) edited by Jennifer Craig-Norton, Christhard Hoffmann and Tony Kushner.

Publications

Books

• The Process of Industrialization (London: Edward Arnold, 1968)
• Industrial Power and National Rivalry (London: Edward Arnold, 1972)
• The End of the Old Europe (London: Edward Arnold, 1973)
• Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire (Barnsley, 1977 reprinted 1979)
• Immigrants and Minorities in British Society. London ; Boston : Allen & Unwin, 1978. ISBN 978-0-04-942160-8
  • Review, Economic History Review. Feb. 1979. vol. 32, no. 1: 127–128.
  • Review, International Migration Review, Summer, 1980, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 270–271
• Anti-Semitism in British Society: 1876–1939 (London: Edward Arnold, 1979) ISBN 978-0-71-316189-2
  • Review, Jewish Chronicle. 28 September 1979.
  • Review, The American Historical Review. Oct. 1980. vol. 85, no. 4: 887–888.
  • Review, Social History, May 1981, vol. 6, no. 2, p. 257–259
  • Review, Jewish Social Studies, Winter, 1981, vol. 43, no. 1, p. 82–84
  • Review, Jewish Social Studies, Summer – Autumn, 1983, vol. 45, no. 3/4, p. 338–339
  • Review by Anthony Julius, in Trials of the Diaspora (Oxford, 2010), pp. LV-LVII.
• John Bull's Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Macmillan, 1988. ISBN 978-0-333-28209-0
  • Review, Economic History Review. Nov. 1989. vol. 42, no. 4: 612–613.
  • Review, British Journal of Sociology, Dec. 1990, vol. 41, no. 4, p. 582
  • Review, The American Historical Review. Dec. 1990. vol. 95, no. 5: 1537–1538.
  • Review, International Migration Review, Autumn, 1989, vol. 23, no. 3, p. 736–737
  • Review, English Historical Review, Jan. 1992, vol. 107, no. 422, p. 260–261
• Economy and Society. European Industrialisation and its Social Consequences (Leicester, 1991)
• A Tolerant Country?: Immigrants, Refugees, and Minorities in Britain. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. ISBN 978-0-571-15426-5
• Outsiders and Outcasts. Essays in honour of William J. Fishman (London: Duckworth, 1993) pp. 214
• (with Sidney Pollard;) Essays on the Industrial Revolution in Britain :(Aldershot; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate/Variorum, 2000) ISBN 978-0-86078-794-5
• Migration in European History. The International Library of Studies on Migration, (2 Vols., Cheltenham, UK: E. Elgar, 1996) ISBN 978-1-85898-421-6
• Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016)
• (with Anne Kershen) An East End Legacy. Essays in Memory of William J. Fishman (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017)

Select list of articles

• 'Joseph Banister's Anti-Semitism', "Patterns of Prejudice", vol.4 (July–August 1970), pp. 29–31.
• 'Bukharin in England', "Soviet Studies", vol. XXIV (1972), pp. 86–90.
• 'The 1885 and 1888 Jewish Tailors' Strikes in Leeds', "Journal of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society", vol. 45 (1973), pp. 158–66.
• 'In Search of Sidney Street', "Society for the Study of Labour History Bulletin", no.29 (1974), pp. 70–77.
• 'Violence and Race Relations in Britain 1953-1968', "Phylon", vol.XXVI (1975), pp. 113–24.
• 'East End Anti-Semitism, 1936', "Society for the Study of Labour History Bulletin", no.32 (1976), pp. 26–33.
• 'New Light on the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', "Patterns of Prejudice", vol.11 (November–December 1977), pp. 13–21. [See The Times, 17 February 1978, pp. 1–2].
• 'The Protocols and the Britons', "Patterns of Prejudice", vol.12 (November–December 1978), pp. 13–18.
• 'Trotsky in Britain: The Closed File', "Society for the Study of Labour History Bulletin", no.39 (1979), pp. 31–39.
• (with A.H. Ion), 'Bushidō and the Samurai: Images of Japan in British Public Opinion 1893–1914', "Modern Asian Studies", vol. 14 (1980), pp. 309–29.
• 'The Ritual Murder Accusation in Britain', "Ethnic and Racial Studies", vol.4 (1981), pp. 265–88.
• 'Government Files and Privileged Access', "Social History", vol. 6 (1981), pp. 333–50.
• 'The Tredegar Riots of 1911. Anti-Jewish Disturbances in South Wales', "Welsh History Review", vol.11 (1982), pp. 214–25.
• 'Immigration into Britain. The Myth of Fairness. Racial Violence in Britain, 1911-19', "History Today", vol.35 (October 1985), pp. 41–45.
• 'The British Government and Brendan Behan, 1941–1954. The Persistence of the Prevention of Violence Act', Saothar. "Journal of the Irish Labour History Society" vol.14 (1989), pp. 125–128.
• 'Building the Nation. The Contributions of Immigrants and Refugees to British Society', "Journal of the Royal Society of Arts" (November 1991), pp. 725–734.
• 'Kings of the Ring', "International Journal of the History of Sport", vol. 8 (December 1991), pp. 429–432.
• Review article: 'Death's Shadow. Reflections on the Holocaust', "Jewish Journal of Sociology", vol. XXXIV (1992), pp. 43–50.
• 'Sidney Pollard 1925–1998', "Proceedings of the British Academy", Vol 105 (2000), pp. 513–534.
• 'The Burton Book' co-written by Geoffrey Alderman,"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society", vol. 18 (2008) pp. 1–13.

Select contributions to books

• 'Introduction to Immigrants and Minorities in British Society', in Colin Holmes (ed.), "Immigrants and Minorities in British Society" (London, Allen and Unwin, 1978), pp. 13–22.
• 'J.A. Hobson and the Jews', in Colin Holmes (ed.), "Immigrants and Minorities in British Society" (London, Allen and Unwin, 1978), pp. 125–57.
• 'Germans in Britain 1870–1914', in J. Schneider, et al., "Wirtschaftskrafte und Wirtschaftswege. Festschrift für Hermann Kellenbenz" (Nuremberg, Klett Cotta, 1978), vol. 3, pp. 581–93.
• 'The German Gypsy Question 1904-6', in K.J. Lunn (ed.), "Hosts, Immigrants and Minorities. Historical Responses to Newcomers in British Society 1870–1914" (Folkestone, Dawson, 1980), pp. 134–59.
• 'East End Crime and the Jewish Community, 1887–1911', in Aubrey Newman (ed.), "The Jewish East End 1840–1939" (London, Jewish Historical Society of England, 1981), pp. 109–23.
• 'John Beckett', in John Saville and Joyce M. Bellamy (eds.), "Dictionary of Labour Biography", vol. 6 (London, Macmillan, 1982), pp. 24–29.
• 'Immigration', in Michael Drake and T.C. Barker (eds.), "Population and Society" (London, Batsford, 1982), pp. 172–202.
• 'The Promised Land? Immigration in Britain 1870–1980', in David A. Coleman (ed.), "The Demography of Immigrants and Minority Groups in the United Kingdom" (London, Academic Press, 1982), pp. 1–21.
• 'The Social Origins of D.H. Lawrence', in C. Heywood (ed.), "D.H. Lawrence. New Studies" (London, Macmillan, 1987), pp. 1–15.
• 'Alexander Ratcliffe, Militant Protestant and Antisemite', in T. Kushner and K. Lunn (eds.), "Traditions of intolerance: Historical Perspectives on Fascism and Race Discourse in Britain" (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1989), pp. 196–217.
• 'Historians and Immigration', in M. Drake (ed.), "Time, Family and Community" (Oxford, Open University with Blackwell, 1994), pp. 165–80.
• 'Immigrants and Refugees in Britain', in W.E. Mosse, (ed.), "Second Chance. Two Centuries of German-Speaking Jews in the United Kingdom" (J.C.G. Mohr, Tübingen, 1991), pp. 11–30.
• 'Immigration', in T. Gourvish and A. O'Day (eds.), "Britain since 1945" (London, Macmillan, 1991), pp. 209–32.
• 'The Webbs and Japan', in H. Cortazzi and G. Daniels (eds.), "Japan and Britain 1859–1991" (London, Routledge, 1991), pp. 166–76.
• 'The Chinese Connection', in G. Alderman and C. Holmes (eds), "Outsiders and Outcasts. Essays in honour of William J. Fishman" (London, Duckworth, 1993), pp. 71–93.
• 'Jewish Economic and Refugee Migrations, 1880-1950', in R. Cohen (ed.), "The Cambridge Survey of World Migration" (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 148–153.
• 'Hostile Images Immigrants and Refugees in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Britain', in J. and L. Lucassen (eds), "Migration, Migration History, History. Old Paradigms and New Perspectives" (Bern, Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 317–334.
• 'Cosmopolitan London', in A.J. Kershen (ed). "London: The Promised Land?" (Aldershot, Avebury Press, 1997). pp. 10–37.
• 'On the Damascus Road. The First Steps in my Conversion to Economic and Social History', in P. Hudson (ed.), "Living Economic and Social History" (Glasgow, Economic History Society, 2001), pp 145–149.
• 'British Government Policy towards Wartime Refugees', in M.Conway and J Gotovitch (eds.), "Europe in Exile. European Exile Communities in Britain, 1940–45" (Oxford, Berg, 2001), pp. 11–34.
• 'Die Einwanderung nach Grossbritannien in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart' in K.Schonwalder and I Strum- Martin (eds.), "Die britische Gesellschaft zwischen Offenheit und Abgrenzung Einwanderung und Integration" vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin,Philo Press, 2001), pp. 17–33.
• ‘William Joyce and the German Connection’ in: I. Wallace (ed.) Voices from Exile: Essays in Memory of Hamish Ritchie (Leiden, Boston: Brill, Rodolpi, 2015), pp. 259–75
• ‘The Reubens Brothers. Jews, Crime and the East London Connection, 1887-1911’ in: C. Holmes and A.J. Kershen (eds), An East End Legacy. Essays in Memory of William J. Fishman (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017), pp. 93–116

Journalism

• 'Anti-Semitism in Britain 1939–1979', "Jewish Chronicle", 14 September 1979.
• (with A.R.J. Kushner), 'The Charge is Ritual Murder', "Jewish Chronicle", 29 March 1985.
• 'Immigration. The Issue that could take centre stage', "The Times", 5 April 1990, p. 14.
• 'Professor Sidney Pollard', "The Independent", 10 December 1998.
• 'Professor Sidney Pollard', "The Times", 18 December 1998.
• 'Frank Cass', "The Times", Online, 13 November 2007.
• 'Victor George Kiernan', "The Times", 14 May 2009.
• 'Lives Remembered. Emmanuel Cooper', "The Times", 10 February 2012.

In media

Radio

• Holmes wrote and presented a 30 minutes program entitled 'Rosa Rust' (BBC Radio 4), 15 August 1998.
• He contributed to "'A Rage in Dalston. The 43 Group'". The Archive Hour (BBC Radio 4), 19 April 2008.
• He will feature in a Radio 4 program on the Trial of William Joyce to be transmitted in May 2015.

Television

• Holmes participated in a major Channel 4 series on immigration, "Passage to Britain", screened in the Spring of 1984.
• He appeared in a Canadian TV documentary on Oswald Mosley, transmitted in 2003.