McLaren, John (2003) Ian Turner as historian. In: Free radicals of the left in postwar Melbourne. Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne.

Abstract

Contains an article on Ian Turner, political activist and historian. Turner's understanding of the historian's task had been formed by his studies of Max Crawford's scientific methodology at the University of Melbourne. Turner’s immersion in Marxist theory deepened his consciousness of class and the material relations of production that shape history, and in particular determined the characteristics of the Australian working class. In certain ways he anticipates E.P. Thompson's magisterial study, The Making of the English Working Class, although he lacks the cultural density of this work. Turner certainly follows the work of his mentor, Robin Gollan, whose work, Radical and Working Class Politics - a Study of Eastern Australia 1850-1910, Turner describes as the story of the gradual emergence of awareness, among the workers, of their separate identity as a class, apart from other classes in Australian society.

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