No general history of the Merseyside working class exists as yet. Two centuries of growth, and the development of hundreds of organisations, would seem to deserve a recorded summary; but who is to accomplish it? All those who could, or might, do so are heavily committed to other pursuits ; many of them are actively involved in the current affairs of the labour movement, making history rather than recording it.
Resources — human and financial — will be needed for the task ; and perhaps it is too much to hope that a class which is bound to be in a subordinate position until it has achieved Robert Owen's "different order of things" can find money and men for writing its story. Yet the effort must be faced.
This small collection of essays is intended to contribute to the general history that future workers will certainly compile. It gathers together a few of the themes and passages that a group of local historians have felt to be significant, and have been able to record.
There is no attempt to follow an imposed plan, or to develop an argument through these pieces. Each contributor has offered what he felt to be worthy of inclusion ; and in each case it has been included in the form and style given to it by its author. If this results in any lack of cohesion, it does offer the compensating advantage that the work of the historians has been entirely free of editorial restriction.
All the essays (save one) are of recent composition, by people who are currently at work on various aspects of the history of the common people. The exception is Professor Rose's essay on John Finch, which appeared in 1958 in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. Acknowledgments are gratefully made to the author and to the Historic Society, for an essay which on the one hand conveys material which seems to be almost unknown to the present-day labour movement, and on the other hand exemplifies an earlier phase of studies in working-class history.