John Fletcher Clews Harrison, usually cited as J. F. C. Harrison, was a British academic who was Professor of History at the University of Sussex and author of books on history, particularly relating to Victorian Britain.
'John Harrison writes always for an informed general public and not for examiners or fellow specialists', E.P.Thompson once commented, adding that 'he writes always with clarity, in an unhurried, authoritative, economical style'. Thompson and Harrison had been colleagues in the University of Leeds Adult Education Department and the years they spent teaching adult students in 'extramural' classes up and down Yorkshire shaped their determination to make academic history as accessible as possible. This was also reflected in Harrison's formative role in the UK Society for the Study of Labour History, of which he was the first secretary. At the heart of Harrison's achievement as a historian are three books.
Learning & Living, described as 'the most influential and widely read work in the field of adult education history'.
Robert Owen & the Owenites in Britain and America, published in the USA under its subtitle The Quest for a New Moral World.
The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850. In his conclusion, Harrison commented: We see only as through a glass, darkly. At the end of this book it is apparent how little we know about what ordinary people "think and feel".' However the editors of his festschrift believe Harrison 'as much as any historian of the nineteenth century, has opened up the history of ordinary people, their thought and feelings. His work is anything but doctrinaire, and it has eschewed preoccupation with narrow, male-dominated, labour movement institutions'.
John Harrison's autobiography is informative not only about the author's academic career but also life in pre-war Leicester and military service with the King's African Rifles.
Honours
For his 75th birthday his lifetime's work was celebrated by his colleagues with a festschrift:
This original collection of critical essays on issues of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rural life, popular politics and beliefs brought together fifteen well-known historians. All were associated with Harrison, and all shared his interest in the importance of the personal in history, as opposed to the history of impersonal institutions. Among the essays on popular belief were studies of millenarianism, the secularist tradition and a case study of American Muggletonianism – the last by E. P. Thompson. Other essays addressed Owenism, Chartism, the Chartist Land Plan, gender and autobiography, vegetarianism and popular journalism. There were critical evaluations of the influence of America on British radicalism and socialism, on the motives that drove workers' children to become teachers, and on the construction of images of English rural life.
