| Intro | Political activist and historian |
| Was | Historian |
| From | South Africa |
| Type | Social science |
| Gender | male |
| Birth |
10 December 1921 |
| Death |
3 October 1999 |
Baruch Hirson (10 December 1921 – 3 October 1999) was a South African political activist and historian.
Life
Baruch Hirson was born to a lower-middle class Jewish family at Doornfontein near Johannesburg. His parents, Joseph and Lily Hirson, had emigrated to South Africa to escape anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire. From the age of four, Hirson attended a Hebrew school in Johannesburg. His mathematical ability enabled him to study as a part-time student at the University of Witwatersrand, matriculating in 1939.
In 1940 he joined Hashomer Hatzair, the radical Zionist youth movement. Encountering organized anti-Semitism from the Greyshirts and those celebrating the centenary of the Great Trek, he moved towards Marxism, joining the Fourth International Organisation of South Africa (FIOSA). Influenced against Stalinism by reading Workers’ Front (1938), Fenner Brockway’s account of the Spanish Civil War, he became a Trotskyist. From 1944 to 1946 he was full-time-organiser for the Workers’ International League, a short-lived Trotskyist group, trying to develop black trade unions despite the Suppression of Communism Act. Hirson came to know other South African Trotskists like M. N. Averbach, Hosea Jaffe, Yudel Burlak and Raff Lee. When the WIL stopped working with unions, Hirson was involved for a while with the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM). In 1950 he joined the Congress of Democrats, the white wing of the ANC-led Congress Alliance, organizing a new Socialist League of Africa. Yet after the Sharpeville Massacre Hirson felt discouraged by the political failure to combat Apartheid: his critique of the movement, ’10 Years of the Stay at Home’, was written in late 1960.
In the early 1960s Hirson organized a National Committee for Liberation, later known as the African Resistance Movement (ARM), with other Trotskyists and younger members of the ANC. The group carried out sabotage actions, and in 1964 Hirson was arrested, convicted of sabotage, and jailed for nine years. Released in 1973, but facing a banning order and house arrest, Hirson and his family moved to England. There he found posts at Middlesex University and Bradford University. He initially lectured in physics, but in 1986 enrolled for a history PhD.
Beginning with Year of fire, year of ash – a record of the Soweto uprising – Hilson wrote a series of works on the history of the left and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. He collaborated with Hillel Ticktin of Critique, and founded the critical journal Searchlight South Africa with Paul Trewhela.
In 1991 Hirson returned to visit South Africa, speaking at eight universities with the demand that “use of Stalinist methods in the ANC” be exposed and stopped.
Works
- ’10 Years of the Stay at Home’, International Socialism, 1961
- Year of fire, year of ash: the Soweto revolt, roots of a revolution, 1979
- Yours for the union!: class and community struggles in South Africa, 1930-1947, 1989
- Strike across the Empire: the seamen’s strike of 1925 : in Britain, South Africa and Australasia, 1992
- Revolutions in my life, 1995
- The delegate for Africa: David Ivon Jones, 1883-1924, 1995
- The Cape Town intellectuals: Ruth Schechter and her circle, 1907-1934, 2000
- Frank Glass: the restless revolutionary, 2003
- A history of the Left in South Africa: writings of Baruch Hirson, 2005