SEDGWICK, Peter Harold (1934-1983)

Papers of Peter Sedgwick (1934-1983), including: correspondence with contemporaries and friends including Raphael Samuel, Jean McCrindle, Anna Davin, Luke Hodgkin, Stanley and Hannah Mitchell, Steven Lukes and others, 1953-1983; photocopies of Sedgwick's handwritten diaries, 1980-1983; family, biographical and personal papers, 1934-1952; published articles, reviews and papers regarding politics, psychology and Victor Serge, 1963-1984.

Peter Sedgwick was born in 1934 and brought up in Liverpool. He gained a scholarship to Balliol College Oxford where he became a communist, leaving the Communist Party in 1956 with other members of the early New Left. He then joined the Socialist Review Group later to become the International Socialists. He wrote brilliantly for the group’s press, but also involved himself deeply in all the drudgery and activities of the rank rank-and and-file members. He was always a free spirit and was bitterly opposed to the International Socialism group renaming itself as a the Socialist Workers Party in 1976 refusing to join the new organisation while always remaining a man dedicated to the far left. He was editing the works of Victor Serge at the time of his death.

The Sedgwick archive is divided into the following four sections:

• SEDGWICK/1: Correspondence
• SEDGWICK/2: Papers
• SEDGWICK/3: Diaries
• SEDGWICK/4: Articles, writings and correspondence for a proposed memorial volume

OPEN

Transferred to Bishopsgate Institute from Ruskin College, Oxford, 12 November 2008.

Adlib catalogue and handlist available in researcher's area.

Entry compiled by Grace Biggins

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