TREC Tributes - Stuart Hall 1932 - 2014

Stuart Hall’s early work on racism and reaction articulated the effect of the world’s history on shaping English history. He stated ‘the outside history that is inside the history of the English ….[that] There is no English history without that other history..” With this he established himself as an essential critical theorist on matters of identity and ideology, articulating and expanding on theories of ‘historical amnesia’ – a concept that remarkably still has currency today. Following this introduction to critical thinking, Stuart Hall joined the Routledge Critical Thinkers and elaborated on his earlier work within the sub publication ‘Racism and Resistance’.

Hall was one of the first academics to define and critically describe the notion of a multicultural society (which he distinguished from a multi-cultural state). He expressed the view that a successful British society would only be determined when individuals in Britain are recognised as having strong but different attachments – thus challenging the notion of a uniquely homogenous British cultural identity. 

Stuart Hall has epitomised through his dialogue (written and verbal) the very essence of The Race Equality Centre’s raison d’etre.

The quality of this man has been summarised by Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington who said: "For me he was a hero. A black man who soared above and beyond the limitations imposed by racism and one of the leading cultural theorists of his generation."