From the national question to the social question

Let me first thank the Harold Wolpe Trust for inviting me to give this lecture in honour of a man whom I have held in the highest esteem. I never met Harold Wolpe but, like many members of my generation, I knew of his Scarlet Pimpernel escapades not as a rescuer of the aristocracy but as a champion of the downtrodden, his deep commitment to liberation, and his prodigious and rigorous intellectual work. I do not know what he would think about what I will be saying, but the underlying theme of my paper – the tensions between race and class, between vertical and horizontal inequalities, between the “national” and “social” questions – would be familiar terrain for him, and one that he addressed with greater rigour than I am able to.