Out of the Burning House

This unique collaboration, between a Marxist historian and behaviourist psychologist, is a vivid picture of the cultural milieu they experienced at Aberdeen University, and of social forces often overlooked in histories of the time: Scientific Humanism, The New Left, and precursors of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

As students together in the MacMillan Era, they shared an attachment to socialist, secular and scientific values. Like Brecht, they saw those unwilling to commit to revolutionary socialism as like people in a burning house asking if it is raining outside before they agree to escape.

They followed different paths in their subsequent lives: one became an historian and long-time member of the Communist Party; the other, although a radical behaviourist, unusually focussed on contemporary folklore and child labour.