Baruch Hirson was born to a lower-middle class
Jewish family in
Doornfontein,
Johannesburg. His parents, Joseph and Lily Hirson, had emigrated to South Africa to escape
antisemitism 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
antisemitism from the
Greyshirts and those celebrating the centenary of the
Great Trek, he moved towards
Marxism, 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
the University of Bradford and then
Middlesex Polytechnic where he lectured in politics, and in 1986, he enrolled for a PhD in
history. Beginning with
Year of fire, year of ash, a record of the
Soweto uprising, Hirson 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. In 1995, his biography of the Welsh communist and opponent of apartheid,
David Ivon Jones, was published. He died in London in 1999, aged 77, from the cumulative effects of a long-term degenerative paralysis of the bone structure, one of several health problems exacerbated by his imprisonment. ==Recognition==