“Who ARE these guys?!” Politics, Passions, Peculiarities, and Polemics in the Historiography of British Communism
Reading John McIlroy’s and Alan Campbell’s dissection of recent writings on the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) by Kevin Morgan, Nina Fishman, Andrew Thorpe, Matthew Worley, and others reminds me of a scene in a cinematic classic, one of a handful of Hollywood’s last unique and great ‘‘Westerns,’’ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. As Newman and Redford, train robbers with a conscience and a populist sense of the poor’s right to the ample and ill-gotten gains of the rich, try to elude those who want them captured and brought to bourgeois justice, they are pursued, relentlessly, throughout the western hemisphere. In spite of some imaginative efforts and a willingness to seek out escapes to what must have appeared to them ‘‘the ends of the earth’’, Newman and Redford cannot shake those who are ‘‘on their trial.’’ Looking down from a mountainous perch, and seeing once again that they are being meticulously ‘‘tracked,’’ Newman turns to Redford and says in exasperation, ‘‘Who ARE these guys?!’’ Morgan, Fishman, Thorpe, and Worley must ask themselves the same question. The team of McIlroy and Campbell have turned from being their collaborators in the writing of Communist history into something of a nemesis. The historiographic impasse that has developed in Britain parallels that which has long exercised an influence in the United States, pitting so-called ‘traditionalists’ (liberal anti-Communists who accent the institutional history of the Party and understand its politics, determined in Moscow and narrowly conceived, to be the prime consideration in their commentary) against seeming ‘revisionists’ (New Left-inspired advocates of the relative autonomy
Index for Volume 4, 2005, American Communist History
Campbell, Alan and John McIlroy. A Peripheral Vision: Communist Historiography in Britain. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005, p. 125. ———. Some Problems of Communist History. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005, p. 199. Davis, Mary and John Foster. Why Were They So Afraid of Communist Influence? Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 167. Devinatz, Victor G. The Communist Party’s Grassroots Labor and Political Activism Circa 1920 to 1960: Of North Carolina Tobacco Workers, Pennsylvania Anthracite Racials and the Cold War. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 247 (review essay). Eckstein, Arthur. Not Just Another Political Party. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 237 (review essay). Filardo, Peter Meyer. Dear Comrade Foster: The following is the autobiographical (personal, political, medical) history that I promised. . . Comradely, Claudia Jones (December 6, 1955). Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2005. p. 85. ———. United States & Comparative Communist History Bibliography, 2004. Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2005. p. 61. Foster, John and Mary Davis. Why Were They So Afraid of Communist Influence? Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 167. Haynes, John Earl.Frissions of Familiarity. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 175. Haynes, John Earl and Harvey Klehr. The CPUSA Reports to the Comintern: 1941. Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2005. p. 21. Isserman, Maurice. Open Archives and Open Minds: ‘‘Traditionalists’’ versus ‘‘Revisionists’’ after Venona. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 215. ———. Rejoinder. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 233. Klehr, Harvey. Reflections of a Traditionalist Historian. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 225. ———. Response. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 235. Klehr, Harvey and John Earl Haynes. The CPUSA Reports to the Comintern: 1941. Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2005. p. 21. Laybourn, Keith. A Comment on the Historiography of Communism in Britain. Vol. 4, No. 2, December 2005. p. 159.
Monte Carlo Study of the Effect of Backscatter Materail Thickness on 99 mTc Source Response in Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography
Introduction SPECT projections are contaminated by scatter radiation, resulting in reduced image contrast and quantitative errors. Backscatter constitutes a major part of the scatter contamination in lower energy windows. The current study is an evaluation of the effect of backscatter material on FWHM and image quality investigated by Monte Carlo simulation. Materials and Methods SIMIND program was used for simulation of a Siemen’s dual-head variable angle scintillation gamma camera. Planar and SPECT scanning of a 99m Tc source and a Jaszczak phantom for varying thicknesses of Perspex slabs, as a backscatter media, were analyzed using the photopeak and scatter windows. Simulated planar images and reconstructed tomographic images were evaluated qualitatively, by two nuclear medicine specialists, and quantitatively, by Structural Similarity (SSIM) Index. Results In the 99m Tc photopeak window, no significant change in total counts due to backscatter material was measured. In the scatter windows, scattering was overestimated compared with a simulated backscatter free SPECT system. For instance, at a thickness of 10 cm, total counts of a 99m Tc source detected in the 72 keV windows eventually doubled with increasing backscatter material, compared with the situation without backscatter material. The backscatter contribution plateaued when more than 7 cm of scatter material was placed but there were optimized results for a backscatter thickness of 4.5 cm. Better image quality for the thickness was confirmed by the results of eye interpretation and also by SSIM algorithm. Conclusion Backscatter should be taken into account, particularly in model-based scatter correction methods in SPECT for an accurate simulation system optimization.