The Beard Liberation Front banner displayed at the Port Elizabeth Test between South Africa and England 16th January 2020
The Beard Liberation Front banner was first unveiled in Aberdeen on May 9th 2014 at the Scotland v England cricket match.
It appeared again at the first day of the West Indies v Antigua Test on 13th April 2015 and subsequently at England cricket games around the globe
Thanks are due to Hazel who conceived it, to Huw who turned it into a reality, to Ian who helped carry it and to Paul who took photos.
The banner features three beards.
There was discussion on social media but agreement was soon reached that they were Marx, WG Grace and H M Hyndman.
The son of a businessman born in London in 1842, Henry Mayers Hyndman played thirteen matches as a right hand bat for Cambridge University, MCC and Sussex in 1864 and 1865. He also played other matches to the late 1860s
On 30th June 1864 at the Oval Hyndman turned out for the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of the South and batting well down the order in both innings made 4 and 11.
However playing for Sussex against Hampshire at Hove on 11-13th August 1864 Hyndman did better scoring 58 before being run out in a match that Sussex won by 10 wickets. A few days later also at Hove he scored 6 and 62 for Sussex against Middlesex.
It was of course some years before Hyndman discovered the works of Karl Marx.
Hyndman, previously a stockbroker, went on to become the leader of the Social Democratic Federation in the 1880s, Britain’s first marxist party.
Marx himself was familiar with Brighton in the 1860s where Hyndman had played. His daughter Eleanor Marx had taken a teaching post in the town and he visited from time to time for his health. Marx was a fan of Margate and described Brighton as ‘this sea-bathing place’.
Marx himself had no known interest in cricket. Capital might have turned out differently if he had to factor in the LBW law.
WG Grace was certainly no fan of Marx but he had met Hyndman.
In his autobiography Hyndman records:
The only two men I ever saw who played almost equally well on bad grounds and on good were Ranjitsinhji and W.G. Grace. The former was a genius: the latter had worked up batting to an exact science. The first time I had the misfortune to play against “W.G.” he was only a lad of eighteen. The match was the Gentlemen of Sussex against the Gentlemen of Gloucestershire. Grace went in first and took the first ball which I bowled. He scooped a gentle catch into Harry Brand’s mouth at mid-off. Brand let it trickle down his chest and stomach comfortably to the ground. “W.G.” made 276 thereafter. Years later Brand, then Lord Hampden, came to see me on an important matter of business. No sooner did his eye light upon me (he did not know he was going to meet me) than he walked up to me and said, “Have you ever forgotten that catch I dropped off you from ‘W.G.’?” I never had. We laughed then: we didn’t laugh at the time.
Make it of that what you will there is no question that the link between Marx, Hyndman and WG Grace went beyond just beards. Cricket was also involved
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