Guardian Editorial on William Morris doesn’t mention his beard
The Guardian has published an Editorial on William Morris:
It was the anniversary of Morris’s birth earlier in the week(24th March 1834) but the reason for the Editorial is to mark the re-opening after a refurbishment of his Oxfordshire house, Kelmscott.
The Guardian is not unsympathetic to Morris- after all he died a long time ago and is not currently opposing Keir Starmer’s Great Moving Right Show for that reason.
It does however have some lacuna. For a start off it has no mention of Morris’s trademark beard. As seriously it rather misrepresents his politics. Morris was a revolutionary and at times anti-Parliamentary socialist. He did not as the Guardian suggests want to abolish Parliament however. In his Utopian novel News from Nowhere Parliament has been replaced by a dungheap. That is an environmentally positive use of the space. Morris saw democracy as being enhanced by a series of people’s assemblies based where they lived, allowing them greater say and more democratic control over their lives. It might seem like a modest measure but over a century after Morris’s death Britain is nowhere near achieving such an extension of democratic practice. Socialist beards are flourishing however.
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