Part of our history: the tradition of Red Republicanism
Given current events its worth recalling that there is a tradition of Red Republicanism in Britain.
George Julian Harney (1819-1897) was born in Deptford and active in every phase of the Chartist movement from 1838 to its demise around 1860.
By the late 1840s he was a leading figure in the Chartist movement and Editor of the Northern Star the biggest selling newspaper of the period. Disagreements with the paper’s owner Feargus O’Connor led to his departure and by June 1850 he had launched the weekly Red Republican paper.
Harney was a left Chartist and internationalist, friendly with and on occasion influenced by Marx and Engels. The Chartist colour had been green but after 1848 it changed to a socialist red.
Harney was clear in an Editorial in the first issue of the Red Republican on 22nd June 1850 that it was about more than getting rid of a monarch, in this case Queen Victoria. Simply replacing a monarchy with a republic as France had done was not enough. There was a need to get rid of all exploiters.
Harney realised and was proven correct that the paper’s name would lead to it being burked (boycotted) by the news trade and changed its name to Friend of the People in December 1850. Before that happened however the paper published the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto by the female Chartist activist and co-thinker of Marx and Engels Helen Macfarlane.
Why isn’t all this on the school history curriculum?
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