Kmflett's Blog

Robespierre (b 6 May 1758) & the British Revolutionary Tradition

Robespierre one of the leaders of the French Revolution was born 268 years ago on 6^th May 1758. The French Revolution devoured its own leaders and Robespierre was despatched on 28^th July 1794.

This however is not about the history and the politics of the French Revolution in France but its impact in Britain. In the aftermath of the Revolution, there were supporters in the UK, and of course opposition from the Government.

The influence of Robespierre and other leaders of the French Revolution however stretched further than the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There was a significant impact in the 1830s as the Chartist movement rose.

E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class contains many references to Robespierre and one in particular focuses on Bronterre O’Brien was the Editor of the Poor Man’s Guardian.

O’Brien wrote:

We must have what Southey called a ‘revolution of revolutions’ such an one as Robespierre and St Just projected in France in the beginning of 1794; that is to say a complete subversion of the institutions by which wealth is distributed. Property..property this is the thing we must be at’

Thompson notes that O’Brien believed that such a change could come about peacefully when the vote was won but cautions that O’Brien’s views were one strand of a number. Even so he became known as the ‘schoolmaster of Chartism’, although active in the Chartist movement in the 1840s he later sought to build links with middle-class radicals.

The influence of Robespierre in terms of how society was to be changed remained significant