Kmflett's Blog

56^th anniversary of the publication of the Making of the English Working Class EP Thompson on William Blake, Beast & Whore

The historian EP Thompson wrote extensively about William Blake and the religious traditions he stood in. There is a review of his Witness Against the Beast from a Blake related website which gives a flavour in overview of what he was looking at:

http://bq.blakearchive.org/28.2.paley

In another age these minority traditions were perhaps better understood. The paperback edition of Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class was published as the 1000th Pelican book in September 1968. To mark the occasion the Guardian published a special supplement to which Thompson himself contributed a piece headlined ‘Beast and Whore’. In Blakeian terms the reference was to Church and State but wonders if such a piece could appear now without attracting the attentions of Guido..

Below is a letter I wrote in 1993 to the London Review of Books defending Thompson’s treatment of Blake. Sadly he died later the same year.

__________________________________________________________________________

It is thirty years since Edward Thompson first published The Making of the English Working Class, and while the phrase he uses to criticise what Post-Modernism has tried to do to William Blake, ‘the somewhat attenuated discourse of analytic academicism’, is perhaps not quite on a level with ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’, we may give thanks that Thompson’s brain is razor sharp still and that, unlike some of his contemporaries, he has never been bought off by academic life or cheap fame in the press. Where, however, are the Edward Thompsons for the Nineties and beyond?

Keith Flett

London N17

January 3, 1873

To the editor of The Times

Sir, -My attention is called to a paragraph in The Times of to-day headed “Karl Marx and the International.” It is there asserted the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, while calling upon the different federations and sections to propose themselves the plenipotentiaries to be appointed by the General Council, has declared it “imperatively necessary that an exact copy should be simultaneously forwarded to Karl Marx in London. The drift of this that none will receive credentials but those acceptable to and approved by Karl Marx in London, and as the agents will, as a matter of course, have to be in constant communication with him, he will be virtually the autocrat of the movement.”

Marx did get a letter published in January 1873 so only a 21 year wait

Marx & Engels to the Times 29th January 1852

Sir,
The destruction of the last remnants of an independent press
on the Continent has made it the honourable duty of the English
press to record every act of illegality and oppression in that
quarter of Europe. Allow me, therefore, through your columns, to
lay before the public a fact, which shows that the judges in Prussia
are quite on a level with the political menials of Louis Napoleon.
You know what a valuable moyen de government* a well got-up
conspiracy may turn out, if brought forward at the proper
moment. The Prussian government, in order to render their
parliament pliable, wanted such a plot in the beginning of last
year. Accordingly, numbers of persons were arrested, and the
police was set to work all over Germany. But nothing was made
out, and after all, but a few individuals were ultimately retained in
prison at Cologne, under the pretext of being the chiefs of a
widespread revolutionary organisation. T h e principal of them are
Dr. Becker and Dr. Bürgers, two gentlemen connected with the
press, Dr. Daniels, Dr. Jacobi and Dr. Klein, medical practitioners..

Marx and Engels 29th January 1852.

The Times didn’t like Marx and Engels politics (much as in 2024) and didn’t publish the letter

Keir Starmer in New York to address the UN on Thursday also met Trump for what the media have described as a two-hour dinner at Trump Tower.

What was on the menu has not so far been reported. However Starmer is a pescatorian so one wonders if he had one of his occasional lapses and joined Trump for the signature MAGA burger?

My elder brother, Tom, was an architect and a great reader of Ruskin and Morris. I too admired these great men and began to understand their social gospel. My brother was helping at the Maurice Hostel in the nearby Hoxton district of London. Our reading became more extensive. After looking into many social reform ideas – such as co-partnership – we both came to the conclusion that the economic and ethical basis of society was wrong. We became socialists.

I recall how in October, 1907, we went to Clements Inn to try and join the Fabian Society. Edward Pease, the Secretary, regarded us as if we were two beetles who had crept under the door, and when we said we wanted to join the Society he asked coldly, “Why?” We said, humbly, that we were socialists and persuaded him we were genuine.

I remember very well the first Fabian Society meeting we attended at Essex Hall. The platform seemed to be full of bearded men: Aylmer Maude, William Sanders, Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw. I said to my brother, “Have we got to grow a beard to join this show. H. G. Wells was on the platform, speaking with a little piping voice; he was very unimpressive.

Clement Attlee, As It Happened, 1954

The Spectator (thanks to Stephen Bush on Blue Sky)

In September 1888 Engels spent some time in the US and Canada. On his return on the SS City of New York he took time to review the quality of German style beer and wine available in the US

and I would advise anyone who is feeling decrepit and under the weather to cross the Atlantic and spend a fort-night or 3 weeks at Niagara and a similar period in the Adirondacks 2,000 feet above sea level. The air there is quite excellent, while the August sunshine of Lombardy is combined with the fresh breeze of our Rhenish October. I already feel an urge to go out there again next year, if I can get someone to go with me. You ought to consider it; you and Rudolf could, I am sure, do with a tonic of this kind. The tour isn’t at all fatiguing; everywhere, in the better hotels, the food is first-rate and the German beer, i.e. brewed after the German fashion, quite excellent, only wine being dear, though a good bottle of Rhine wine is to be had anywhere for 1 dollar or 1 dollar and 50 cents, nor is American wine at all bad, though unfortunately not as a rule obtainable in the hotels. We have got 24 bottles on board, which we are drinking with gusto—Ohio wine (Reisling and sparkling wine) and Californian Riesling with a very good flavour but no bouquet.
Much love to Emma and the children,ditto to all our relations.

Your old brother

Engels to Hermann Engels SS City of New York 27/8^th September 1888

How often Nigel Farage the MP for Clacton actually visits Clacton is open to question but he does visit (expenses paid) the US frequently. At the moment Sept 25-28 is at the Nomad Capitalist conference in Kuala Lumpur.

He is listed as ‘Mr Brexit’ and will speak on bank account cancel culture and the future of the West.

The event is in a colonial era hotel built in 1932 and revamped in 2012. It looks like a Farage kind of place, although what the voters of Clacton might think about it is another matter

We’re meeting again at The Majestic Hotel in Kuala Lumpur for one reason: our guests enjoyed the comfort of easily speaking in English alongside unrivalled service and luxury that captures colonial-era charm… all at an extremely affordable price that makes our event open to all.

Step into a smoking jacket in Mr. Henderson’s favourite cigar room, enjoy a tropical-themed cocktail evocative of old Malaya over a game of billiards, or sip tea to the sound of the 1920s with The Majestic’s band. This national heritage site hotel is a true hidden gem with stunning city views secluded amidst lush greenery.

Monday 7th October 5.30pm Rosalind Eyben, John Horner & the Communist Party, Uncomfortable Encounters with Truth.

Recording of seminar

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/11a-rXdLrMk4n3kXvQ2xwWWqyi8fJ4qKxDWxwzUIhEuiTX1jDXU_iMd4yi22mJj6.HEFilCUPxIMi0LnS

Despite their influence on British politics there are few thoroughly researched and critically distanced accounts of the lives of twentieth century British trade unionists and of leading working-class communists.  Until he left in 1956, John Horner was one of the British Communist Party’s cold war success stories but has been forgotten about because he stayed silent when others published their memoirs.  Horner drafted a lively, unpublished autobiography of the first half of his life but never wanted to write or even speak about his time with the CP until towards the end of his life he revealed to his daughter, Rosalind Eyben, some of what most ashamed him about his past. In her illustrated talk, Rosalind discusses how Horner created the modern Fire Brigades Union and the problem of political allegiance, personal morality and states of denial associated with his membership of the Communist Party that were later to haunt him.   

William Cuffay (1788-1870) the black leader of London Chartism in 1848 was found guilty on 25th September of participating in an armed Chartist rising in Seven Dials on 16th August 1848. He denied this but was sentenced to be transported to Hobart, Australia, where he remained active until his death in 1870

A word about Cuffey, and I have done, I believe in my conscience that a more honest or
sincere man never breathed than Cuffey, and if he was foolish enough to lend himself to the
machinations of such villians, it was lest he himself might be suspected of cowardice.
Cuffey—as I frequently told him—was operated upon by the cheers and applause of the spies
and informers that filled the galleries during the sittings of the Convention and the National Assembly; and I told him and others that they would be victimised to this false enthusiasm; and that my words have been realised is a melancholy fact, as I have no hesitation in declaring that I feel more for Cuffey than for any man that has been victimised since the Whig reign of terror commenced in 1839. And, however the Press may scoff, rogues may sneer, spies may swear, and juries may convict, I tell you that an
honester man does not breathe the breath of life than Cuffey; and that he was appointed
auditor of the accounts of the Land Company from the implicit confidence that those of his
own order placed in his integrity, and from the conviction that he would not allow his
own brother to practise a fraud upon the poor to the amount of a shilling.
I remain, Your faithful Friend and unpurchaseable Representative,
Feargus O’Connor.

Newcastle University researcher Oskar Jensen has uncovered some fascinating links to the original revolutionary politics of the US National Anthem.

Its long been known that the Star Spangled Banner started life as a drinking song first in Liverpool and then in London. Its original title Millions Be Free was in support of the French Revolution and against slavery.

It was taken up by amongst others the London Corresponding Society and Mary Wollstonecraft was known to be a fan of it, possibly helping to inspire her support for the French Revolution.

It made its way to New York via an economic migrant where it also had an anti-slavery focus before becoming later the US anthem. Meanwhile post Peterloo in 1819 it also resurfaced as a radical song in Britain.

E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class notes that Millions Be Free was sung at meetings of the radical Hampden Clubs in the run up to Peterloo in 1816 and 1817. The transatlantic link underlined by Jensen reflects the reality that the development of capitalism and those who opposed its exploitative system was global

Link to a Radio 3 broadcast on the above (25th September 2024)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00230k1

For anyone unable to access the link, there is more detail about the research here:

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2024/09/originsofthestar-spangledbanner/#:~:text=Pirsson%20went%20on%20to%20run%20the%20first%20free%20Black%20school