The Talented Mr Sketchley (1823-1913)

by Christopher Draper

JOHN Sketchley’s name pops up in numerous labour histories but never accompanied by an adequate biography so who was this man – the only anarchist whose activism stretched back to Chartism and forward into the twentieth century?  William Morris appreciated John’s significance, reminding readers in his flattering introduction to Sketchley’s magnum opus of, “his career so important and instructive for us." 

Road to Damascus

Sketchley was born in 1823 in Hinckley, Leicestershire to parents William and Elizabeth. His father was a stocking maker and John followed him into the trade.  Although it was less than a decade since Ned Ludd visited Leicester, John’s dad was no frame-breaker, with a political outlook conditioned by Roman Catholicism. 

When John was 16 he went with his father and friends to hear the Reverend Simmons preach at a nearby village and it changed his life. John recalled, “the Rev. gentleman dwelt at great length on the sufferings of the poor and very ably expounded the principles of Chartism as the one thing needed.  I felt pleased with the sermon and when he announced that he should preach there again the following Sunday I was delighted.”

As a Catholic choirboy John naively expected his own parish priest to also preach the charitable gospel of the Charter but was rapidly disabused:
“Father Proctor on entering the pulpit, took for his text the well known words, 'ALL POWER COMES FROM GOD' etc, etc.  His sermon was a political one. He commenced a violent attack on the French Revolution; condemned the Republicans as atheists, robbers and murderers, declaring that they were the scourge of France, accursed by heaven, and abhorred by every good man.  He next came to Chartism, which he condemned as synonymous with atheism and infidelity and concluded by calling on every member of the congregation not to attend another Chartist meeting.”

John’s dad insisted he attend that afternoon’s Catechism class and forbade further attendance upon the Rev. Simmons but John disobeyed… ”I hastened to Earl Shilton and at 3 o’clock was listening to the Rev. Mr Simmons. A second sermon was given at 6 o’clock, after which a committee was formed for Hinckley and district. I was appointed Secretary of that Committee."

Facts Before Faith

As a Chartist militant, John didn’t immediately abandon the Catholic Church but throughout the following decade carefully compared and contrasted the gospels of each.  “I left the Church only when I was thoroughly convinced that its claims were incompatible with human liberty and human dignity.”

Enduring loyalty, careful study and sombre reflection remained defining characteristics of Sketchley’s libertarian politics throughout his long and active life.

Although John recorded that many feared Chartists were on the verge of violent revolution in truth the movement was inadequately organised.  “The storm of 1842 closed with arrest of large numbers of the leaders; the people became more or less demoralised, the movement collapsed for the time and the people found that something more was needed than resolutions, cheers, petitions and even threats of violence.”

John continued to campaign for the Charter and was warned that his arrest was imminent but he refused to desist. 

The Next Step

Sadly the movement disintegrated around him until John had to admit:
"Chartism is a thing of the past…reaction everywhere triumphant, the people everywhere again in chains…nothing left but to give to Chartism a decent burial in the hope of a more glorious resurrection.

“In 1850-1 I began to study the writings of the immortal Mazzini and the documents sent for by the Central European Democratic Committee and in the latter year I organised a republican group…”

At that stage the twenty-eight year old John Sketchley was living in Chapel Street, Hinckley with his young wife Lucy and their infant son, Julian, named after “Red Republican”, George Julian Harney. Both John and Lucy worked as stocking makers and in 1855 John was called to give evidence on the trade to a Parliamentary committee.

Woollen stockings were made on frames supplied by manufacturers who charged workers “rental” plus other costs and paid for each completed “piece”, minus “expenses”.  Workers complained of onerous charges and unfair distribution of profits. Serving as secretary of the local Stocking Makers Committee, in 1859 Sketchley’s militant opinions of the exploitative nature of the trade prompted one local manufacturer to sue for libel the owner of the Midland Express newspaper in which they were published. Sketchley further accused the manufacturer, a “Mr Homer”, of operating an illegal “truck” system of payment whereby workers received vouchers exchangeable only for goods from his wife’s shop instead of currency.  Despite the detailed, objective evidence Sketchley submitted, the court ruled in favour of the manufacturer against the publisher.  The case cost Sketchley nothing but he had his own problems.

Suspicious Death
On the night of Sunday 13th November 1859, John’s wife, Lucy was suddenly taken ill and died before morning. Sketchley’s obvious distress at being left alone with two young children increased after it was suggested she may have been poisoned.  The Coroner said the symptoms suggested strychnine and ordered an inquest.  A post mortem revealed that, “the brain was affected by chronic disease and the upper part of the spinal marrow injected with blood” but the examining surgeon, “did not consider this sufficient to account for death."   The inquest jury accordingly requested that Lucy’s “stomach and other internal organs were sent to Professor Taylor for analysation."

Mrs Frances Wathers, a neighbour, and little Julian Sketchley were both questioned before the analyst finally pronounced, “That the deceased did not die of poison but the precise cause there is no evidence to show.”

New Wife, New Career

A year after Lucy’s demise, on the 23rd December 1860, John walked down the aisle at St Michael’s Parish Church, Coventry with 23 year old, Mary Ann Osborn. Sketchley had given up stocking making and become an “Insurance Agent”, with other sidelines  including acting as sales rep for, “JOHN CASSELL’s COFFEES – Celebrated for their Great Strength and Fine Aromatic Flavour”!

John escaped the factory system but his son ten year old Julian wasn’t so lucky, he was employed as a “winder”. Besides selling coffee and insurance, John occasionally received payment for his journalistic contributions and the punchy tone of his style is evident in a piece submitted to The Midland Workman in 1861, which concludes with this stirring call to arms:  “The interests of employer and employed are said to be identical; yet they are arrayed against each other as antagonists in war. Political economy may sanction this but morality condemns it and it will yet have an end. The just and moral will yet be triumphant.”

Brought to Book

In 1865 morality triumphed against him when he was in trouble for not paying the baker’s bill for refreshments he’d served up to members of his insurance scheme.  “The plaintiff sued for the sum of £1 1s. 8d. as due to him for bread and plum cake, which had been ordered by the defendant to supply a tea party held at the Town hall, in connection with the National Mutual Assurance Society." Judgement was given against John who was ordered to pay off 5s. a week.

The following year he was back in court after refusing to settle an account totalling £4 11s. for stationery supplied to him.  Having ignored the legal deadline for submissions the court let him off lightly and accepted a belated offer to repay 12s. a month.

Adding another string to his bow, John began retailing books and pamphlets but it did nothing for his finances. Sketchley found getting books on account easy but settling the account was impossible. London publishers proved less willing to be fobbed off with hapless promises of future payment, and owing £23 4s. 8d to Messrs. Dean & Sons was the last straw.  After giving the Court the run around for six months, in July 1867 Sketchley was committed to Leicester County Gaol and his wife and children sent to the workhouse.  As no-one came forward to settle his debts, he remained in prison until the end of the year when Deans finally accepted that they weren’t going to get their money and agreed to his release. 

Radical Republican

Throughout the late 1860’s, Sketchley was Secretary of the local branch of the “National Reform League”.  Through the pages of the Leicester Chronicle he rhetorically asked - “working men of Hinckley and district, are you willing to remain political slaves – mere political ciphers in the land of your birth?” 

In 1870 John and his family moved to Birmingham.  A voracious reader he became increasingly aware of and in touch with continental revolutionaries and their political ideas. During 1872-3 John was one of the main contributors to W H Riley’s, “International Herald” where the advanced nature of his politics was obvious, “The term Republicanism in its modern or European sense, embraces the social as well as the political emancipation of the People…  A mere political revolution, leaving the great social questions unsolved leaves the great mass of the People in social degradation, still victims of social tyranny and oppression…."

In 1875 Sketchley founded “Birmingham Republican Association”, and campaigned for the abolition of the Monarchy, House of Lords, State Church and Standing Army as well as the nationalisation of the land and the currency. Two years later he renamed the organisation, “The Midland Social Democratic Association”, which EP Thompson describes as, “The first English society of the modern Socialist movement.”

International Socialist

By 1879 John Sketchley was part of an advanced guard of European socialists anxious to replace workers’ affection for Liberalism with revolutionary ideas.  His 36-page booklet, “The Principles of Social Democracy: an exposition and a vindication” was published and broadcast by the revolutionary internationalists of London’s Social Democratic Club, Rose Steet, Soho.  As English anarchist Frank Kitz later recorded in his memoir, “Many thousands of this pamphlet were sold, the German section bearing the major portion of the cost, in order to aid propaganda among our own working class.”

The following year, with backing from, “The Land Restoration League”, John published a four-page tract entitled, “Land Common Property”. Next came longer, locally published pamphlets on, “The Workman’s Question: why he is poor” and, “The Funding System, or how the people are plundered by the bond holding classes.”

In 1884, Sketchley joined the Marxist “Social Democratic Federation” and was appointed Secretary of the Birmingham Branch, which met at the Bell Street Coffee House. Although
John was happy enough with Marx’s diagnosis of society’s ills he never swallowed Marx’s statist solution.  It’s significant that when Sketchley published a hugely expanded (238pgs), version of his original “Social Democracy” booklet in 1884 he asked libertarian, William Morris, rather than SDF party-leader, H M Hyndman, to write the introduction. When Morris’s anti-parliamentary faction split at the end of the year to found the “Socialist League” Sketchley joined the Birmingham Branch and wrote regularly for the SL’s newspaper, “Commonweal”. 

Lessons from History

Sketchley’s writings were superbly well-informed and his prose crystal clear.  Consider the inspirational clarity and anarchist analysis evident in this short extract from one of his 1885 Commonweal pieces:
"The gullibility of the English is great and their credulity almost unbounded. After centuries of misrule and generations of cruel deceptions they are again becoming the victims of designing politicians.  Ignoring the past they have learnt nothing by experience. They are as thoughtless today as though the facts of history have no lessons for them. It is strange that the working classes should be so easily gulled, so easily deceived for the thousandth time” (this assertion is then copiously illustrated with specific examples drawn from English and European history of the manipulations and cynical duplicities enacted by politicians…), I have said that the whole political life of England is based on expediency and not on principle and that the third Reform Bill will accomplish nothing for the toiling masses.  But it will do one thing.  It will undeceive them to a great extent. It will show them that the vote will not give them political power.”

Sketchley was keen to explain, illustrate with evidence and promote anarchist ideas but preferred to label himself a Socialist and maintain relationships with all progressive elements of the local community and labour movement. 

Rebel Without a Penny

Sketchley’s expertise in political economy wasn’t reflective in his domestic economy and before the year was out John and his family were again penniless.  An “Appeal” was published in November’s “Commonweal”:  “As it is the wish of many friends that comrade Sketchley the veteran Chartist, Republican and Socialist should resume more active work, where his well-known abilities and great experience will be of the greatest services and where he can devote his future years to the furtherance of the Socialist movement, we ask everyone to assist us in making the testimonial a success. All who have received subscription lists etc might kindly remit to the treasurer, William Morris.”

With financial support from comrades John was soon back in action and in 1886 delivered several lectures away from Birmingham, travelling in May and September to Sheffield. In June 1886 John journeyed north to Blackburn to deliver a series of lectures under the auspices of “Darwen Progressive Society”.  What he didn’t do was follow the hackneyed path down to London, despite the blandishments of comrades including George Odger.

Socialism Begins at Home
Despite his concern for humanity Sketchley neglected his wife and children. Mary Ann stuck with him for almost three decades, despite the indignity of the workhouse.  Poverty killed half of their numerous offspring in infancy and her life was a constant struggle to keep the family together.  At the end of 1886 they finally separated and John left Mary Ann to look after the family on her own. Although John’s propaganda spoke eloquently of the rights of women his personal politics appear unconvincing.

Mary Ann stayed in Birmingham, in their old home at 348 Cheapside, with seven of their surviving children. John moved out, first to 8 Arthur Place, Birmingham, then after making several further propaganda trips to Sheffield, at the end of 1888 he settled there, initially at 299 Shalesmoor.

Sojourn in Sheffield

Sheffield had obvious attractions for Sketchley; a Socialist Club, a tradition of labour militancy and an emerging anarchism.  In 1889 John campaigned alongside Edward Carpenter and Fred Charles, in a series of Sheffield street meetings organised to raise support for the striking London dockers.  In July John visited Nottingham to stand on a platform in the Market Place with seven comrades and deliver what the local paper described as, “extravagant tirades against Royalty…round the platform a large crowd of men and boys collected and if they came for the purpose of hearing members of the Royal Family insulted they must have gone away fully satiated."

Having settled in at Sheffield in April 1890 John placed a notice in “Commonweal” seeking comrades to start a Sheffield branch of the Socialist League:  “As the study of Socialism from a revolutionary or international standpoint is absolutely necessary, it is intended by several friends to form a branch of the League. I have therefore to ask all those who are willing to join in forming such branch and who are willing to help in propagating the principles of true Socialism to communicate with me as early as possible – J. Sketchley, 165 Gibraltar Street, Sheffield.”

Hull, Gateway to Anarchy

John’s ad proved unproductive, so he decided to move on.  Hull looked promising as it had long been a key access route for smuggling anarchist and advanced Socialist propaganda between Britain and the continent, especially Germany.  Hull’s socialist club, “Club Liberty” was a haunt of International Anarchist ideas and personalities with the two leading lights anarchists Gustav Smith and Conrad Naewigger.

Now aged 67, John Sketchley, “Bookseller & Stationer”, lodged at 41 Porter Street with 24 year old Emily whom he described as his wife.  Meanwhile, back in Birmingham, his legal wife, Mary Ann Sketchley, described herself as a “widow”.  In Hull, John established, “The People’s Bookstores, 52, Salthouse Lane” where besides selling his own booklets he supplied a range of socialist and other progressive titles.  From Salthouse Lane, in 1896, John published a new title, as the anarchist newspaper “Liberty” announced, “Shall the People Govern Themselves? is full of facts, figures and statements in favour of an affirmative reply to the question… Sketchley always puts his case clearly and generally with considerable force: he has been very successful in this instance and his pamphlet should have a wide circulation.”

In August 1895 “Liberty” published Sketchley‘s own account of, “How and Why I Became a Socialist” which although eschewing the epithet “Anarchist” revealed the libertarian nature of his politics, “What are the elected but gods of the people’s creation, to whom the electors humbly pray and promise ever to pray for some paltry favour… The basic principle of Socialism is the sovereignty of the people, but that sovereignty rests upon the sovereignty of the individual. The individual can never be absorbed in the state…."

Sketchley and his local comrades founded, “The Hull and District International Socialistic Association” which held open-air meetings every Sunday at 11am on Drypool Green, where, according to the anarchist journal Freedom, “Comrade Sketchley always lectures on one or other of the great questions of the day.”

Comrade Sketchley was already a grand old man of the movement and as unsectarian as ever. In 1895, according to the “Hull Daily Mail” John gave members of Hull Labour Church, “some personal recollections of the Chartist movement”.  The following year John chaired a public meeting at St George’s Hall where George Lansbury, chief organiser of the SDF, “delivered an interesting address on Social Democracy”. 

A Long and Winding Road

Having put politics before personal well-being it was no surprise that as he approached eighty, John was again penniless and in 1900 a fresh public appeal was launched by his old Birmingham comrades, Emile Copeland and Henry Percy Ward.  A huge range of people contributed from Marxist party hack, Dan Irving (8s) to George Cadbury (of chocolate fame, £1.00).  Solvent and rejuvenated, from his new base in Birmingham in 1901 John once again ventured forth.   He delivered two talks at St James’s Hall Burnley and another at Colne, after which a correspondent in “Justice” declared, “taking into account Sketchley’s age, I think his pronunciation and voice wonderful.”

In the Edwardian era jingo politics eclipsed Socialism and as the First World War approached, John Sketchley was back, living alone in Leicester.  His views hadn’t changed but the audiences had.  He’d never attained a sustainable lifestyle but his politics remained constant; sensible, strong and well informed.  Unlike fellow anarchist militants he was never tempted to over react to either opposition or defeatism, or diverted down the electoral route.  Although his writings have never been assembled they’re worth searching out for information and inspiration.

Sketchley doesn’t easily fit political categorisation.  I claim him for anarchism but he didn’t do so himself.  He sometimes served as paid organiser for the Marxist SDF but rejected that party’s statist objectives.  Worst of all he was never part of the London bubble so seldom reported by “National” newspapers and now he’s overlooked by academics who regurgitate the same anarchist “names” and ignore anarchist activity in the “provinces”.

John Sketchley, perhaps Britlain’s most underrated anarchist, died in 1913 in Billesdon Workhouse.

Christopher Draper - Number 12 in a monthly series of “Northern Anarchist Lives” 

Working-class Movement Library Events

'Sweet Responsibility' play read-through

IN April 2016, Charlotte Delaney, playwright and daughter of Shelagh Delaney (the Salford writer of A Taste of Honey, Dance with a Stranger and other plays) retraced an epic rail journey across America that her mother had first made in 1972.  She was accompanied by Selina Todd, historian and author of The People: the rise and fall of the working class, who is now writing the authorised biography of Shelagh Delaney. The journey helped shape Charlotte's latest play, Sweet Responsibility, which is having its first reading in the UK on Thursday 3 November 6pm at the Library.  Come and hear Charlotte and Selina discuss the life of one of Salford's most famous daughters - and listen to members of MaD Theatre Company read Sweet Responsibility, Charlotte's play about friendship and activism, as the ugly underbelly of a rural idyll puts a treasured friendship to the test.
Free advance tickets for the event are available via Eventbrite here.   We expect tickets to book up fast – and please note that because of limited space, people will only be able to get in to the event if they have a ticket. 

Invisible Histories talk on office workers and their unions 1914-39

On Wednesday 26 October at 2pm there will be a talk at the Library by Nicole Robertson from Sheffield Hallam University: “Organise, educate and agitate”:  trade unionism and office workers in Britain, 1914-39. The rising prominence of the clerical sector was one of the most important changes in the 20th century workplace.  As organisations grew larger and more complex the need for greater communication and documentation transformed office work.  Clerical workers became a key component of cityscapes and urban communities.  Trade unionism during the 1914-39 period is often associated with manual workers; however, office workers were engaged in trade union activity.  This talk explores how these white-collar workers challenged, resisted and negotiated their working conditions through clerical unions.
This free talk is part of our autumn Invisible Histories series.  All welcome.

Singing on the stairs as part of Museums at Night
 Come and enjoy the Library's great acoustic as two wonderful performers sing on the stairs on Thursday 27 October from 6.30 to 8.30pm. Broadside ballads from the Manchester region from the ‘Middleton Linnet’ Jennifer Reid form a counterpoint to Battle for the Ballot, in which singer-songwriter and People's History Museum songwriter in residence Quiet Loner uses original songs to tell the story of how working people came to have a vote.  The story will take in events like Peterloo, with a song Matt wrote after he read first hand accounts of the massacre here at the Library.  It goes on to focus on people – Chartists, politicians and suffragettes – who fought for the ideal of universal suffrage.  It’s all part of the nationwide Museums at Night long weekend, which is billed as ‘the UK’s ‘lates’ event for the culturally curious’.

Matt Hill says: 'When I was researching Battle for the Ballot, the Working Class Movement Library provided me with some amazing insights into the people who campaigned for our right to vote. I can't wait to perform the show at the Library.'
Jennifer Reid adds: ‘I'm really looking forward to singing at the WCML again. It's always a pleasure, and where better to debut some new material?’.
Admission is free, and all are welcome.  Pop along any time as the Library will stay open ‘after hours’ from 5pm, with light refreshments served.

The Radical North & Melvyn Bragg

TODAY, Melvyn Bragg explores the radical movements that sprang from the North - Chartism, the campaign for women's votes, anti-slavery protests, the birth of the Labour Party.  The programme begins outside Manchester's Midland Hotel where Mr Rolls met Mr Royce.  It's also near the site of the Peterloo Massacre - one of the defining moments in British social history.  People had gathered here in their thousands from the city and surrounding towns and villages - protesting for parliamentary reform. fifteen were slain and hundreds wounded by charging cavalry troops.  Melvyn visits what one contributor Dr Robert Poole describes as Democracy Wall - it runs alongside of the nearby Quaker Meeting House - many people were crushed against it at the time of the Massacre. The wall is the only structure left from the period.  The massacre inspired the poet Shelley to write the Masque of Anarchy, part of which is read for us by the actor Maxine Peake.
Melvyn goes on to describe the rich history of dissent nurtured in the north - the women's suffrage movement, the campaign to abolish slavery, chartism, and the founding of the Independent Labour Party.
Why the north?
Was it Methodism, the size of the population, the isolated landscapes, the topography of the cities or even the weather?

George Julian Harney: Radical Chartist

Hegel vs Wittgenstein's approach 

DAVID Goodway gave a talk on Saturday the 7th, February 2014, at the Peoples' History Museum on George Julian Harney, one of the leading Chartists.  He was introducing the book that he edited and published in 2014, and was entitled 'The Chartists Were Right' on Mr. Harney's contributions to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, which is the first selection of Harney's journalism to be published.  Mr. Goodway taught sociology, history and Victorian studies to mainly adult students at the University of Leeds.  His first book had been London Chartism, 1838-1848 (1982).  Elsewhere Mr. Goodway has written mostly on anarchism and libertarian socialism.

David Goodway gave a brief history of Chartism and the general background of the times mentioning the Newport uprising, as well as other attempted uprisings in Dewsbury and Sheffield, and later in Manchester and Birmingham; the 1832 strike in Stalybridge; the murder of a policeman in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1848.  He insisted that there had been no link or continuity with the labour movement and that ultimately Chartism had been replaced by trade unionism.  He posed the question as to why Chartism failed after some 50 years of agitation.  He didn't seem to answer this precisely, but pointed out that the demand for the Charter was for more specific reasons to do with the New Poor Law, and also concerns about the factory system and it had been confronted by an alliance of the propertied classes. 

The main intellectual influence on Harney was the Irishman Bronterre O'Brien, the editor the Poor Man's Guardian, who was an enthusiast for the French Revolution identifying with Robespierre.  Harney was more drawn to Marat and often signed himself 'L'Ami du Peuple' (Friend of the People).  In April 1839, he wrote for the London Democrat, but during his travels in the north of England he was seen as one of the foremost spokesmen of physical-force Chartism, and in May 1839, soon after the Convention moved to Birmingham, a warrant was issued for his arrest for a seditious speech he was reputed to have made there.  He was arrested at Bedlington in July, and held for a time at Warwick Gaol, but in April 1840 the case was dropped, because his speech had not been properly witnessed.    

He was appointed Northern Star correspondent for Sheffield and later became its sub-editor in July 1843 when O'Connor,  its proprietor, dismissed the Rev. William Hill and replaced him with Joshua Hobson.  Hobson started to give Harney a free hand.  By the time he was formally appointed editor in October 1845 Harney had already taken-over as editor in practice.  From then on through the 1850s his influence was at its height as although O'Conner was the proprietor of the Northern Star, to begin with he gave Harney editorial independence.   

In the 1840s, the Northern Star was based in Leeds, and Friedrich Engels had visited there in 1843 when he met Harney and they became lifelong friends,  Engels was to write:

'We kept in touch with the revolutionary section of the English Chartists through Julian Harney, the editor of the movement's central organ, the Northern Star, to which I was a contributor.'

Engels thought Harney should push himself into the Chartist leadership over O'Connor but Harney disagreed responding:

'A popular leader should be possessed of magnificent bodily appearance, an iron frame, eloquence, or at least a ready fluency of tongue.  I have none of these.  O'C. has them all – at least in degree. ...'

Then very perceptively Harney argued that the qualities that Engels claimed for Harney were, in fact, in English terms defects:

'...the very qualities you (Engels) give me the credit of possessing, and which you emphatically sum up in the sentence “You are the only Englishman who is really free of all prejudices that distinguish the Englishman from the Continental man” are sufficient of themselves to prevent my being a leader.' 

Goodway writes that 'Harney, a Londoner and indeed a proletarian, was then insufficiently English in outlook, whereas O'Connor, who belonged to the Irish gentry, exerted a mesmeric appeal on the English working class, many whom were, of course, either Irish-born or of Irish origin.' 

Harney fell out with Marx and Engels over the issue of social inclusiveness which Harney proclaimed:  'I stay not to enquire whether they were of the aristocratic [sic], bourgeoisie, or the proletariat.  Enough for me that they were men of earnest convictions, which they maintained through every kind of adversity, including bonds, exile, and to death.' 

Essentially Marx and Engels were Hegelians or some may say 'monomaniacs', while Harney's writings in his publications were as Mr. Goodway says: 'vigorously polymathic, ranging across literature, contemporary politics and world history of all periods.'   

Wittgenstein wrote:

'Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same...  Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different.' 

George Julian Harney in his editorship of the Northern Star was not engaged in producing a mono-maniac tract for Marxists, hence David Goodway was able to say that  the Northern Star sold well and was 'not boring' and was definitely 'not a sectarian paper'.  Basically Harney, according to Mr. Goodway, was all for inclusiveness while 'Marx and Engels couldn't stomach that'.  Mr. Goodway also insisted that the Chartists were in no way 'Socialists' and that no direct line could be drawn between the Chartist movement and the formation of the Labour Party at the end of the 19^th Century.  O'Connor believed in peasant proprietors, according to Goodway; and when I asked if this meant he was more in the tradition of the Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mr Goodway agreed with me on this. 

'English Working Class': Made Up North!

The 4th Northern Radical History Network Conference in Bradford

LAST Saturday Dave Goodway, the social and cultural historian who worked in Continuing Education at the University of Leeds from 1969 to 2005, gave an illuminating rendering of the intellectual influences upon E.P. Thompson through William Morris and, perhaps more importantly, the necessary territorial environment in which Thompson found himself when he researched his significant book 'The Making of the Working Class' in 1963, in what is now West Yorkshire. This last point became clear when Mr. Goodway came to answer the question from Adam Gutteridge from Sheffield:
'How did the book come to be produced out of a specific geographical location?'

Mr.Goodway responded thus:
'He didn't teach local history, his background was in English literature, but E.P. Thompson's “The Making of the Working Class” is a national history with in-depth local research in the West Riding of Yorkshire that goes beyond the London-centric history, and he made an active choice to live in an industrial area.'
or as E.P. Thompson has it in his Preface dated Halifax August 1963:
'This book was written in Yorkshire, and is coloured at times by West Riding sources.' 

Thompson had gone to Cambridge in 1941 to study English literature and social history in Elizabethan England, going to Leeds University as a staff teacher still in English literature in 1948, and had in the 1950s still regarded himself as a poet and had been elected to the District Committee of the Communist Party around this time. He later came to write a 908-page book on William Morris 'Prophet of a New Order', and claimed 'Morris came to seize me by the throat', and Goodway said this book led him to 'reclaim Morris for a socialism that is revolutionary'. It was Thompson's work on this book that was, according to Mr. Goodway, crucial in beginning a transformation in Thompson's thinking that was accelerated in 1956 when he left the Communist Party, during what became 'the most important year for Thompson': following the Hungarian Revolution E.P. Thompson had written about the folly of 'leaving error unrefuted'. 

Goodway pointed to the distinction that Thompson found in his study of William Morris between 'Desire and necessity' or between morality, human will and conscience on the one hand, and Marxist determinism on the other. Derek Pattison told me that the historian Eric Hobsbawn regarded E.P. Thompson's 'The Making of the English Working Class' as too 'romantic'; Hobsbawn stayed in the Communist Party up to his death, long after Thompson left in 1956, and Hobsbawm deftly continued to juggle his grand historical ideas about society and with a straight poker-face, and an apparently clear conscience as the mountains of corpses piled up across the planet.

E.P. Thompson is not, like Hobsbawm seems to be, studying a topic to pour scorn on some social element like 'Primitive Rebels' or 'Bandits' in order to show that they are immature or backwards stages in a linear progression to the present. Thompson writes in his Preface:
'I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not.'

One senses a smug, supercilious condescending attitude in Hobsbawm, that is lacking in the Englishman, E.P. Thompson. George Orwell's portrayal of 'Catastrophic Gradualism' would not trouble the hardened Marxist Professor Hobsbawm, as I suspect it would E.P. Thompson. The publishers Gollanz asked the historian John Saville for a text book on the English working-class and he referred them to Thompson, then what started as a social and political history of the West Riding ended up by being what Dave Goodway describes as 'the most important history book in England'. For Goodway the word 'Making' in the title of 'The Making of the Working Class' is vital because it emphasises that 'man must and does create the conditions under which he lives'. 'Making' in this sense means 'agency and engagement' in people creating for themselves their own destiny. Goodway said that the key organising theme of this work was visible in Thompson as early as 1955 during his work on Morris, and the facilities for the study of the subject were present in the fact that Thompson was involved in giving adult education classes in the West Riding of Yorkshire; several of his students helping in the project from classes scattered across West Yorkshire from Todmorden to Northallerton.

Fiona Cosson from Littleborough in Lancashire, asked if Thompson was a 'public intellectual' and if this is something of a legacy that has now been abandoned by the Left? It was thought that historians today had bought into the 'consensus' and moved from the study of 'class' to research into consumption with research grants now awarded for contemporary concerns like consumption habits and perhaps issues of identity politics. Goodway said that there are pressures on academics to produce their results before they are really ready, and that he felt that there is little chance now that researchers and academics can create works like 'The Makings of the the Working Class' or 'William Morris'.

There was some discussion as to if Thompson was right in his central thesis that the working-class became a reality at the time of the Reform Act Bill in the 1832 the focus of his Chapter 16 on 'Class Consciousness', or as Hobsbawn has claimed, later in the 19th Century with the emergence of the popular press and cheap railway travel.  Hobsbawm had taught Goodway, and he said that Hobsbawn didn't address the issue that this late 19th Century rendering of the formation of the English working-class was an altogether more passive animal.  Something that was not tackled last Saturday was Thompson's stress in his Chapter 2 of the book on the London bias of many theorists of the English working-class.  At the end of that chapter, after giving a quote from Dr. Hobsbawm, he writes:
'Nearly all the theorists of the working-class movement are in that London tradition - or else, like Bray the Leeds printer they are analogues of the skilled London working men.'
He then argues:
'But the list itself reveals a dimension that is missing - the moral force of the Luddites, of Brandreth and young Bamford, of the Ten Hour men, of Northern Chartists and I.L.P. (and) South and North, intellect and enthusiasm, the arguments of secularism and rhetoric of love - the tension is perpetuated in the nineteenth century...  And each tradition seems enfeebled without the complement of the other.'
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The next issueof the printed issue of NORTHERN VOICES No.14, will soon be available for sale with a with a review of one of Dave Goodway's books 'The Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow:  from William Morris to Colin Ward', Northern Voices can be obtained as follows:
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PEOPLE'S CHARTER: Is this an alternative agenda or vain expectations?

This coming weekend the TUC Trade Union Councils' Conference 2010, will discuss the People's Charter. It calls for 'the nationalisation of banks, insurance and mortgage industries and an end to asset stripping, raids on pension funds and corporate tax loopholes.' It asks for 'more taxes on the rich; better and more jobs by [the State] investing to create employment, and a higher minimum wage; decent homes, no repossessions, rent control, and more funds for councils to build homes and buy empty properties; bringing energy, transport, water, post & communication under nationalisation; free heating & transport for pensioners, an end to child poverty & bring back education grants without fees; reintroduction of trade union rights; end cost of war & nuclear weapons, and cancel debts of poor of the planet.'

To bring about this lot, the motion says: 'it is noted that the TUC Congress 2009 agreed to build support for principles outlines in the Charter in workplaces & communities to help promote progressive policies in the Labour Party & [wait for it] to get a million signatures to show that the government must put people first. Trade Union Councils to collect a million UK signatures to show the Government it must put people first and to get MPs and local councillors, particularly but not exclusively those in the Labour Party, to back the People's Charter.'

These people haven't progressed since the 19th Century when the original Chartist Movement set out to appeal to the powers that existed then, with a petition. It represents a kind of strategy, but one that looks to the government (preferably a Labour Government) to set out an agenda, amended to include the above incoherent wish list: a potted program based on vain expectations and, in the present economic and political climate, a total illusion. A domestic colander so full of holes it is hardly worth serious consideration. It is such a weak effort, so lacking in intellectual rigour and analysis, that it merely demonstrates the absence of vision in the current UK labour movement.