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In November 1882 we held the first meeting which produced a direct public effect. At that time a clergyman, the Rev. Lewery Blackley, set forth a scheme whereby, on a basis of compulsory thrift and forced insurance, the working classes of Great Britain might be legally persuaded to make a sound provision for their old age, by stinting themselves of the necessaries of life in their youth and maturity. This idea was warmly welcomed by the well-to-do, was puffed in the capitalist Press, and was belauded by the men of God of every persuasion. The only class which objected to the reverend gentleman’s vicarious philanthropy was the one for whose benefit it was intended. The feeling against it on the part of the workers was very strong indeed, which was natural enough.
The Democratic Federation took the matter up, denounced and exposed the whole project, challenged the Rev. Lewery Blackley to public debate, and so on. But we had little chance of dealing adequately with the plan and its supporters until, unluckily for them, they called a public meeting, to sanction and bless the whole enterprise, at the Holborn Town Hall. Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., known to us as the “sainted Samuel,” was announced to take the Chair, and two or three respectable personages were announced to support the speaker of the night, the worthy rector who had worked out this device for stewing the workers in their own juice. Thereupon we set to work quietly but persistently, and we succeeded in packing at least two-thirds of the hall with our sympathisers. Mr. Lloyd was the organiser on the other side. Just before the meeting, Mr. Lloyd was congratulated by one of the committee on having secured such an excellent audience. He received this tribute to his skill and energy with the modesty and self-appreciation of one to whom such a success was nothing unusual. I looked round the hall at the same time and felt equally gratified. The first sign of discord was shown when Mr. Morley took his seat as Chairman. His appearance was received not with cheers but with vigorous groans. It was quite amusing to note his surprise at this greeting. But we had appealed to all our friends to give Mr. Blackley and his mover and seconder of the resolution a fair hearing, which they all three accordingly had.
Then our two chosen speakers went forward to move an amendment we had drawn up. Mr. Morley ruled this out of order, and called upon Mr. Finch Hatton, a young aristocrat of wealthy connections, to speak. Thereupon uproar arose, accompanied by strong language and much excitement. Mr. Morley stuck to his guns. Then I told him plainly that if he did not adhere to the ordinary rules of public meetings we should argue the matter out on the platform. A compromise arrived at, whereby Mr. Finch Hatton had ten minutes before Patrick Hennessey, a well-known agitator of those days, and James Rowlands, the cab-drivers’ secretary, spoke for our amendment. After that we insisted upon the amendment being put. Put it was, and carried by at least two to one amid great cheering. The chairman declined to put the amendment as a substantive resolution, so we did that for him and occupied the platform for that purpose. Little more was heard of Mr. Blackley until he blossomed out into a canon as a reward for his useful philanthropy. We on our side felt encouraged by our victory, and went forth to suppress and exalt others of a like “philanthropic” turn of mind.
One result of this meeting was to bring to us a knot of very clever enthusiastic young men who then were bringing out the Christian Socialist. Joynes, Champion, and Frost, with them H.S. Salt and two or three more, were as promising and capable a set of men as ever threw in their lot with an advanced movement. Even their names are now almost forgotten, but the good work they did has survived both death and disappearance. J.L. Joynes had been a master at Eton and had given up his place on conscientious grounds. No more genial, fearless, and lovable personality ever took part in our movement than Joynes, and his literary ability was of great service. His work on behalf of fair-play in Ireland was most timely. Some of his translations from the German of Freiligrath, Hervegh, and others are admirable, and preserve in English the full spirit of the original; while his letter in words of one syllable to the present Duke of Westminster, when a little boy, which I published in Justice, was as telling as anything of the kind ever written. His early and lamented death, I lay to the door of the vegetarians. Vegetarianism may keep a lot of useless people alive: it certainly killed a valuable and delightful personality in J.L. Joynes. Notwithstanding his chaff of “Quarrelsome Corpse Eaters,” as he called us flesh-consumers, he was taken and we were left – quarrelling.
Frost, another of the Christian Socialist trio, fell under the influence of an extraordinary adventuress who called herself Mrs. Gordon Baillie, and unfortunately, owing to her influence, got into all sorts of mischief which ended very badly indeed. I have always partly blamed myself for this ending. Though Mrs. Baillie was a very fine-looking woman, I took a great dislike to her from the first, and when she laughed cheerfully at a phrase from a French writer I used in an address I delivered on the French Revolution, to the effect that the Count de Charolais had ensanglanté la débauche, I told Frost she was a very dangerous woman for him to consort with. I had far better have held my tongue. Opposition only made Frost more eager, and off he went with her. Champion, the third of the party, was a much more complex individuality than either of the other two. Years afterwards, when he had completely wrecked one of the most promising careers a young man could have had before him, I was talking about him with Dr. Hunter, the member for Aberdeen, and like Champion, a Scotchman. I happened to mention to Hunter that Champion’s mother was an Urquhart. “Oh,” said Hunter, “Urquhart blood in him – that accounts for it all.” All this came afterwards, but when they joined the Democratic Federation at the beginning of 1883 there could not have been a more valuable set of enthusiastic recruits to the movement.
Since these days, Champion having upset us all here and lost our regard and friendship by more than mere political misunderstandings, has largely made amends for his action in this country by his work for Socialism under the most distressing physical circumstances in Melbourne, where he has helped to keep alive the spirit of Social Democracy and to uphold the Red Flag against the discouraging compromisers of mere Labourism. In this he has been greatly helped by our old friend and fellow-agitator, Tom Mann. It has always seemed an extraordinary thing to me that Champion should ever have gone wrong as regards Socialism and his comrades. A smart artillery officer, with a good knowledge of the world and a successful career before him, he gave up his profession, as Joynes did his, on conscientious grounds and then threw himself into Socialism, when assuredly nothing whatever was to be gained personally, pecuniarily, or politically by doing so. He worked hard in the movement, ran great risks, showed remarkable pluck and ability, and became the darling of the organisation. I was at the time not in the best of health myself and, not anticipating certainly that I should attain to my present age in activity and vigour, I looked to Champion, with his initiative, trained intelligence and determination as the very man to carry on the work without faltering, and to maintain our growing party in good order and fighting train. This, too, was the idea of all of us, practically without exception.
He himself seemed to feel this. Speaking, and he spoke well, in Regent’s Park on one occasion he said, when appealing to others to join us: “Now is the time to come into our ranks. Now is the time when it is an honour to be with us. Victory for us in the future is quite certain. The day is not far distant when those who are in the fighting line with us now will regret, with Henry V at Agincourt, not that we are so few but that we were so many to share the greatness of the glory to be won.” Why then, seeing all this, having refused to join the superior, upper-chamber-furnished Fabians, why did he go off as he did? I am at a loss to know. But leaving the “Urquhart blood” theory of Dr. Hunter aside, I am inclined to attribute his defection at a critical time to my own action. It was Champion’s birthday, and he dined with us. After dinner I set to work to tell him all I saw, or thought I saw, in the future, and I believe I convinced him that we could not hope to succeed at once or for a very long time. Thereupon, with the usual exquisite illogicality of the human mind, he set to work to try to make twelve o’clock at eleven by carrying on an intrigue with the Tories in order to bring about some reforms in his own day. I dare say this was done with complete honesty; but the amusing part of the story is, as he himself will recognise should he read this, that he was carrying on his trade with men whom I knew much better than he did, and who used his advances to them as an argument to me to give up Socialism altogether and join their party; seeing that the man I trusted most implicitly had so little faith in the movement that he wished to attain success for his cause in this roundabout way.
I have never felt annoyed at any attempt to squeeze genuine palliatives out of either faction. Until we Socialists ourselves obtain control, it is obvious that we can only get half-measures out of one political camp or the other. But Champion, I fear, did not maintain that complete independence which is absolutely essential in order to have any real weight in such matters. Moreover, I also think, though this may be fanciful, that when I gave him the original edition of Voltaire’s Candide I did the movement a very bad turn. I do not know any work more calculated to destroy the confidence of any one who is not thoroughly grounded in Socialism than Candide, and I fancy at that time it had this injurious effect on Champion’s mind. Anyhow he left us, and became sub-editor of the Nineteenth Century and seemed likely at one time to play on the Tory side the same game that his fellow-Scot, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, has of late years so skilfully engineered to his own advantage on the Liberal. How he came to give up all this and went to Australia I do not know. But, once there, he has, as I say, done most useful work for the cause. His friend Frost, after going through desperate experiences, is now, Champion writes me, happily married and a Professor of English at a Foreign University. If it is any satisfaction to them to know it, I may tell them they have been very much missed in the movement, to which they could have rendered very great service in the years that have passed.
1883 was in more ways than one a noteworthy year for us. Though those who were not ready to accept Marx’s theories or to mix familiarly with the working class went off and formed the bureaucratic Fabian Society, which has since so assiduously promulgated the doctrines of middle-class permeation and high-toned intrigue, their withdrawal was more than compensated by the adhesion of others and the increased zeal of those who remained. In the autumn of the year I published The Historical Basis of Socialism, which has, I think, been of service in giving a sound foothold to many who might otherwise have floundered in the slippery paths of bourgeois history and economics and has become a sort of classic in its way. As no copy can be bought under £2 and I have been constantly asked for a new edition, I have long intended to bring it up to date; but as this would entail a great deal of rewriting and many additions I have not yet found time to do so, though twenty-seven years have now passed since its publication. I set to work to write the book in the spring of 1883 because, as I well remember, I was struck by a remark of Lassalle’s that he regretted he had not written what he had to write before he went out into the exhausting toil of public agitation, and I resolved to do something of a serious character before, like him, I was swept into the whirlpool of social and political strife.
True though it may be that, as Paul Louis Courier very forcibly argued, nearly all the most important educational work of the world has been done by pamphlets and speeches, which are but spoken pamphlets, there is an attractiveness and permanence about a book which no pamphlets or speeches can achieve; unless they attain to the high level that leads to their collection and embodiment in a book afterwards, and few can expect that their passing output of writing or speaking will satisfactorily arrive at this eminence in a durable form. A carefully thought-out work on a matter of importance, on the other hand, may be of real use in the transition period towards general acceptance of the views set forth – if, that is to say, it is of any use at all.
Moreover it is true, as Kropotkin says, that History has to be re-written from the new point of view; from the point of view, that is to say, of the interests of the great mass of the people and not merely as a record of the doings of the dominant classes, who have held control in succession in different countries and whose ambitions or greed have entailed the wars and piratical struggles by land and by sea with which historians have too largely busied themselves. My Historical Basis of Socialism was an attempt to do something of the kind, for which I admit I was not sufficiently equipped; but then as I did not know any one that was more so, I made bold to try what I could do. I was gratified when many years later my friend, Professor York Powell, was kind enough to say the work had been of value to him, and my comrades and friends of the Church Socialist League have expressed the same opinion, and are lending the book out daily as worthy of study. [1] The references, I think myself, are still worth looking over. I often tell the workers who sometimes imagine the abler men of the upper classes do not watch what is going on, or study our literature, that they are quite mistaken as to this. I have had many opportunities of noting precisely the contrary.
This particular book of mine had not been out a fortnight when I happened to dine in company with some leading politicians. All of them had apparently read it, and one of them, Mr. Goschen, was kind enough – though, of course, strongly opposed to us – to congratulate me on the industry and learning it displayed. As Social-Democrats are so commonly spoken of as ignorant, I think I am at liberty to refer to this incident. But the truth is there was in 1883, and there is in 1911, a very great disinclination on the part of our University men as a whole, and our Professors in particular, to free their minds from the shackles of the old bourgeois economics and sociology. They even seem afraid to deal with the facts of the period other than in a disjointed and pragmatical fashion, without any guiding theory whatever. In any case the fact remains that the leading Continental Professors, several of whom I have the satisfaction of numbering among my acquaintances and friends, are pursuing a much bolder course in their investigations, with the result that the country which produced William Petty, John Bellers, Steuart, Adam Smith and Ricardo is left completely in the rear in the increasingly-important spheres of study – Political Economy and Material Sociology.
It should not be forgotten that the Democratic Federation had now developed, as I had hoped from the first it would, into a thorough-going revolutionary organisation. This is clearly shown, among other things, by The Summary of the Principles of Socialism which I wrote in collaboration with William Morris at the beginning of 1884 for the Federation, and which has had a large circulation ever since. Our Stepping-Stones or Palliatives were only formulated and agitated for as ameliorative measures to the existing capitalist anarchy. Throughout we all of us preached, then as now, that no great or permanent benefit could accrue to mankind at large until the payment of wages by one class to another class is finally put an end to and the means of making and distributing wealth are owned and controlled by the whole community. This meant, of course, a complete social transformation, the destruction of the money fetish and the apportionment of wealth – then easily made as plentiful as water – among the whole community, who would all from youth up share in the light, general, useful work and participate fully in the delight of life thus rendered easy of attainment for everybody. It is no mere tinkering fiscalism or pottering Labourism which has kept up the enthusiasm of the Social-Democratic party in this island from 1881 onwards for more than thirty years.
1. In reference to The Economics of Socialism Professor York Powell wrote me, years later, the following encouraging letter:–
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CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, |
DEAR MR. HYNDMAN – I have read the book you kindly sent me, and I like it greatly, as the exposition, handy, clear and well-put, of your standpoint and the Marxists’. The poem is also excellent.
I wish we were safer from external trouble. Reaction will follow disaster inevitably if only for a time. The present parties without future, without talent, without faith are doomed of course. They are too ludicrous. I hope to see you here again and shall call sometime if I may on you at the “House of Wisdom,” Queen Anne’s Gate.
I sat up till two to finish your book, it interests me greatly to see the Marx position clearly put.
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– Believe me, Yours faithfully, |
Please remember me to Mrs. Hyndman.
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