Still seeking socialism amid the rebellions

The workers of the world have been given many names over the centuries.

Nowadays we do actually talk of workers or employees, but in the past it has been working class as opposed to middle class even when the middle class worked; even further back we talk of peasants or serfs which, considering the conditions they faced along with their lack of rights, was tantamount to slavery.

Nowadays if we want to protest we tend to get together, make banners and write out placards and march to confront whoever they wanted to protest against (although if the current government gets its way this peaceful means of protest could be lost to us).

Even earlier in the 20th century we had the right to withdraw our labour.

This was not always the way and going back to the early part of the 19th century often the only means of protest involved violence, not necessarily to those opposing the workers as much as their property (bearing in mind that in the 19th century destruction of property could even be considered a more heinous offence than violence against the person).

Much of this form of protest was considered to be against industrialisation in both rural and urban areas as well as the imposition of tolls and similar taxes. As rioting could lead to hanging or at the very least transportation, the rioters, of necessity, would disguise themselves and would have a mythological leader such as Rebecca giving us the Rebecca Riots; Captain Swing and the agricultural Swing Riots and Captain or Genera Ludd leader of the Luddites.

These, however, did not even scrape in at the bottom of a list of peasant revolts and we have to go back to England in the 14th and 15th centuries to see serious revolts in England.

The peasants’ revolt of 1381, sometimes called Wat Tyler’s Revolt, came in the wake of the Black Death which had killed off over a third of the population of Europe and creating a serious shortage of people to work the land. The last straw for these peasants was the imposition of a poll tax (which didn’t work out too well 600 years later for Thatcher.

Groups of peasants from all over the south east of England banded together and headed for London. Some natural leaders emerged as the groups joined together, eventually reaching 60,000, but one man stood out as an overall leader, Walter (or Wat) Tyler.

Despite Tyler being seen as leader it was another group leader who gave us one of the outstanding quotes that is often still used by socialists today, highlighting the fact that there had not always been masters and peasants.

John Ball was classed as a rebel priest, often referred to as a hedge priest, and, although he had only led one small group to the final gathering outside London, but his speeches urging the crowds on had been avidly received.

In calling out for a change in the class system he came out with the slogan: “When Adam delved and Eve span who was then the gentleman”

Whether or not you believe in the Creation as opposed to the Big Bang this simple slogan highlights the fact that in the beginning there was no difference between man and woman when it came to status.

Although the young King Richard II had made many promises to the rebels, thus persuading them to go back to their homes, none of these were kept and once dispersed it was difficult for the peasants to reorganise and return as greater armed control had been put into force.

There was little unrest amongst the peasants over the next 70 years and in fact for a good part of this the shortage of workers because of the Black Death had put them in a better bargaining position when it came to being paid a better rate by the landowners who did not fancy doing the dirty work.

The next peasant rising was in 1450 and was again in the south eastern region with tens of thousands of peasants advancing on London in protest to King Henry VI about maladministration and corruption in local areas by representatives of the government.

They were led by a man called Jack Cade and might have got a lot further with their protest if Cade had shown greater control. As it was many of the peasants saw a chance for looting in London, not just from shops but also from private houses. This roused the ire of the citizens of London who drove the rebels out of the city.

The rebels eventually dispersed after being given promises of improvements in local administration and by Jack Cade and other leaders being granted individual pardons for their actions by King Henry.

Weeks after the rebellion, when all the peasants had returned to their own areas, the pardons were withdrawn and many of the leading lights of the revolt were rounded up and executed.

The third and final peasants uprising (the riots of the 19th century were not classed as rebellions or uprisings) was in 1549 and was called Ketts rebellion even though Robert Kett was one of the first victims of the uprising in Norfolk.

The cause of complaint was the Act of Enclosure which meant landowners could enclose common land for their own use.

Rebels in Wymondham were going to tear down fences belonging to Sir Robert Flowerdew, but he bribed them to go elsewhere and they moved on to destroy the fences of landowner Edward Kett.

Rather than oppose them or bribe them he offered to lead the rebels and ended up with a gathering of 16,000 rebels. They headed for Norwich, after destroying Flowerdew’s fences anyway, and actually took control of the city. A royal army sent against them was defeated but soon after another royal army was sent in and defeated the rebels.

Kett was executed at Norwich castle and other rebel leaders were hanged at an oak tree outside the city which had been used as a central gathering point for rebels.

Socialism seems to have failed these rebels.

Maybe we need to go further back to find out whether socialism was actually part of our Creation story or our actual evolution.

NEXT TIME: were Adam and Eve our first socialists or does that claim belong to Lucy and her family?

Count That Day Lost

by George Eliot

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went -
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay -
If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face -
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost -
Then count that day as worse than lost.

Death Be Not Proud

by John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost, with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swells't thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death thou shalt die.

A neverending journey in search of socialism

The search for socialism has no real beginning and no real end.

Even if you concentrate on socialism in the UK you have to figure out where it has come from, including when did it begin, and is it still evolving.

More than anything a socialist needs to find a home.

There are many choices in the UK but most see the Labour Party as the natural place to go and believe it to be the founder of the labour movement in this country.

In fact the British labour movement began long before the UK Labour Party was founded and had been around even before the previous incarnation as the Independent Labour Party.

In fact the first political party to espouse the cause of the working man (this came before women’s right to vote) and to represent the worker in Parliament was the Liberal Party, and although it it often referred to as a Lib-Lab pact there was no real party for the Liberals to form a pact with.

To find the real roots of socialism I had to go further back than this late 19th century political move on behalf of the workers.

One of the most important things is to define socialism and see how it compares to or differs from that other major political player in the late 19th century well into the 20th – communism.

If you go back to basics then socialism could be viewed as a political AND economic system with property and the means of production owned in common but usually controlled by the government representing the people. This is considered to be the best way to achieve equality for all.

Opposed to this is capitalism which is based on private ownership of property and the means of production with a free market setting the values of both labour and produce. Socialists see this as creating inequality in wealth and therefore inequality of power.

Communism believes in common ownership of property and the means of production in a society without class or government under the mantra: “From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.”

As it happens socialism and communism were being considered by the working people of Britain in the 1840s but the discussion was not being led by British workers but by two German philosophers – Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, both of whom lived in England for some time (Engels’ father owned textile mills in Salford as well as in Germany) and worked on their individual and joint philosophies.

The two of them had a great influence on those looking for change in the way working people were accepted in the class system of England.

What appeared to be a simple search for the origins of socialism in the UK has already taken us back 200 years to a period before the Industrial Revolution and we are nowhere near to our source.

NEXT TIME: When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman.

Comments on this search for socialism are welcome. Please be courteous and preferably brief.

Forgetfulness

by Billy Collins

former US Poet Laureate
The name of the author is first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to return to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted,
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Seaside resort – not the best place when you seek political answers

Growing up in a middle class household during the 1950s and 60s in a seaside resort in NE Wales is not totally conducive to getting an insight into national politics in general and local politics in particular.

For a start nobody really talked about politics to children and when I first started to take a real interest I was still years away from getting the vote – for those of us born in 1950 the lowering of the voting age to 18 didn’t make much difference because there was no general election until we were 20 and rapidly approaching 21.

I learned more about modern politics in a year at college than I had in five at the grammar school – and even that came from talking to fellow students.

From the age of 15 I did my best to find out about the various political beliefs, not just in the UK but also worldwide. Living in Wales did mean the Welsh nationalist movement was very much to the fore and I did know people in both the main political movements, Plaid Cymru, and the Free Wales Army.

Neither of them really appealed to me as one was too insular and the other seemed to be run by people who were throwbacks to school playground when “secret societies” used to be organised along the lines of Just William and his Outlaws, created by Richmal Crompton, or Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven.

In fact in 2005 The Welsh newspaper the Wersten Mail ran a story based on documents from the National Archives in which it was claimed the FWA leader had a mental aged of 12. Having met him once I think they had got him to a T.

When I was 15, that was 1965, I read about a man who had been with Fidel Castro when he ousted the Cuban President, Batiste, and formed socialist/communist government. This man, an Argentiniabn doctor called Ernesto Guevara but known as Che, had suddenly disappeared after resigning his senior role in Castro’s government. He was supposed to have gone to South America.

I found out everything I could about him, discovering erven more when I was at college, and found that I admired his principles even if I didn’t approve his means of getting there. It was similar to my ambivalent attitude to another revolutionary, turned statesman, Michael Collins, the first leader of the Irish Free State.

My interest in politics took real root there but I still had to find where my real interests lay.

Rhyl was not the best place to find answers to your political beliefs. The town was in a Conservativ*e constituency, held by Nigel Birch and later by Anthony Meyer (that’s right, the man who stood for party leadership as a stalking horse when the Tories wanted to get rid of Thatcher.

The town itself was a mix of politics with the urban council consisting of Conservatives, Labour members, Residents Association councillors and independents, including businessmen (yes I said men because not a lot of women ran businesses at that time).

At the end of the day the most important thing was to have Rhyl stay as a fun holiday venue during the season as most people in town relied on it one way or another.

I knew about the Russian revolution but was still uncertain as to the main differences between communism and socialism and wondered if they were just two sides of the same coin – each seeking power for the people but finding the need to take different routes to get there.

This is why in Basildon I was still seeking answers and it was in that new town that I actually found some of the answers.

Next time: searching through history for the roots of socialism.

My Heart and I

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

l.
ENOUGH! We're tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason's knife,
As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
With which we're tired, my heart and I.

ll.
You see we're tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colours could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune's end,
We loved too true to keep a friend;
At last we're tired, my heart and I.

lll.
How tired we feel, my heart and I!
We seem of no use in the world;
Our fancies hang grey and uncurled
About men's eyes indifferently;
Our voice which thrilled you so, will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet:
What do we here, my heart and I.

lV.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
'Dear love, you're looking tired,' he said;
I, smiling at him, shook my head:
'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.

V.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in sigh
Of happy langour. Now alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

Vl.
Tired out we are, my heart and I.
Suppose the world bought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.

Vll.
Yet who complains? My heart and I?
In this abundant earth no doubt
Is little room for things worn out:
Disdain them, break them, throw them by
And if before the days grew rough
We once were loved, used, - well enough,
I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

The Old Gods

by Dannie Abse

The gods, old as night, don't trouble us.
Poor weeping Venus! Her pubic hairs are grey,
and her magic love girdle has lost its spring.
Neptune wonders where he put his trident.
Mars is gaga - illusory vultures on the wing.

Pluto exhumed, blinks. My kind of world, he thinks.
Kidnapping and rape, like my Front Page exploits
adroitly brutal - but he looks out of sorts when
other unmanned gods shake their heads tut tut,
responds boastingly, boringly anecdotal.

Diana has done a bunk, fearing astronauts.
Saturn, Time on his hands, stares at nothing
nothing stares back. Glum Bacchus talks ad nauseum
of cirrhosis, and small bald Cupid, fiddling
with arrows, can't recall which side the heart is.

All the old gods have become enfeebled,
mere playthings for poets. Few, doze or daft,
frolic on Parnassian clover. True, sometimes,
summer light dies in a room - but only a bearded profile in a cloud floats over.

Market meeting was a real bonus

Meeting my Muse at the market in March 1973 was a bonus as I thought it would be two weeks after the party before I saw her again. That half an hour with her made all the difference.

If you are thinking of a long-term relationship then you should base it on each of you having an understanding of the other, and sharing some common interests, rather than basing it all on physical attraction.

How many marriages have been broken because it was only after the ceremony (anything from a year to seven years) the people involved realised their only compatibility was in bed.

Our first proper meeting, although not lengthy, gave me some early insights into her interests. Reading and history as strong passions were certainly a good start in my book. I could only hope that my interest in both had come across.

Meanwhile it was back to work and in my spare time delving deeper into the origins of socialism and the Labour Party, although I should say labour movement because that movement really came about in the 19th century long before the party itself was born.

When it came to the readings before the next play was cast I was looking forward to an evening with my Muse – and the dozen or so others who would be there of course.

The group had decided on The Importance of Being Earnest by that brilliant Irish playwright and poet Oscar Wilde, an interesting choice for an amateur drama group which clearly had a limited number of members.

When I arrived others were already there, including my Muse, once again sans baby. She also appeared to be sans hubby. Since the party I had gone over faces from that night and realised that the somewhat older chap with a balding head, who had played a small part in The Servant of Two Masters, was almost certainly the prime suspect.

While waiting for others to arrive I chatted to a couple of people who I remembered from the party, and then said hello to the subject of my desire.

I commented that she appeared to be on her own and she told me her husband was looking after the baby as he had decided he was not really that bothered with amateur dramatics.

This is when I also discovered that she was not intending to go on stage anymore herself but was going to be stage manager for shows in future and would also be the prompt.

I had a good knowledge of these reading evenings where everyone would get a chance to read for any of the parts, which means I also knew that certain roles would already have been cast.

As a newcomer I wasn’t expecting much, even though I was asked to read Algernon and Merriman. My final reading of the evening was for Canon Chasuble. If I wasn’t offered a part this time I would have been content to help backstage but I was very pleased to be asked to play the canon.

After the readings, everyone chatted for a while over a cup of tea and I had a further chance to chat to my lady. This time we talked about plays and our likes and dislikes.

Now it is good to have the same interests but it would probably be unlikely, and possibly even undesirable to have the same taste in everything. That night I discovered the first difference between us – she was NOT a fan of Shakespeare.

It was only a minor setback, after all I wouldn’t expect her to be a dedicated fan of Welsh rugby, or a devotee of Sherlock Holmes.

She got a lift home with another couple. I hadn’t offered to give her a lift myself as it would have been too forward of me and I had deduced someone must have given her a lift to the meeting, unless she lived close to the house where the readings had been held.

The next few weeks were a combination of work, including evening meetings and theatrical shows for review; evening rehearsals for the Wilde production; an occasional NUJ chapel meeting; and “accidental” meetings in the town centre with my Muse.

Things were looking good. I saw her at least one evening a week and we got into the habit of going for a coffee on Friday or Saturday mornings after having a browse at the market bookstall.

Work was just as good and my Friday morning absences were no problem because I was getting my fair share of stories for the paper and was even given the occasional bit of subbing to do – something which stood me in good stead in my future journalistic life.

There were to be quite a few ups and downs before I stepped up to that level.

To woo or not woo – that is the question – only fools rush in

Since I last mentioned the moment I actually met my Muse, and discovered she had a six-month-old baby, I have not gone back to that period, well not until yesterday when I commented on that eventful year 1973.

It is not because there were any bad memories from that event, or even that year. In fact 1973 sticks in my mind as the best of the times. The trouble is that the following year led me to the worst of times.

Let’s not dwell on that today, however.

Instead I will hark back to the Sunday morning after Jean and Jim’s party.

I was still euphoric in that I had met my Muse in the flesh rather than seeing her as a character on the stage. There, dressed in a long skirt and a loose blouse top, I had concentrated on the face and the dark hair which tumbled down her back almost to her waist.

In my dreams I had seen her face but the stage lights had prevented me from seeing their colour. At the party I had been far closer and even in the dim light I could see they were a soft, dark brown – eyes that you could lose your soul in.

Once the euphoria of having met her settled down I came back to the reality that my Muse was a young married woman with a six-month old baby and to make any advance without knowing her feelings would not only be unseemly but could also lead to never seeing her again.

I decided it would be better to become a friend and at least I would be able to see her again.

I didn’t expect to see her for a couple of weeks as the reading for the next play would not take place ’til then.

Instead I immersed myself in my work and my reading.

Monday to Thursday were busy with courts, council meetings and making my regular rounds of the emergency services to check on any action overnight. I think I had at least two evening meetings that week which kept my mind off other things.

Friday was publication day for the Standard Recorder and, as was my wont, I got myself a cup of coffee, a copy of the paper, put my feet up on the desk, fortunately without falling back on the chair, and smoked a couple of cigarettes as I drank my coffee and read the paper from front to back.

I even read the sports pages even though my only real sporting interests were Welsh rugby and darts (yes I do consider darts to be a sport no matter what some sports reporters say).

Being this thorough with our newspaper and with the evening paper out of our stable meant I knew almost everything that was going on in our patch.

Afterwards I headed to the Town Centre intending to have a stroll around on the offchance I might bump into someone with a story (that can really happen you know). I soon found myself in the market and heading for the secondhand book stall.

This was one of my favourite haunts. In those days these stalls, and secondhand bookshops, were common and as well as selling old books they would buy ones you had finished with.

I had already picked up a number of political works on the stall, including booklets by Marx, Engels and Lenin as well as items on the British labour movement and old copies of books from the Left Book Club.

I was browsing the politics section when I happened to look up and notice another browser where they displayed historical novels – guess who it was. You probably did guess and got it right. There was my Muse standing just a few feet away from me.

I walked over and as she turned to me I was struck by her eyes.

We said the usual “Hi” and “fancy meeting you here” and then my brain clicked into gear and I asked if she would like to go for a coffee.

She agreed, but said she couldn’t stay too long as she had left Sarah with her mother.

While we were sitting having a coffee I asked her if she had found anything of interest at the book stall and from there we began to talk about books in general – she said she liked historical novels, as long as they were factual; I told her I would read anything, even a sauce bottle label.

After about 20 minutes she said she had to go and we said our goodbyes and I said I would see her at the reading the following weekend. Then I went back to the office and back to work.

I suddenly realised that the wooing had begun. It was a very simple form of wooing, but I had set myself on a long-term journey to charm my Muse.

Wooing is a very old-fashioned word and it harks back to the days when if you wanted to win the love of a good woman you had to take it slowly and easily, You discover what she is interested in and where your interests coincide.

I wasn’t planning a short, sharp charm offensive – I was looking well ahead.

Meanwhile it was time to get more involved with my union, the National Union of Journalists, and find out when the next chapel meeting was scheduled to take place.