Robert Kee - The Most Distressful Country

A recent trip to the North of Ireland prompted me to look at the history of Ireland. Robert Kee's Green Flag trilogy is often recommended as a good place to start to understand the historical developments that have led to the anachronistic situation we see today - the north of the Island part of the British State and the remainder "the South" an independent country.

Kee's book is not a complete history of Ireland, rather it is a history of the development of Irish Nationalism, used here in the sense of thinking of Ireland as a nation, rather than today when it might be used to distinguish a political outlook separate from that of the loyalists. The context for all of this is of course the fact that Ireland was Britain's first colony. The majority Catholic population were kept down trodden and oppressed while Britain used the Protestant landowning class to govern in its interests through a process of divide and rule.

That said, modern divisions - Catholic and Protestant - weren't necessarily appropriate historically. In the context of the struggle for Irish "nationalism" as Kee shows, many leading figures were Protestant. They were also keen to struggle for improvements to the rights for Catholics, who had historically had few rights. Take the famous figure Robert Emmet, who lead an uprising in 1803. Emmet was a wealthy Protestant who supported Catholic rights, in particularly their right to stand for parliament. The defeat of previous movements, including the United Irishmen, meant that Emmet could downplay the potential for the nationalist cause:

Asked by the Speaker if it were not so that 'the object next their hearts was a separation and a republic', Emmet replied: 'Pardon me, the object next their hearts was a redress of their grievances.;' He said that if such an object could be accomplished peaceably, 'they would prefer it infinitely to a revolution and a republic'.

The reality is, of course, that a redress of grievances could not happen without a struggle against British rule, and for some form of independence. The period covered in this volume covers some of the great movements for this, such as the United Irishmen's rebellion of 1798. These took place in the context of the French Revolution and it is interesting to  speculate what might have happened had the military support from France been successful, or better organised.

Kee is particularly good an analysing events when he puts class at the heart of his history. Take the debate about the "union" between Britain and Ireland that was passed in 1801. Kee writes:

Opinion about a union did not run clearly down any political or social dividing line. The most solid opinion seems to have been among the Orangemen who were very generally described as being against it. This to may seem a paradox in the light of later events, but it was a logical attitude at the time, for the Orangemen simply represented the most extreme expression of the Protestant point of view, namely that they held a dominant position in Irish society and the legislature as things were, and what they held they wanted to hold. Even in later times, after they had identified their interests with the Union they were always to make clear that, in the event of a clash between those interests and the Union, it was the Union they were prepared to sacrifice.

One of the strengths of Kee's book is that he doesn't focus just on the ideas or actions of prominent figures. He writes with sympathy and understanding of the majority of the Irish population, particularly its peasantry and shows how their confidence in struggling against the status quo rises and falls. He also covers the great tragedies that befall them, particularly the Potato Famine but also the route cause of their poverty - the way that land ownership was organised solely to profit the owners and those who sublet land, rather than those who did the work.

The book finishes just before a new outburst of radical nationalism, the Fenian movement, following the decline of the earlier struggles. I look forward to reading part two.

Related Reviews

Woodham-Smith - The Great Hunger
Mitchell - A Rebel's Guide to James Connolly
Davis - Late Victorian Holocausts

Andrew Ward - Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres & the Indian Mutiny of 1857

This is an incredible work of history. It describes, in often horrible detail, the Indian Mutiny and specifically the Cawnpore Massacre of the British and the resultant bloody retribution by the East India Company's troops. The author is unapologetic in this, writing in the preface:

I have tried to depict the massacres at Cawnpore unflinchingly because though they were more terrible than anything I hope you can imagine, they were less atrocious than the British public was encouraged to think, and more complicated than either imperialist or nationalist historians have made them out to be. I have tried not to spare the reader the horrors of British retribution because they were more atrocious than the British public was encouraged to think. No one can say how many thousand of Indians - including women and children - died during the suppression... but many times more, certainly, than the Europeans who died at Cawnpore.

Ward locates Cawnpore (including the specific violence of the uprising) and the wider Mutiny in the longer history of British rule in India. He notes the systematic robbery of India's riches, the racism that pervaded everything that Europeans did with regard to the native population, the violence with which the military was used to enforce company interests and the casual belief in white supremacy that meant Europeans simply could not comprehend that the Indian population would revolt against them.

There were a number of issues that meant 1857 brought the native soldiers to the brink of mutiny. Discontent was growing throughout the country, indicated at first by the circulation of chupatty's among the population. This is a fascinating phenomena which clearly has its roots in much older village traditions - headmen would bake these bread and pass them onwards and those who took them, and made others to pass one, where declaring their allegiance. But Ward points out that the colonial administration ignored this, he quotes a British administrator saying that officers "who dared to look gravely on the 'chupatty mystery' were denounced as croakers".

But more direct problem was the question of the new ammunition. Some authors writing on 1857 have argued that the question of the tallow used on new cartridges supplied to the regiments, made from pork and beef, was not as important as historically thought. The tallow was offensive to Hindus and Muslim's alike, and "even the most complacent Calcutta bureaucrat had to concede that the cartridge business was more worrisome". But as Ward points out the "history of the Company's army was replete with such blunders, but at a time of dangerous disaffection in the army's ranks this one proved colossal". It was commonly believed that the British wanted to systematically destroy the Indian population's caste and belief, and rumours regularly circulated that there were factories that manufactured things deliberately to do this.

Ironically, the violence retribution of the British reinforced this idea. As we shall see captured rebels were treated in ways that were designed to be as offensive as possible, reinforcing the beliefs that led to the rebellion in the first place.

Ward's story focuses on events in Cawnpore, a key town in British rule. Here, hundreds of European's, men, women and children, found themselves under siege in a inadequate defensive compound, surrounded by tens of thousands of well armed rebel soldiers. In appalling conditions the mainly British defenders survived weeks of shell-fire and attack, as well as hunger and thirst. Eventually they brokered an agreement with the leader of the rebels, but were betrayed and most of them were killed. The women and children that survived were eventually massacred in the most horrific and brutal way, their dismembered bodies thrown into a well.

I found it difficult to put down Ward's day to day account of the siege and then the massacre, as well as events elsewhere in India. It is brutal, but it's obsessive detail brings to life the reality of the Uprising, and the reasons behind it. The Europeans cannot believe that their world has fallen apart; the Indians are confident they can end British rule, even if they are often unclear on what this means and the true nature of British power. It is extremely clear to the reader that the violence that takes place is a direct result of the nature of Company rule; despite racist European beliefs that such behaviour was inherent to the population they ruled.

The rebellion was eventually overwhelmed by British military power, and weaknesses in the Indian leadership that meant, for instance, failing to take Cawpore quickly and moving forward to other important targets. British retribution, was overwhelming, and appalling. British army columns moved through rebels areas:

Sending the rebels to paradise was not the column's ideas of revenge... so hanging parties devised means of defiling and degrading them before death. Many captives were not permitted to call witnesses or testify in their own defense, some were even gagged... condemned prisoners were often flogged... Soldiers then forced beef down the throats of the Hindu captives, pork down the throats of the Moslems. Prisoners were daubed with animal fat; some Moslems were even sewn into pig skins before hanging. Sweepers were employed to execute Brahmin prisoners, many of whom were first smeared with cow's blood.

From blowing victims from guns, to rape and systematic murder, the violence continued. Despite this, and not unexpectedly, the British public never heard about the revenge. The story of Cawnpore however was used to justify the taking of India into the British Empire and the further rule of India for another century. As Ward concludes:

None of the many wells that the British filled with rebel corpses were memorialised... It was not until April 13 1919, that the well at Cawnpore was displaced in India's moral imagination by another: the well at Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar into which Indian men, women, and children jumped to escape the volleys of a party of Gurkhas under the command of British General Dyer... 379 people were killed and another twelve hundred wounded.

It has often been said that victors write history. This is absolutely true of the Indian Mutiny. For years the narrative focused on the appalling violence and betrayal of the rebels, without putting it into context, while the British response was downplayed or ignored. Andrew Ward's detailed, scrupulously researched and extremely well written history rectifies this. I encourage you to read it.

Related Reviews

Davies - Late Victorian Holocausts
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Holmes - Redcoat
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John Saville - The Consolidation of the Capitalist State

There are any number of books by Marxists that look at the way that English capitalism developed out of the earlier, feudal society. Following Marx they show how the outcome of the English Civil War and Revolution gave those with capitalist interests the freedom to develop their wealth and their interests. This involved the systematic transformation of the economy in the interests of capital. Countless laws were passed to enshrine private property as above anything else. Land was enclosed, common rights destroyed, nature was turned into a commodity.

But for capitalism to fully succeed required, in the title of Saville's short book, the consolidation of the state in its interests. Some of how that took place fits in with the processes of primitive accumulation - the laws passed to support enclosure or criminialise poaching etc. Other processes described by Saville are much more explicit - the creation of a national police force for instance - that could act in the interest of private property.

The crucial period of this process, 1800-1850, is described in Saville's book. It coincides with wider changes that were further entrenching the interests of capital. Saville notes, for instance, that this half century saw the final eclipse of the rural economy, at least in terms of those working on the land. In 1801 the ratio of urban to agrarian population was 20:80; by 1850 it was 50:50 and had completely reversed to 80:20 by the end of the century.

This was the period when the new capitalist class conscioussly acted to further its interests. Those who "were using capital for ecnomic development" were moving towards the "centre of political power". All the changes; economic, legal and so on, were simply about making the system "efficient" for the bourgeoise. Saville gives a handful of examples, but fopcuses on the Anti-corn law movement as openly reflecting the interests of the middle classes;

The Corn Law of 1815 imposed directly in the itnerests of the landlord classes, led to the vigorous reactions of the 18440s,... but the formation of the Anti-Corn Law LEague in 1838... reflected the middle classes' growing confidence in their political and social positions in society. It gave a clear warning to agricultural interests that the blance of ecnomioc power was shfting steadily towards the commercial and industrial sectors.

All this was resisted: the scale of riot by the labouring  populations of the British Isles meant that some countries saw the British as "ungovernable". In an excellent discussion of Ireland, Saville notes just how much the subjugation of Ireland was part and parcel of the development of capital for the British bourgeoisie, and that required the constant "shuffling" of troops back and force to attempt to maintain order. The scale of Irish impoverishment in the interest of the colonial power is forgotten, points out Saville, but the British ruling class also learnt valuable lessons about the controlling of rebellious populations.

Key to the consolidation of the capitalist state was the year 1848. This was the point when the first great working class movement, Chartism, threatened the British states' control. Saville discusses the various ways the movement was repressed and the mistakes made by its leaders, and the way that 1848 saw a "historic fracture in working-class political consciousness". Following this, the mainstream movement fought for reforms, rather than the revolutionary reconstitution of society. Summed up, Saville, argues by the slogan "A Fair Day's Work for a Fair Day's Pay". This, says Saville, meant in part the belief that "fair dealing was available... in capitalist society". This was the crucial final piece in the capitalist state's jigsaw.

A turbulent and dissatisfied working people was not helpful [to the development of capitalism] and althugh their activities could be contained by oppressive laws and iproved policiing it was their polittical attitudes that had finally to be confronted and defeated. That was the meaning of 1848, and for the rich and powerful, and their middle-class allies, it was a famous victory.

At only 82 pages this is a short work, but Saville packs a lot in. It is one of the best Marxist writings I have read on the period and I recommend it to everyone trying to understand the origins of capitalism.

Related Reviews

Thompson - Making of the English Working Class
Thompson - Customs in Common
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John E. Archer - 'By a Flash and a Scare': Arson, Animal Maiming & Poaching in East Anglia: 1815-1870

Given the extremely specific title it might be thought that this was a book that would only appeal to the specialist historian, but it is actually a very interesting examination of the intersection of protest and crime among rural labourers in a formative period of English agricultural history. Many readers will be aware of the Captain Swing protests when, in large parts of England's agricultural areas, mass protests led to the burning and destruction of landowner's property - most famously threshing machines. But, John Archer argues, there has been a tendency to see events like Swing as breaks in essentially passive periods of rural life. The reality he shows, is that there was almost continuous protest in rural communities, which at times reached major proportions that threatened social stability, but at others was a continuous backdrop that was at least passively supported by the wider population.

Arson and animal maiming tended to be individual acts - of terrorism, revenge, protest or even crime - but they took place in a wider context of anger and frustration at rural unemployment, underemployment and poverty. Poverty levels were such that in reality there was no "rural tranquillity. What charity and poor relief that did exist often bred discontent and tended to fail the group most prone to protest and crime - young single men. Even those that worked understood the reality of their class position, "we till and sow the land till there is an abundance of food, and our reward is starvation".

When the oppressed and exploited fought back, even on an individual level, they were often cheered on by the compatriots. We know that burning ricks or farm buildings were often left to burn while the locals watched and we also know that poaching was often an activity supported by the majority of the population. Archer quotes Joseph Arch's comment that every second person he met was a poacher. But what this study is careful to show, is that the crime of poaching was also a reaction to a set of economic circumstances. As Christopher Hill and other historians have argued, the criminalisation of poaching has as much to do with the solidification of property relations as it has with protecting animals. Thus the act of killing a deer, or trapping a hare was in part resistance to those relations; as much as the illegal supplementation of diet. Archer also points out that we cannot ignore the sheer enjoyment of hunting that would have affected many participants. These sort of actions were an act of class struggle as much as a necessity in the face of poverty:

The arsonists were the 'loose hands', that is, the casual day labourers who were the lowest paid and the first to be laid off in times of bad weather or falling markets... low wages and unemployment were the most frequently cited grievances by the guilty. The 'flash and a scare' clearly had the dual purpose of raising wages and providing employment for such men. But we should not simply dismiss the incendiaries as the losers in agrarian capitalist society... They may have acted alone under the cover of darkness but their actions were clearly supported by the labour community as a whole before 1851. The villagers shielded them from the law and gloried in the destruction. The fires were lit on their behalf to and advertised their poverty and bitterness to rich and poor a like... The camouflage of deference clearly misled the landed who closed their eyes... to the rural poverty which surrounded them.

John Archer's book deserves as wide a readership as Christopher Hill's Liberty Against the Law or E.P. Thompson's Wigs and Hunters. Full of data and analysis (as well as amusing anecdote - such as the mass cutting down of trees by Snettisham villagers, the culmination of a 44 year feud with the lord of the manor). It helps us understand how rural working people resisted, and the context in which they did so. Highly recommended.

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Hill - Liberty Against the Law
Fisher - Custom, Work and Market Capitalism
Sharp - In Contempt of All Authority
Hay etc - Albion's Fatal Tree
Linebaugh - Stop Thief

Richard Holmes - Redcoat

Initially I was disappointed by Richard Holmes' Redcoat. I had expected it to be a history of the British Army and in particular it's wars and battles. But Redcoat is actually much more rewarding - a social history of the British Army in, as the subtitle says, "the age of horse and musket". The period covered by this book includes some of the most famous battles of the British Army - Bunker Hill, the Indian Mutiny, Balaclava and so on. It also is the period when the deeds of the its soldiers ensured that the British Empire was created. This history doesn't look at the consequences of that, but explores who it was who fought in Russia, America, China, India and Europe to give the British ruling class world dominance and why they did it.

The British Army reflected the class nature of the society that created it. Holmes' describes the strange system of commissions, which enabled individuals to buy themselves into ranks in regiments and then the system of promotion (that often involved buying and selling commissions) that enabled officers to move up the ranks. It seems a system almost guaranteed to ensure that quality and experience was less important that money. The class system is a running theme through the book. What happened to soldiers and officers, why they enlisted, what happened if they were wounded, or pensioned off, depended in large part on who they were and where they came from:

When the 32nd Foot embarked for India in May 1846 it was a microcosm of the line infantry of the age. Its officers included three sons of landowners, eight of officers or former officers, and fourteen of varied middle-class occupation, including sons of a bishop, two clergyman, an Indian judge, a East India Company civil servant, a colonial administrator, a Canadian businessman, a city merchant a West India merchant and a bank manger. 

The ordinary soldiers would, of course, have come from less illustrious backgrounds likely a poor or unemployed rural labourer, a working class man looking for money, seduced by the drums and bright uniforms and the promises of the recruiting sergeant. Holmes takes us through the lives of these individuals - how they trained, how they lived and loved, how they spent their money what they looted and how they kept it and so on. Holmes tells us much about these lives, and also the women who were around the troops. I was surprised to find out the extent to which soldiers families followed the regiments on campaign - even onto the battlefield, on patrol and sentry duty. There are sections here about who those women were - families obviously, but also prostitutes and camp followers who sold goods to the troops.

Discipline was harsh, and few officers were loved. Though there is a surprising lack of mutiny here (though on several occasions Holmes' discusses cases where soldiers attacked individual officers, often when drunk). An amusing example of what became known as fragging, is told here though:

The unpopular major commanding the 14th foot at Blenheim [1704] addressed rhe regiment before the battle apologising for his past behaviour and asking that if he had to fall it should be by the enemies bullets. A grenadier shouted "march on sir, the enemy is before you, and we have something else to do..." The battle over, the major turned to his men and raised his hat to call for a cheer: he was instantly shot through the head by an unknown marksman.

This was unusual though, and surprisingly, despite the horrors of war, the poverty and the bad equipment and conditions, the British soldier seemed remarkably loyal to his comrades, his regiment and country.

While Holmes' is an easy read, and he has a wonderful eye for the amusing and unusual anecdote, what this book does well is to answer a difficult question. Why did people join the army? Why did they frequently remain extremely loyal, and commit acts of enormous bravery for things that had very little bearing on their lives. They were fighting to build an Empire which would benefit few of them so what was their motivation to risk life and limb? Holmes' book goes some way to answering these questions, and does so in an fascinating way that allows the voices of the ordinary soldiers and British officers to come through. While there is a lack of wider context to much of the history, to be fair to Holmes that is not what he set out to write. I'd suggest reading this, alongside other histories (such as Richard Gott or John Newsinger's books below) that discuss what Britain did around the world and who it was who fought back.

Related Reviews

Newsinger - The Blood Never Dried
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Katrina Navickas - Protest & the Politics of Space & Place 1789-1848

Katrina Navickas' book is an interesting and refreshing look at the protest movements that took place during a crucial period in the development of the modern British capitalist state. Its notable that her period begins with the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution and ends with the year of European revolutions. There was nothing in the British Isles on that scale, but these events influenced and found their echo in protest and reform movements here. As the title suggests Navickas uses the concept of space to analyse these movements, but she notes that this method has its limitations. In her introduction she writes:

Describing politics as being conducted within multiple public spheres or a dichotomy of public versus private risks making the term methodologically useless. This is not to reject it completely... much of the debate over the politics of space covered the meaning of the word 'public'. The working classes used instruments of the public sphere - newspapers, pamphlets and political debates - to declare their opinions and rights...

She continues "contests over the body politic and its spaces were contests between classes". Much of the book looks at particular struggles and how their participants and leaders attempted to develop and build their movements within contested arenas. This might mean the struggle for the right to meet, or protest - and here there are many echoes with contemporary times where the increasing privatisation of public spaces can limit places where activists can demonstrate. Thus the struggle for the right to protest in a park or square might also take the form of legal challenges, or mass protests designed to win the right for the future. But they also meant struggles over how spaces were seen by communities (and the authorities) how they were used and how they were defended from encroachment by hostile interests.

Thus the struggle for space is more than a question of future rights, it can also encompass tradition and custom. Navickas writes that "Custom established what rights were attached to inhabitants of a locality... and thereby defined the particular culture of that locality" and notes EP Thompson's "emphasis on custom as an interface that set patrician against plebeian". Her discussion of struggles against enclosure, or common rights are just two of such examples. But Navickas goes on to note that this struggle in the period she covers, takes place in the context of "global processes of free trade political economy, trading and manufacturing practices" which means that "mass collective action" emerges. To put it slightly cruder, the development of a global capitalist system required the entrenchment of particular capitalist values within in society, but these in turn created mass movements that resisted those changes, or attempted to shape things in their own interest.

In her studies of these processes Navickas has uncovered and highlighted some fascinating aspects of radical history. She discusses, for instance, the use of pubs and taverns as places for radicals to meet, and how the authorities would try and restrict this. She examines the way that particular spaces (such as St. Ann's Square in Manchester) become symbolic of particular struggles, in this case the "royalists" movements as opposed to the radicals. And she also looks at how particular events engender some spaces with highly symbolic meaning. Her classic example of this is the way St. Peters Square becomes a place that every radical movement wants to associate itself with in the years following the Peterloo Massacre.

Readers who are based in Manchester will find much of this particularly interesting because Navickas focuses her study on northern cities and some of the detailed studies are of historic radical movements in this city. I was particularly struck by two maps that give a real sense of the intersection between different movements and time periods. One of these is a map of routes taken by radical and "loyal and patriotic" protest marches and parades around Manchester. This shows how the radicals deliberately copied the patriots in their roots in an attempt to gain legitimacy by association as well as taking their spaces.

The second is a map of Ancoats which juxtaposes the homes of individuals who signed radical petitions with known meeting places. Navickas shows how we can trace different radical traditions through the overlapping of meeting places, neighbours and marches to build up a sense of a working class community developing traditions of struggle that are more than simply protests, strikes or marches taking place in different years.

While Navickas' approach has its uses I found it sometimes a little frustrating. Part of the problem is that I don't think that the oppressed can easily (if at all) "reclaim a space" for their use while capitalist relations remain. An example of this is Navickas' discussion of how the "defeat of the bill of pains and penalties against [Queen] Caroline" was celebrated by the loyalists and authorities. She argues that the "rest of the population took the opportunity to reclaim the use of the streets for political symbolism in support of Caroline". These "highlight ritualised movements created a 'contested topography of political authority'. In the urban areas, support for Caroline was clearly marked out in light against the dark of entrenched loyalism".

The problem is, of course, that the morning after the streets are still owned and controlled by the British state (or its local representatives). Any "reclaiming of the streets" by the masses is out of necessity a temporary thing whose longest standing outcome is the confidence of the movement. The temporary nature of space won can lead to the movement becoming solely about carving out its own spaces, rather than challenging the system. Navikas herself notes that this does take place with attempts to create permanent trade union buildings, mechanics institutes and the like. It is, essentially a type of reformism, and could be counterpoised to revolutionary attempts to permanently change things.

That said, there is much of interest here. From Navikas' discussion of urban spaces and working class communities and movements to her analysis of rural struggles such as Captain Swing. Readable and fascinating, Katrina Navickas book might be particularly of interest to modern day activists and historians in the North (particularly Manchester) but I expect it will also become a much studied book for social historians trying to understand the historic struggles that have shaped, quite literally, the world we live and struggle in today.

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Charles Forsdick & Christian Høgsbjerg - Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions

Toussaint Louverture remains an inspirational figure to those who want to challenge oppression and exploitation. Perhaps only Che Guevara is a better known representation of anti-colonial revolution. Louverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution, which overthrew French colonial slavery, fought off an English invasion trying to capture the colony and then, with the decline of the French Revolution, defeated a Napoleonic invasion intent on restoring slavery. Louverture played a crucial part, inspiring, leading and organising the masses in their military struggle, creating a social movement that could defeat their colonial oppressors and go further to declare independence.

Forsdick and Høgsbjerg's new book should become an essential introduction to the life and politics of Louverture because it places his actions in the context of the wider Revolutionary era. It is accessible and will enable to the reader to get to grips with other classic works such as CLR James' Black Jacobins.

The authors note how the ideas of the French Revolution with its talk of liberty, fraternity and equality, went deep into the heart of the revolutionary movement. They gave inspiration, but it also meant that events on Haiti would have global implications.

One executed insurgent was found to have 'in one of his pockets pamphlets printed in France, filled with commonplaces about the Rights of Man and the Sacred Revolution'. If the enslaved themselves had not risen up against slavery, in what constituted the largest slave revolt in modern history, then as Dubois notes, 'the French Revolution would have probably run its course, like the American Revolution, without destroying the massive violation of human rights at the heart of the nation's existence'.

But as the authors explain, it was not enough for the enslaved masses to rise, they had to also take the revolution forward through numerous twists and turns, to win victory. This required revolutionary leadership, and Louverture was able to provide this. He was not alone and the tensions between him and other military and revolutionary commanders are neatly explained here. But there is no doubt that without Louverture the revolution would not have gone as far as it did.

That said, this is no hagiography and Louverture was no perfect, flawless leader. Louverture did not play a role in the initial uprising, something he was keen to avoid discussing. But he was able, at crucial moments, to seize the time and drive the movement forward; inspiring and leading from the front in some of the most brutal conflict imaginable often against over-whelming enemies. The ill equipped and outnumbered black armies were able to defeat some of the best trained colonial troops that France and Britain could send. That they did so is testament to the desire of the masses to fight for liberty and freedom, and the leadership of Louverture and others. While the authors focus on Louverture, they never forget the role of thousands of ordinary people in winning their revolution.

On 18 My 1797 Louverture declared:

Let us go forth to plant the tree of liberty, breaking the chains of our brothers still held captive under the shameful yoke of slavery. Let us bring them under the compass of our rights, the impresscriptible and inalienable rights of free men... We see only to bring to men the liberty that [God] has given them, and that other men have taken from them.

But what was that liberty? In reality it meant the creation of capitalist relations in the former slave plantations. The revolution had led to economic collapse, and Louverture was able to turn this around relatively quickly, even bringing back former plantation slavers to oversee the new agriculture. But the slaves who had overthrown their masters did not take kindly to their new wage slavery and Louverture found himself crossing the country to put down strikes and riots against the new conditions. Capitalists constantly want to extract the maximum from their workers and the contradiction of the Haitian Revolution was that the class who had made the revolution now found themselves in new servitude.

The French revolutionary Étienne Polverel who was sent to Saint Domingue, encapsulated this new world order:

You can lay claim to the products of this land only through agriculture. And I have told you that the portion assigned to you in the revenues of the land will be given to you only in compensation for your work... Before, you had no share in the profits of the plantations. Today each of you will have his share in these profits in proportion to his work.

Despite their central role in the Revolution women were given a secondary position, wages were unequal. Louverture was complicit in this "Work is necessary, it is a virtue. It is the general good of the state. Every lazy and errant man will be arrested to be punished by the law. But service is also conditional and will be paid a just wage."  In other words Louverture led a movement to overthrow slavery, but it was not to build a world of freedom. That said, the revolution itself created a very different world. There's a fascinating quotation from a British officer who sees "the usual subordination's of society... entirely disregarded, and that he was to witness for the first time a real system of equality."

The "Age of Revolution" that the masses of Saint Domingue were fighting in, was not one for freedom and true economic equality, it was to establish a new capitalist order. This is the contradiction that Louverture faced and one that, whether he liked it or not, he had to enforce at the risk of shattering the revolutionary unity that had overthrown slavery.

This biography is an important one because it understands that the Haitian Revolution was not the work of an individual, nor was it isolated from wider political and economic developments. Its impact was enormous and the final chapter is a fascinating discussion of the lasting impact of Louverture and the Revolution. This is not a long book, but it contains a wealth of material and argument that everyone interested in the struggle for social justice will learn from. I highly recommend it.

Related Reviews

Høgsbjerg - Chris Braithwaite
Blackburn - The American Cruicble: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights
Bell - All Souls Rising
James - Black Jacobins
Jaures - The French Revolution
McGarr & Callinicos - The Great French Revolution

Reg Groves - Sharpen the Sickle! The History of the Farm Workers' Union

This lively account of the history of British agricultural trade unionism is written by one the UK left's most interesting characters. Reg Groves was a Communist who wrote briefly for the Daily Worker but ended up breaking with them and becoming influenced by Trotskyism. Eventually he became well known as a Christian socialist, remaining true to the socialist cause for his whole life he made links with Trotskyists from the new left in the 1970s.

He wrote, or jointly authored, a number of popular histories of radical movements. I reviewed his book (jointly written with Philip Lindsay) on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 previously on this blog. They are all aimed at a mass audience and are often entertaining reading. A note of caution though, Groves on occasion is a little lose his historical accuracy and books of his like Sharpen the Sickle! have no footnotes, so those reading them for research might want to have other sources to hand.

Nonetheless Sharpen the Sickle! is a powerful read. It begins with early attempts at trade unionism in the countryside, briefly touching on the Tolpuddle Martyrs before discussing the struggle by Joseph Arch to found and maintain a national union in the early 1870s. Groves is found of focusing on key individuals in the movement - reflecting a close connection with many of them. But the doesn't ignore the forgotten rank and file, and indeed, where possible he celebrates some of the smallest struggles in order to put rural trade unionism into context.

The defeat of Arch's union in the mid 1870s, led to a difficult period economically and organisationally for the agricultural worker. The late 1890s saw a brief revival in fortunes, but it wasn't until the 20th century that trade unionism was back on the agenda. Once again it arose out of the absolute poverty of the countryside and despite the braking role of the liberal politicians that helped found the new unions, workers quickly moved into battle. In addition to the intransigence of the farmers, agricultural workers face a number of issues that make it harder to organise - seasonal and temporary labour; (at the time) tied cottages and so on. But Groves shows how the union was able to over come these and build a mass base.

The 1920s brought economic decline and collapse in wages after the UK government abandoned its support for agricultural post World War One. But the workers fought back with a major strike in East Anglia in 1923 that helped to stem the losses. It seems that agricultural unions played little or no role in the General Strike that closely followed this, at least according to Groves' account. The 1930s were the "lean years" and the union fought a rearguard action through the Labour Party to try and gain better conditions for the workforce. Labour in the 1920 and 30s played a dirty role in betraying the hopes of its working class base, and agricultural workers suffered more than most. The final chapters then are Groves' account of the small gains they did make and the impact of World War Two.

Interestingly, Groves' radical politics come out at the end when he comments on the limitations of agricultural trade unionism in the context of capitalist farming, echoing Marx's writings on the metabolic rift.

But it would be wrong to leave the impression that the NUAW [National Union of Agricultural Workers] as a whole has yet expressed its final opinion on the future of Britain's agriculture. So far, it strives against capitalist agriculture only to get better conditions for its members, it seeks adjustment rather than drastic change. This, however, puts the NUAW in a halting place, a half-way house, untenable in modern conditions. Not only does this leave the status of the farm worker unchanged; it also leaves untouched the fundamental unsoundness of present-day agriculture. For capitalist industry and agriculture broke the essential social and individual relationship between man, his work and community life, and the land, which was the basis of the oldest subsistence farming. The freeing of land and labour from exploitation and destruction is only possible if it purposes to restore men's co-operative relationship with the soil.

Related Reviews

Lindsay & Groves - The Peasants' Revolt 1381
Horn - Joseph Arch
Marlow - The Tolpuddle Martyrs

Dave Sherry - Russia 1917: Workers' Revolution and the Festival of the Oppressed

I've already reviewed Dave Sherry's new book on the Russian Revolution for Socialist Worker, and I hope you'll read that in conjunction with these additional comments. Having read Sherry's book for a second time I wanted to add a few more thoughts.

As the centenary progresses, more and more books are being published. But Sherry's book is by far the best I've read. In part this is because he puts great emphasis on the role of ordinary people in the Revolution. But it is also because he gets across the grand sweep of events - the way in which the Revolution was a process, where things happened and peoples ideas changed. Political organisations that failed to grasp this, were unable to adapt to new circumstances lost their ability to shape things as their support vanished. Take this summary of the February events:

For the Mensheviks, years of mechanical adherence to the orthodox formula, that Russian socialism would have to wait until capitalism was fully developed and assumed complete political power, blinded them to the developing situation. Their attempt to half the revolution... left the Mensheviks into supporting the new capitalist government... The paradoxical character of the February Revolution, a bourgeois' revolution undertaken by workers and soldiers, brutally exposed the social weakness of the bourgeoisie, once the crutch of the Tsarist state had been knocked out from under it.

In a sense the Revolution fed itself. As workers and peasants collectively began to understand their immense power. The "act of ridding Russia of its monarchy gave people a sense of how society can be changed, and when the Provisional government refused to stop the war, it failed to stop the momentum for revolutionary change."

Sherry explains this process well, and shows how the Bolshevik party led by Lenin, were able to both shape and learn from the movement. This wasn't inevitable and the party almost made the same mistake as the Mensheviks in the post-February period. Sherry shows that Lenin's arrival in Russia in April led to a row that redirected the Bolshevik organisation towards workers' revolution. But crucially this could only happen because the Party was so rooted in working class organisations and struggles. It was the reality of revolution as experienced by the working class, principally in Petrograd, that meant Lenin's instincts were accepted by the bulk of the Bolshevik Party.

Towards the end of the book, after summarising the numerous revolutions and mass working class actions that have taken place world wide since 1917, Sherry reminds us that only the Russian Revolution in 1917 led on to a workers' state, albeit briefly. As he writes:

Without Lenin and the Bolsheviks it is inconceivable that a coalition of workers, soldiers and peasants would have taken power in 1917. The absence of revolutionary leadership and such a bold socialist workers' party in all the other revolutionary upheavals that have challenged capitalism through the last 100 years, explains why 1917 is unique. Times change but we can still learn from the past. That is why it is such a tragedy that Lenin's real legacy has been hidden or distorted by what passes for bourgeois scholarship.

And there has never been such a need for such revolutionary organisation. The Russian Revolution matters not because of historical curiosity, but because "it provides an alternative view of what is possible when society polarises and socialists organise to offer hope and unity in place of fear and division". If you only read one book on 1917 it should be this one, because these lessons are crucial today for a new generation of socialists. As Dave Sherry concludes:

Across the world there is a revolt against the people at the top of society - the one percent. It can go left or right and it is the job of all of us who want a better, safer world to shape it and pull it in a socialist direction.

Related Reviews on 1917

Smith - Russia in Revolution
Lenin - Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?
Serge - Year One of the Russian Revolution
Cliff - Lenin: All Power to the Soviets
Smith - Red Petrograd
Trotsky - Lessons of October

Related Reviews of books by Dave Sherry

Sherry - Empire and Revolution: A Socialist History of the First World War
Sherry - John Maclean
Sherry - Occupy!

Jonathan Martineau - Time, Capitalism and Alienation

The way that humans have understood and related to the universe around them has varied dramatically throughout history. One aspect to this, is the question of time. One of the points that Jonathan Martineau makes in this interesting book, is that we tend to think of our modern time system as being the only way of understanding, measuring and experiencing time. Other societies, specifically non-capitalist ones, often have dramatically different ways of experiencing time. In his famous studies of the Nuer people, the anthropologist Evans-Pritchard noted, for instance, that those Nilotic cattle farmers had more time in the mornings when they were busiest with their animals.

Martineau's book is an attempt to understand how the modern, capitalist understanding of time arose. He begins by reasserting the Marxist argument that humans are the "animal" that can only differentiate itself in the midst of society. In other words their life experience is a collective one and their understanding of the world around them arises out of their social organisation. Thus, for Martineau, "Time is...a socially mediated relation between humans and their world. This social mediation is shaped by the social organisation of production and labour, and shapes it in return." [19] Time cannot be separated from the interacting relationship between society and nature.

Time being both natural and social means that 'social time'; cannot be thought of without reference to the conditioning determinations brought about by natural phenomena, just as the latter cannot be properly conceptualised and addressed without a recognition of their always already socially mediated character. Natural phenomena such as celestial movements and atomic pulses are socially standardised continua of change...Humans socially mediate natural processes and cycles of change in the sense that they alter, funnel, use, coordinate, divert, channel, exploit or conserve them, in order to survive and reproduce.

Under capitalism, time, its measurement, use and experience becomes subordinated to the needs of capital. Time itself becomes a commodity in the sense that "labour time" is the method by which capitalists extract value from workers. Time is "fetishised" because [Martineau quotes Norbert Elias] "the social standardisation of individuals in terms of socially institutionalised time is anchored more firmly and deeply in their consciences the more complex and differentiated societies become". So children are taught "clock time" as their schooling, experiencing their days through time-tables and dinner breaks, before home-time.

Clock time, arises Martineau argues, before capitalism as the needs of production begin to require more coordination and management. But it is under capitalism that clock-time reaches its "hegemonic position", and then Martineau argues, this requires industrial capitalism to ensure its fully accepted. I was reminded, while reading this, of Tony Cliff's oft repeated story. He described a wealthy Arabic businessman arriving in a factory town to purchase equipment. When the factory hooter sounds and the workers stream into work, the buyer is entranced. "Never mind the machinery, how much for the hooter".

Cliff was making a joke, but its an important point. Key to Martineau's work is an understanding that capitalism could only make clock-time hegemonic through winning a class struggle. Some of the most fascinating parts of the book are the examinations of how this took place - the breaking of the historic traditions of working people, the subordination of them to the rhythms of the clock. Martineau contrasts these with the historically different and specific ways that pre-capitalist societies understood and used time to fit with their economic systems. For feudal peasants day-light hours lengthened and shortened with the changing length of day. If day break marks the beginning of the twelve hours, noon the centre and sun set the end, then these hours are of variable length. Today a variable length hour sounds absurd. To a peasant in the fields its the obvious way to mark time between starting and ending labour.

But clock-time arises before capitalism, but with the need for workers to sell their labour power. Its the way that capitalism helps to quantitise that labour, and this is the key point of Martineau's book. But just as commodities have a "dual" character in capitalism, so does time. Martineau develops the thesis of Moishe Postone that argues the "distinction between abstract and concrete time rests on their definition as independent and dependent variables. 'Abstract time', for Postone, is thus 'uniform, continuous, homogeneous, 'empty' time, [and] is independent of events', while concrete times are 'functions of events: they are referred to and understood through natural cycles and the periodicities of human life as well as particular tasks or processes'."

Theory aside, once the time becomes accepted, the struggle over it is changed. Martineau utilises a famous analysis of time and capitalism by E.P. Thompson and quotes the historian on how this takes place:

The first generation of factory workers were taught by their masters the importance of time; the second generation formed their short-term committees in the ten-hour movement; the third generation struck for overtime or time and a half. They had accepted the categories of their employers and learned to fight back within them. They had learned their lesson, that time is money, only to well.

This of course begs the question of how might a new society, one formed through the revolutionary over-throw of the old order, understand time. As Martineau concludes, this might "lead to a reclaiming of history and historical time by those who make it."

Clearly this is an interesting book, but I feel obliged  to make one strong critical point. It is a real shame that the publishers did not translate all the quotes from French to English. Not all of us are bilingual, and having key quotes in French and roughly translating them in the footnotes is bad enough. But having some quotes completely untranslated is a serious mistake.

That said, and leaving aside the academic style which makes some of the book rather dull, there is still much of interest here, particularly for those trying to understand how human society has transformed itself through history.

Pamela Horn - Joseph Arch

The life of Joseph Arch, agricultural labourer, Methodist preacher, trade union leader and liberal MP, is a fascinating one that Pamela Horn tells with her usual readable and engaging style. Horn notes that Arch was prone to over emphasise his own importance, particularly in terms of the founding and development of the National Agricultural Labourers Union that he helped found. So it is useful that Horn provides a good account of the pre-history of rural trade unionism, and the struggles of agricultural labourers.

The NALU and rural trade unionism in general was a central part of Arch's life. These arose out of necessity - the appalling poverty of rural life, in particular the low wages of agricultural workers. Horn had two strategies for dealing with this. The first was trade unionism, so that workers could come together to struggle for higher wages, particularly through strikes. Secondly, the extension of the voting franchise to male agricultural workers. There were some secondary strategies, one of which was emigration, particularly the United States and Canada. The other was migration within the United Kingdom, usually to urban industry.

Arch was sceptical of socialism as outlined by the Webbs in the late 19th century, but his politics were generally on the left. Like his hero, Gladstone, he was a champion of Irish Home Rule, even when this put him at odds with his core supporters. He was, like most at the time, however more backward about issues such as the women workers, believing they should remain in the family home. He never abandoned the trade union cause, though late in his life he became extremely cynical about workers, feeling they had abandoned him. When Arch was elected an MP he was frequently extremely poor, as MPs were not paid and he had no independent income save a small, irregular wage from the union.

But the main story here is that of the NALU. This rose rapidly, growing on the major outbreak of class struggle - the Revolt of the Fields, that is forever associated with Joseph Arch's leadership. The union grew rapidly and quickly took on a national importance. It's newspaper was read by tens of thousands, even being sold by WH Smiths in the train stations. The NALU won some initial wage rises, though it was part of some bitter strikes. Arch however was prone to personal feuds and sectarianism, both of which helped undermine his position. He was frequently accussed of living a high-life at the expense of his poverty stricken union members. There was some truth to this, particularly as Arch clearly loved being in the lime-light - he was also, in later years, very pleased with the friendship of the Prince of Wales.

The NALU declined with membership falling from a peak of around 86,000 in 1874 to 1,100 in 1894. The decline hurt Arch enormously, though he clearly had no strategy for turning this around other than exorting labourers to join. The decline of the union is clearly related to the decline in class struggle, alongside slight improvements in the economic situation.

Arch's career in parliament was relatively lacklustre. During his first period in office he made an excellent maiden speech (reproduced by Horn) on the condition of the agricultural labourer. Yet in his latter years following his second election, he was remarkably quiet, speaking on only a few occasions. Despite his earlier temperance, Arch became known for heavy drinking in London, and though he clearly loved the limelight and the acquaintance of famous figures, he remained relatively tied to his roots. Only ever appearing in his famous brown suit. Following retirement, Arch lived on a small income from a fund setup by his liberal friends. He was able, probably unlike most of those who had been his union members, to survive to a ripe old age, and his death was in 1919, by which time the English countryside had been transformed once again.

Arch's story is of interest because he, almost by accident, found himself at the head of a mass movement. To his credit he threw his enormous energy and talents into building and strengthening the union movement in difficult conditions. Horn celebrates this, while acknowledging the weaknesses of Arch's personality and politics. We should remember him as a pioneer from whose life we can learn much.

Related Reviews

Horn - Life and Labour in Rural England 1760 - 1850
Horn - The Rural World - Social Change in the English Countryside 1780 - 1850

Joyce Marlow - The Tolpuddle Martyrs

Joyce Marlow's history of The Tolpuddle Martyrs is a classic of its period. It tells the story of the Martyrs well, allowing for occasional bits of speculation by the author. The problem for those writing about the Martyrs is two-fold. Firstly there have been numerous books, plays and articles. Secondly the material itself is relatively thin.

The primary source for most authors are the pamphlets written by George Loveless and four of the other martyrs. Loveless was the key figure in the Martyrs' case, a principled and quietly heroic individual, he wrote a short, very readable, memoir of his role.

Unfortunately this is brief and while detailed in places, Marlow is right to point out that being written in hindsight we cannot necessarily take it always at face value. That said, she puts it to good use and frames a much more detailed account around it. Marlow's additional sources, mostly including contemporary newspapers and legal records help fill out the story.

Like other authors she sees the persecution of the Tolpuddle labourers as very much about an attempt to drive the nascent agricultural union movement underground. Unlike most other writers of the period she also understands that the union movement saw in the Tolpuddle case the opportunity for self promotion. The six men were safe for the union movements' leaders. They weren't violent, they didn't burn down threshing machines and the solidarity movement that grew up to demand their return was the very model of how to campaign within the system.

This is not to downplay the movement. In fact, one of the strengths of Marlow's book is that she has great detail of the solidarity campaign itself. This involved mass protest, systematic petitioning (at least 800,000 people signed one or other of the numerous petitions presented to parliament), hundreds of meetings and the use of public protest alongside of agitation within parliament.

Once free, the Martyrs became symbols of the need for trade unionism, though Marlow points out that in agriculture the government was successful in undermining the union movement. It was forty years before Joseph Arch's agricultural worker's union was the become the site for new battles with the landowners and the bosses.

Marlow's book is an easy read. It's very dated by today's standards, and in places the language would be considered quite inappropriate for a left wing author. But there is plenty of material here, and some useful background reading and history.

Related Reviews

Norman - George Loveless
Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
Hammond & Hammond - The Village Labourer

Christophe Bonneuil & Jean-Baptiste Fressoz - The Shock of the Anthropocene

I found The Shock of the Anthropocene a very interesting book that has a lot to say about the multiple environmental crises that we are currently facing. But simultaneously I was left deeply unsatisfied by it, in particular its critique of the Marxist approach to the Anthropocene, and its lack of a clear strategy for solving the problem. That said, it has a lot to offer the careful reader.

It begins, like all writing on the environment must, by setting out precisely how bad the contemporary ecological crises are. Human society, the authors argue, is transforming the environment in a way that is utterly detrimental our ability to continue to live in the way we do. The authors argue that human's are not separate from nature, but part of it, and have transformed global ecology fundamentally. For instance, they point out that "Ninety per cent of photosynthesis on Earth occurs in 'anthropogenic biomes', that is, ecological ensembles modified by human beings."

It is with this approach that the authors begin their critique of contemporary Anthropocene science. They argue that discussion of the Anthropocene, reflects a "contemporary ideology of an ecological modernisation and a 'green economy' that internalises in markets and policies the values of the 'services' supplied by nature". They are scathing about the inability of this market driven approach to the natural world to deal with ecological crisis, pointing out that "the International Union for Conservation of Nature now presents nature as 'the largest company on Earth'."

Much of the early part of the book is a useful discussion of how this approach to nature developed. It is, in part, rooted in a enlightenment view of humanity sat neatly above a natural world ready and ripe for exploitation. But it is, for these authors, a result of the way that the modern economy was shaped by the interests of the Cold War, and particularly the United States.

They show how after World War Two, the concepts of ecosystems and machines, games theory and complex systems theory were used to try and break down the "Cartesian analystic reductionism" that had characterised scientific approaches to nature previously. Here they critique one famous guru of this approach James Lovelock, showing that his ideas arose out of the intellectual cradle of the US imperialist machine:

Lovelock...was in reality a pure product of the scientific-military-industrial complex of the Cold War. After collaborating with NASA, he worked for the CIA during the Vietnam War on detecting human presence under forest cover. His post-democratic conception of planetary government, his apology for nuclear power and his systemic view of the planet as a self-regulated system are the legacy of a world-view born from the Second World War and the Cold War.

The Cold War, the authors argue, shaped a way of viewing the world as a "natural world ... completely enclosed in a man-made container" (the quote is from Marshall McLuhan) and as a result, arrives at a position where, the "dominant narrative of the Anthropocene presents an abstract humanity uniformly involved... uniformly to blame".  Further, the authors argue that

The grand narrative of the Anthropocene places anthropos, humanity, into two categories: on the one hand, the uninformed mass of the world population, who have become a geological agent without realising it, and on the other, a small elite of scientists who reveal the dramatic and uncertain future of the planet.

Counter to this, the authors offer an alternative explanation of the origin of the Anthropocene, rooted in the particular developmental path taken by capitalism which has placed fossil fuels at its core. The authors quote Andreas Malm's work on several occasions, and their analysis, particularly of the post-Second World War Great Acceleration is similar to that taken by other authors such as Ian Angus.

However, Angus' own study of Anthropocene science and scientists shows that actually scientists do not by and large accept a narrative of all humans are "uniformly to blame" nor do they believe that the mass of humanity is uniformed or unconcerned about the environment. So the authors attempt to set their own work up as an alternative to the flawed approach of the scientists (and other environmental thinkers) is based on an incorrect reading of the scientific material.

My final criticism of the book is that the approach explicitly rejects Marxism as not being applicable to understanding the current dynamics of capitalism. The authors argue that the driving force of capitalism is consumption, and not accumulation. Which means that they lose vital analytical tools to explain the current inability of capitalism to respond to the climate crisis. They rightly understand that the Second World War was the "decisive break" that meant energy use leapt forward, but they highlight this only to emphasis that it laid the basis for "mass-consumption society".

Mass consumption is, of course, a major issue for the environmental impact of modern capitalism. But it isn't the cause. The cause is the drive to maximise profits, which in turn is based on the need to constantly expand production. So, the authors can reject "the great universals of 'capital' or the 'human species', " without seeing that Marx offered an analysis that put these in their historical context. Turning to Systems Theory, the authors hope that they can find a new way to understand the "ecologized history of capitalism". Unfortunately this leaves them unable to offer any alternative to the current system.

An example of their flaws is their discussion of militarism and the environment. For instance when they argue that "The 'scorched earth' practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... the Boer War, the second Sino-Japanese War.. the German Operation Alberich of 1917... Stalin's destruction of Soviet resources (etc) should be analysed as environmental phenomena." The problem is that these are imperialist phenomena, which, given the nature of capitalism, inevitably has an environmental consequence - the two are dialectically linked, and its a mistake to separate them. In fact, separating them out means the authors commit precisely the reductionist error that they complain about others making.

This is a harsh critique of Bonneuil and Fressoz's book, so it is worth noting that I found much of interest in its pages. I was, for instance, fascinated by their material on the role of the military machine in shaping a particular approach to the environment, as is the parallel discussion of the importance of the rise of the motor car. Originally published in France the book inevitably has material from that country's environmental and industrial history that is new to me, and shows a close parallel to the historical developments of the UK.

In conclusion then, while the authors' approach is flawed by their simplistic critique of Marxism and their lack of clarity on the approach of Anthropocene scientists, there is material of interest here. However I'd recommend potential readers read Ian Angus' Facing the Anthropocene and Andreas Malm's Fossil Capitalism first, to better appreciate the context.

Related Reviews

Malm - Fossil Capitalism
Angus - Facing the Anthropocene
Moore - Capitalism in the Web of Life
Burkett - Marxism and Ecological Economics

Andrew Norman - The Story of George Loveless and the Tolpuddle Martyrs

This short and readable account of the Tolpuddle Martyrs focuses on the life of the key figure in their struggle, George Loveless. Loveless was a Methodist minister and Andrew Norman locates his radicalism in the context of that branch of Christianity's break from the staid, pro-government, pro-system approach of the Anglican Church. But whatever George Loveless' religious beliefs he was motivated to try and organise his fellow agricultural workers to counter the appalling rural poverty that they experienced.

Drawing heavily on Loveless' own writings, we see how the Tolpuddle struggle was rooted in earlier, more radical protests. In particular, the Captain Swing rising of 1830, a few years before the Martyrs set up their union. Loveless and several other of the martyrs were part of this movement and its decline led them into the trade union movement. It's also notable that James Frampton, the magistrate who made it his personal crusade to prosecute the Tolpuddle trade unionists was himself a key figure in repressing the earlier struggles. Norman doesn't mention this, but Frampton was zealous in this earlier action, and the Dorset historian Barbara Kerr credits this central role in suppressing Swing as in part shaping his determination to foil the new trade unions.

It is arguable how much of a break this was with the past, particularly as several members of Loveless' wider family were involved in the union movement. But what is clear, is that the fledgling movement terrified the establishment. Of great interest in this book is how Norman highlights the correspondence between Frampton and Lord Melbourne in London, which shows how Tolpuddle was seen as a key case in challenging trade unions across the country. It's clear that there was a conspiracy to frame the Martyrs, and they were victims, not of the law, but of a system designed to protect the wealthy.

Andrew Norman's book focuses on the individual lives and experiences of the Martyrs, including the later lives of five of the six in Canada. I was disappointed that there wasn't more on how the trade union movement mobilised nationally in their support. Norman points out that a few days after they were found guilty, 10,000 attended a protest meeting in the capital. It would have been fascinating to know more about this. Norman attributes the freeing of the Martyrs to the way that the government found itself exposed by allegations of "illegal oaths" by the Orange Order, and downplays the mass movement outside Parliament. The problem with this, is that it ignores the fact that without the mass movement there would have been no pressure on the government to bend under over the wider question. In fact, it's doubtful it would ever have received prominence, without thousands protesting and signing petitions.

That said, this is an decent introduction to the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and the struggle that got them returned from transportation. This is, of course, in contrast with those who were deported as a result of Captain Swing. Hobsbawm and Rudé could only find two people who managed to return from exile in that case, but they didn't have a mass movement in England demanding justice. Such are the lessons of history.

Related Reviews

Griffin - The Rural War: Captain Swing and the Politics of Protest
Hobsbawm & Rudé - Captain Swing
Hammond & Hammond - The Village Labourer
Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class

Carl J. Griffin - The Rural War: Captain Swing and the Politics of Protest

This is the most recent serious book on the Captain Swing movement. Its author is keen to present it as the definitive work that surpasses two other earlier book lengths treatments. These are the Hammond's Village Labourer and Hobsbawm and Rudé's Captain Swing. Griffin's certainty of his works' improvement on its predecessors irked me somewhat as I don't think it's fair to say that neither book offers students of rural class struggle something.

However it is true, as Griffin can say, that both of them missed crucial parts of the struggle and his work does highlight how the Swing movement was brother more intense, and more extensive than hitherto understood. Of Hobsbawm and Rudé he writes that they "seriously underestimate the level of reported disturbances".

Griffin also attempts to introduce other missing aspects of the history of the period, including the role of women, of which more shortly.

This review will not repeat an account of the Swing movement itself, but essentially this was a movement of popular outrage at rural economic conditions. The origins of these problems were simple enough - wages were low, jobs were scarce and farming was now for profit. But the situation was made worse because the standard system of poor relief was so inadequate. Old traditions however remained. Griffin notes that rural workers believed that "public relief was a right" and that "field labour [w]as a right". He argues that this "fostered a 'culture of xenophobia'," (the quote is from the historian Keith Snell) against non-indigent and migrant workers. In the context of rural England in the 1830s this meant attacks on Irish migrant labourers. Certainly this aspect was neglected in earlier histories and is an interesting fact that helps understand some of the dynamics of the period.

Griffin also argues, and I think this is an extremely important point, that Swing was not a "bolt from blue" as Hobsbawm and Rudé suggested, instead it was an intensification of events. Attacks on migrant labourers, as well as earlier attacks on machines, riots, protests and threatening letters, are part of the Swing "prehistory". Griffin also highlights how the movement continued after 1830 arguing that the repression didn't simply destroy Swing, but changed its form. For instance there are a number of cases when labourers who had won a pay rise from local farmers protested and burnt down targets again when the increases were removed.

Swing took place in the context of economic downturn. But it also took place at a time of enormous political upheaval. The 1830 French Revolution drew some support from rural workers and there were cases of the French tricolour being waved at protests. Another factor was the struggle for Parliamentary Reform and Griffin is particularly useful at understanding the interplay between that and Swing itself.

But its the sections on gender politics and the Swing movement that Griffin clearly feels are some of the most significant developments on earlier work. Here he argues that the role of the male agricultural labourer was being challenged. Their labour, he says, was about a family wage and this was being undermined. Women themselves took part, on occasion in protests during Swing and "even if men were trying to reassert their economic and household-political primacy, women clearly too had much to gain from Swing and therefore might support their husbands and brothers".

Clearly there is likely some truth to these factors, though a lack of evidence is a problem. I find Griffin's discussion of the sexual nature of machine breaking more problematic. He quotes George Youens, a labourer arrested for destroying a threshing machine at Elham, remembering that some of the gang shouted "Kill Her - More Oil". Griffin argues "Threshing machines became proxies for female bodies, something they as men should control, dominate and discipline... the allusion in the quote is in all probability to sex. Not only wasa 'woman' going to be 'killed', but the machine-breakers also were going to rape 'her'."

From a "misogynistic perspective" writes Griffin, the "machine's rhythmic action combined with the fact that it had to be 'served' through 'entry' meant that it was not unlike the objectified sexualised female body."

Personally I feel that is somewhat contrived. That's not to say that gender politics did not play a role in the Swing movement - as with Rebecca and a host of other rural movements, symbolic cross-dressing was part of some of the actions. But this over-sexualised interpretation of the Swing movement doesn't seem to fit with the evidence that Griffin has. He asserts that "gender politics in the Kentish machine-breaking heartlands shows the ingrained nature of sexual violence towards women" that sexual violence against women was an "integral part of labouring life", but I'm sceptical that the evidence proves this (Griffin highlights five cases). Even if true it seems a big leap to suggest that machine-breaking was a "reassertion, as psychological as much as it was public, of male power". I suspect that the vast majority of those engaged in machine-breaking did not approach the action from this point of view, but rather because they wanted better conditions for them and their families. If this is because their traditional roles were being challenged then we must understand that this is how class struggle takes place - in the context of the ideas "inherited from the past" and "not in circumstances of our choosing".

However Griffin is right to explore the role of women (and gender politics) in rural movements like Swing, a role that is usually ignored or dismissed. While I was not convinced by his conclusions here, the question of how women joined in the struggles for social and economic justice in the early years of capitalism are of great importance.

In conclusion I found Griffin's book very useful, developing early history a great deal; expanding the coverage of the struggles and asking some important questions of both the historical material and previous historians. Anyone studying Captain Swing will gain a lot from reading this.

Related Reviews

Hobsbawm and Rudé - Captain Swing
Hammond and Hammond - The Village Labourer

E.J. Hobsbawm & George Rudé - Captain Swing

Hobsbawm and Rudé's Captain Swing is one of those books that dominates a particular historical field. Their examination of the 1830 Captain Swing movement was the first attempt to systematically understand the causes of that agrarian revolt and the nature of the movement itself. Written in the late 1960s it was the first real full length account of Swing. Prior to that, only the Hammonds in their book The Village Labourer had paid particular attention to Swing, and Hobsbawm and Rudé are critical of them for underestimating the scale and importance of Swing.

Later historians, in turn, have criticised these two authors, while celebrating the first foray proper historical study into Swing. Carl Griffin's more recent book is possibly the most detailed attempt to surpass Hobsbawm and Rudé, and I'll review that on this blog soon.

Nonetheless those attempting to understand the dynamics of rural capitalism, the nascent workers movement and class struggle in 19th century England should read Captain Swing if only because the two authors bring a sensitivity and eloquence to the history that is seldom seen in writing about this period.

The authors argue that the Swing movement, the largest "machine breaking episode in English history" is rooted in the proletarianisation that takes place in rural England as a result of the changes taking place to agrarian communities. The most obvious change is enclosure, which sets the scene for a transformation of rural society from one geared towards production for immediate use and need, to one where peasant producers become transformed into labourers. Swing is mostly remembered for its machine breaking, particularly the destruction of threshing machines, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage was done. But it was also characterised by different phases of destruction - the burning of hay ricks and other property, the sending of letters, the breaking of machines and mass meetings of labourers demanding higher wages and work.

But Swing is more than an economic response to hard times. Its roots in the changing social relations, and decades of failure to address rural poverty, in the context of continental revolution and growing Reform movements in England, make it potentially explosive. Rural poverty was significant. The Speenhamland system which was supposed to help alleviate poverty had been a "millstone" for forty years, Instead of helping the poor, it actively encouraged farmers to pay labourers low wages, placing burdens on the parish that had to subsidise the difference in pay. When Swing explodes then, we see a cross-class alliance between workers and some farmers who both understand that the existing system is wrong. The authors point to a number of occasions when local authorities effectively support the movement, as they see the need to transform the status quo. In particular a large number of farmers allow their machines to be broken without opposition (in some cases doing it on behalf of the labourers) because they can then ask the labourers to also oppose the tithes that they are paying to the parish. In many cases then, wage rises are won, and these are effectively paid for by a reduction in monies to the local parish.

We should be careful though. The authors do not suggest that this is a revolutionary movement - though a few individuals wanted that, and some of the slogans suggest that labourers recognised the nature of their oppression and wanted much larger change. In fact, Hobsbawm and Rudé argue that there was "no subversion of social order" during Swing, rather a desire for a better "regulation" of rural society. But even these limited changes could not be allowed. The government reacted with ferocity and the aftermath of Swing saw the greatest ever repression on a workers' movement in England. 19 men were executed. Nearly 700 were transported and in total almost 2000 workers faced trial.

Hobsbawm and Rudé spend some time exploring what happened to those deported and this is an interesting, if not particularly relevant chapter to the study of the movement. More interesting is the appendix which analyses why threshing machines were being introduced in such vast numbers. The benefits to individual farmers in terms of money saved was minimal, which might explain the acquiescence by many in the face of rioters. But it seems the greatest benefit was that it allowed crops to be taken to the market quicker after harvest. At a time of big price fluctuations this could mean the difference between big profits or breaking even. However once the machines had become common, the benefit was no longer viable for the farmer and the labourers might well be better.

In conclusion there is no doubt that later historians built upon the pioneering work of these two authors. But this book gets across the nature of Swing - a mass movement of workers who wanted to fight for a living wage in the face of government indifference. Their struggles were partially successful, but the nature of their struggle - direct action and mass militant struggle - meant that their fight had been sidelined from the history books in favour of the much more palatable (for the trade union leadership at least) tale of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Captain Swing was rescued by Hobsbawm and Rudé and any study of the period begins with their memorable work.

Related Reviews

Hammond & Hammond - The Village Labourer
Hammond & Hammond - The Skilled Labourer