William Morris: The Man and The Myth. R Page Arnot 1964
Now that the virulence of the myth has been attenuated in these last thirty years – not by mere passage of time but through the remedial operation of books by Bernard Shaw and others [1] – it is possible to see William Morris as he really was, and in the first place as leader, however much he would have disclaimed it, of a revolutionary socialist organisation. Additional material is now available in fifty letters written by Morris in the last twelve years of his life – his communist years. Of these letters the first thirty (here published for the first time) show Morris in a very interesting light as party worker and party leader, or at any rate as the man who bore chief responsibility for a Marxist organisation. On the other hand letters to Dr Glasse exhibit Morris in the role of propagandist as well as a lively commentator on current events. As will be seen in the next chapter, these Glasse letters bring out very clearly Morris’ standpoint on the much-disputed question of parliamentary action: but in this chapter it is the details of organisational work inseparable from the life of an agitator, the anxieties over the preparation for policy conferences, and such similar matters that are in the forefront.
It was in January 1883 that William Morris joined the Democratic Federation, which within a few months explicitly adopted socialist principles: a year later it became the Social-Democratic Federation. It was in January 1884 that a gift of £300 from Edward Carpenter launched the paper Justice, to which Morris immediately contributed literary and financial support. Morris, then well on in the fiftieth year of his life, had for the past twelve-month been giving socialist lectures in various parts of the country; and had arranged for one such in Edinburgh. From that city early in March 1884, a letter suggesting additional meetings was received by Morris, who replied as follows.
Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith [2]
13 March 1884
Dear Sir
Thank you for your letter: Professor Butcher was good enough to ask me to his house, but I replied that I was engaged to Mr Glasse; Mr Campbell must have told you of the engagement he thought probable before he had heard from me: Professor Butcher now asks me to lunch with him on the Thursday, which I shall accept unless you think it would make it impossible to see you or be inconvenient to you indeed. I should not think of leaving without seeing you; that is a matter of course: I will write as you suggest, to Mr Campbell I suppose. I shall have to return to London by the night mail on Thursday, so shall not be able to accept the invitation from the Symposium.
Please tell me of anything else which would be useful to do, and which I could compass on the Thursday: I propose by the way coming to Edinburgh by the night mail on Tuesday so I should have Wednesday as well for meeting any friends on: only it would I think be better to meet the students after the lecture rather than before.
With best regards
I am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
PS: I see by the way that there is a train leaving London at 5.15am which would get me to Edinburgh in time, at 3.30: if this would do I should go by it, because we have an important meeting at the DF on Tuesday from which I must not be absent if I can help it: please write. WM
This was the beginning of a correspondence with John Lincoln Mahon, a young engineer, with whom as yet Morris was not personally acquainted. But, as appears from the letter, he was sufficiently acquainted with leading figures of the Church and learning in the capital of Scotland. John Glasse was the minister of the Greyfriars Kirk where the National Covenant was signed in 1638: he had already shown an interest, unusual at that time, in socialism – and indeed even more unusual in the Scottish ecclesiastical establishment than it would have been amongst the Anglicans south of the Border. The correspondence of Morris with Glasse, as preserved, does not begin till two years after the spring of 1884.
Samuel Henry Butcher, afterwards a Member of Parliament for Cambridge University from 1906 to 1910, had been born in 1850 in the capital of Ireland where his father was Bishop of Meath; and Butcher was afterwards to sit on more than one Royal Commission dealing with university education in Ireland. In 1879 Butcher, in collaboration with Andrew Lang, made a rendering of the Odyssey in a prose translation which was to be famous for another half-century. At the time of this letter, and for twenty years afterwards, Butcher was Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh: and it may have been a common interest in Homer rather than politics that brought them together. It was two years later in 1886 that Morris began his translation of the Odyssey.
In Edinburgh, on Wednesday, 19 March 1884 (or on the next day), Morris got hold of his new correspondent’s name as ‘MacMahon’, but by mid-May had learned to spell it ‘McMahon’. That summer, however, the ‘Mc’ was dropped by its owner.
Mahon, at this time in the nineteenth year of his life, within a few weeks made a ‘publishing adventure’ – really to supply progressive books. On this new business he wrote to Morris and got the following reply.
24 April 1884
Dear MacMahon
I shall be happy to subscribe £5.0.0 towards the publishing adventure on the distinct understanding that I am not responsible for any debts incurred by the adventure, that it is a loan, I mean, to be repaid at their convenience, or not at all if things go adversely.
I am sorry that I cannot do more at present (though I may be able as time goes on), but you will readily understand that I am spending a good deal on keeping the agitation on foot here, and I must manage my resources; as, very naturally, Socialists don’t seem to be rich generally.
Wishing you all success
I am
Dear MacMahon
Yours fraternally
William Morris
Three weeks later Morris implemented his promise of monetary support and in the same letter raised for the first time the question of ‘the Land Agitation’.
13 May 1884
Dear McMahon
I enclose the cheque for £5 herewith and wish you all success: your letter did not come up last Tuesday: I should be glad to hear what you are thinking about with reference to the Land Agitation, as it needs some careful steering in dealing with the people who have set it a-going. Of course we don’t want to offend them on the one hand; but on the other if people get into their heads that that is all that needs agitating about, it will hinder us greatly.
Yours fraternally
William Morris
A week later, on 20 May 1884, Morris harks back to the question of ‘the Land Agitation’. This requires some explanation. As is known, Henry George coming from the United States had caused great interest and aroused much enthusiasm by his lectures and his book Progress and Poverty which indicated a single tax on land as basic to any solution of social problems. George was not a socialist but he gave an impetus to the growing interest in social questions. HM Hyndman, founder of the Democratic Federation, went far beyond George, and so did his followers. There was the same sort of apprehension amongst the socialists that their standpoint would be watered down, if not smothered, by any Land Agitation as there had been an apprehension amongst the Chartists that Cobden’s Free Trade League would smother and obliterate the agitation for the People’s Charter. Consequently, when the suggestion was made of the formation of a mixed organisation to deal both with the land question and with the labour question, it caused heart-burning and very considerable discussion in the ranks of the Democratic Federation in London. It was ultimately to result in a split in the Federation.
There was, however, much more to it in Scotland at that time than the effect of the Henry George propaganda. There had been a history not only of ‘landlordism’ but a particular grievance, repeated and growing from generation to generation, about the ‘clearances’ or wholesale evictions from the highland glens and from the islands. These ‘clearances’ dated far back: and one of them is the subject of a scathing satire by Robert Burns. The Sutherland clearances of 1819 were particularly mentioned at the time by Walter Scott, and nearly fifty years afterwards by Karl Marx in Volume One of Capital. The grievances of the remaining crofters were unabated. They grew to a head in the early 1880s when in more than one place the military had to be called out in aid of the civil force. The result was that a Royal Commission on the question of the crofts and the crofters was set up in 1883. It reported in 1884 and two years later an Act of Parliament, which still is the main Act governing the crofting tenures today, was passed in 1886. While the Royal Commission was at work there was a most extensive agitation going on on this special aspect of the land question.
It is therefore understandable that some of the young socialists in Edinburgh, prominent amongst whom was JL Mahon, should have thought that in this existing agitation there was the means to begin rousing the people and that it would lead finally to the road to socialism. The matter was very differently viewed in London. There HM Hyndman at once wrote a letter on hearing of this project put forward in the middle spring and took up an attitude of great suspicion towards the proposed Scottish Land and Labour League. It was his view that a branch should straightway be formed of the Democratic Federation and, for the moment, nothing else. Others, however, as will be seen from the following letter, did not share the suspicion entertained by the founder of the Democratic Federation.
20 May 1884
Dear McMahon
You will probably have heard from Hyndman about your project with the Land people: I heard your letter read when there were some half dozen of us present, and we all agreed that with a man as sound as you are there was no danger, and much chance of advantage in your scheme: we are sure to get some of those busy over the land movement, and those that we don’t get will I imagine tail off into mere social reformers afraid of their own shadows at every step.
I am going to my publishers this afternoon, and will bid them send you some of my Hopes and Fears for Art on sale or return. I fancy you will sell some in Edinburgh: though written before I had studied socialism from the scientific point of view, they always meant Socialism. Item, I will send you as a gift to yourself my last volume of poetry in case you care to read it.
Larner Sugden is publishing one of my lectures as perhaps you know: perhaps it might sell with you, though ‘tis not as good as the one I gave at Edinburgh.
I return the kind regards and again wishing you all success am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
The second paragraph of the above letter dealt with the book-supply business into which Mahon had plunged. Morris offers on sale or return some of his Hopes and Fears for Art, published in 1882. This book was composed of a series of lectures as follows:
‘The Lesser Arts’ (1877)
‘The Art of the People’ (1879)
‘The Beauty of Life’ (1880)
‘Making the Best of It’ (about 1879)
‘Architecture in Civilisation’ (1881)
These were to be sent on sale or return from the publisher Ellis and White, who had put out a second and then a third edition in 1883. Morris also offers Mahon a volume of poetry. This must have been his epic poem Sigurd the Volsung.
Two months now elapsed and it was not until mid-July that Morris wrote again, this time in response to some matter of the sales accounts, presumably of Justice. It is clear that Hyndman had not merely been suspicious beyond the others of this proposal for a Scottish Land and Labour League, but also had his doubts either about the financial stability or the commercial ethics of the new businessman, Mahon, who had started this bookshop. CL Fitzgerald was the first editor of Justice and HH Champion was its publisher. Reference is also made to the fact that Andreas Scheu, the Austrian socialist for whom Morris (unlike Hyndman) had a very high regard, had gone back to Edinburgh.
Scheu was soon convinced by Mahon that it was good to go ahead with the Scottish Land and Labour League. From this moment onwards all the elements for a row inside the Social-Democratic Federation were gathering. At the moment Morris only refers to ‘many vexations and disappointments of a personal kind’, and, for the rest, endeavours to cheer Mahon, who was not finding the path as smooth as he may have hoped.
18 July 1884
Dear Mahon
I am very vexed that any misunderstanding should have arisen about your account: but it is obvious that Hyndman took his figures from Fitzgerald, and that the latter had made a mistake, which certainly was annoying enough on all grounds, but ought not to upset you too much. As to myself I never had any doubts beyond supposing it possible that you just starting a new business might be hard pressed. In future Mr Champion will manage all the distribution, and I think it will go better: in fact I am sure it will. Pray understand that I quite know that you are working hard in the cause and have done a great deal.
I am very glad that you see much of Scheu: he has both heart and head, I wish we had a dozen like him: I am sure that he will be the making of the cause in Edinburgh, sorry as I am to lose him from London. I am not the only pecuniary support of Justice; our comrade Carpenter has spent more money than I have on it: however, I suppose I shall have to keep it going now. As Scheu will tell you no one can feel more deeply than I do the necessity for getting rid of all national rubbish; I mean as far as any rivalry goes.
If you come up to London for the Conference I can without any trouble give you a bed, so I hope you will come here then.
In spite of any drawbacks we are certainly moving in London; but one is sometimes appalled at the amount of education that is needed, and it is likely to be a long job: we shall want every man of any energy to work at it: so please excuse my preaching at you to this extent, since I am so much your elder, and older even than Scheu (although he has seen so much more active service) that we must put up with many vexations and disappointments of a personal kind, or the cause will push us out of the way to make room for more patient people: meantime I believe you may trust me for always keeping the true principles to the fore whatever my capacity may be.
The philosophical Institution of Edinburgh have asked me to lecture for them: but I would much rather lecture to such an audience as you and Scheu could get me there: at the same time I will not refuse definitely till I hear from you: please write at once as to this. I enclose the copies of the bill you ask for, and am, with best wishes
Yours fraternally
William Morris
PS: I send a memo: receipt: but you will deal as to Justice with Champion I suppose – WM.
PPS: You had better distribute the old copies left – WM.
Your card received thanks.
Two months again elapsed. It is clear from the following letter in mid-September that the enterprise started by Mahon had folded up. Mahon, by August, had gone to Leeds and was looking both for some other place of work and for some other kind of activity than the bookselling. Morris promises to help.
13 September 1884
Dear Mahon
Thank you for your letters: you may be sure that I impute no blame in the matter of the Edinburgh bookshop. Can you by the way tell Champion of someone to sell Justice both there and at Glasgow.
I will certainly do what I can in trying to find you a place. I am going to Sheffield on the stump in the course of an hour, or I would write at greater length. Hoping to see you soon.
I am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
After a month Morris had kept his promise. He had been looking for a place but had not found one in the engineering industry. It is clear that from now onwards he felt some obligation to help Mahon. This would also appear from the tone of both the October and November letters.
17 October 1884
Dear Comrade Mahon
I have been making enquiries about a place but cannot find one at present and there is nothing open in my own business, which I am very sorry for: I will go on trying to find something. Meantime I enclose a cheque for £3, which please accept as a necessity and not as a personal matter between us.
You must tell me what kind of engineering you can do, it is true that I have no influence with the shops here; indeed I am afraid since the foundation of the branch here my name would do you less than good. I quite understand (as you may easily imagine) what your worries must be under the circumstances.
Hoping all will go well with you.
I am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
20 November 1884
Dear Mahon
I send you £1 in case you are in momentary need and will bring you some more tomorrow. I will give you (of course) the recommendation you want for the Museum.
I think Scheu was well pleased with the meeting on Monday at Newcastle: I had a very large audience; some 3000.
Last night was curious: I seemed to feel that George’s nostrum was nearly played out; and that a real socialist would have had a good reception. Davitt skated round the subject, and never said anything to favour George’s speciality – he was good.
Yours fraternally
William Morris
‘George’s nostrum’ was, of course, the single tax on land already mentioned. Michael Davitt, born in 1846, joined the Fenian brotherhood (Irish revolutionaries) in 1865; was sentenced in 1870 to fifteen years’ imprisonment for treason-felony; released on ‘ticket-of-leave’ 1877; founded along with CS Parnell the Irish Land League in 1879; was associated to some extent with Henry George and later with the growing labour movement.
After the autumn of 1884 things developed rapidly towards a split inside the Federation. The quarrel was bound up with the project for the Scottish Land and Labour League now being sustained by Andreas Scheu in Edinburgh. The details of the quarrel, the climax in the month of December, the resignation of the majority of the Council and the formation on the second last day of 1884 of the new Socialist League, are matters of history. They have already been recorded in detail by Morris himself, by his daughter May Morris, by JW Mackail, and also by EP Thompson, Philip Henderson and by others. The upshot was that JL Mahon, aged now nineteen, was appointed first Secretary of the Socialist League. The appointment lasted for some four months. Mahon was very active, as indeed was Morris also, but a quarrel grew up. The upshot of it was the resignation of Mahon, as is explained in the following two letters (one from Morris and one from Mahon to the Provisional Council) and in a resolution which speaks for itself.
4 May 1885
My dear Mahon
I am sorry to have to say that on the whole I think you would do well to resign your secretaryship. On the other hand I am pleased with you for taking the resolution and admitting that there are reasons for it: for I feel sure that if there is any feeling against you, it is not in the least in the world an ill-natured one, and that you will set yourself right with everybody by resigning. As for any ‘faults’ I don’t think anyone, and certainly not I, would be likely to cast them in your teeth; they have none of them been serious in themselves; they have only been inconvenient to the organisation: the truth is the position has been a difficult one, requiring a great deal of arrangement to fill successfully, it is no wonder if you didn’t quite succeed. If you will take my advice you will cut the matter as short as possible this evening; simply saying that you feel that you find you can’t quite get on, that the position requires qualifications which you don’t yet possess; that it wants more experience and so on: I mean not to stir up in the least any subjects of dispute: everybody will sympathise with you in this case. You should not be discouraged by this matter; you will be able to be useful to the party in many ways, and will be freer to act in some ways that [sic] you could be in an official position. I repeat I am pleased that you see the necessity for our going on in a friendly manner; for that doubtless lies at the bottom of your resolution. You may of course reckon on me for doing all I can to assist you.
With best wishes
Yours fraternally
William Morris
26 Clarence Street, Islington, London N
4 May 1885
To the Provisional Council of the Socialist League
Comrades
I wish to resign the duties of Secretary with which you entrusted me four months ago.
I am sure you will agree that this course is the best for me and for the Council. It is quite evident that we do not get on together as well as a Secretary and Council should. This, I am convinced, is in great measure due to shortcomings of mine which I need not discuss with you at present.
I would suggest, if I may, that my resignation be accepted at once, and with as little discussion as possible. This, I am sure, will tend to help the friendliness between us which I hope will exist in the future.
Yours in the Cause
JL Mahon
The Socialist League, Offices: 27 Farringdon Street, London, EC
24 May 1885
That this meeting in accepting the secretary’s resignation, records its sense of the earnestness and energy with which he has conducted his duties during his term of office.
E Belfort Bax
C Mowbray
This resolution, which Mahon had kept together with the letters from Morris, is written on the back of a leaflet issued by the Finsbury Clubs’ Radical Association and is headed ‘Democracy and Disestablishment’. The leaflet convenes a London conference of delegates for Wednesday, 6 May 1885, in support of ‘Mr Hopwood’s Oaths Bill’ and for an expression of ‘Working-Class Radical’ opinion on the proposition ‘That the hour has arrived for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church of England’.
Mahon immediately after writing his letter of resignation of the secretaryship seems to have written suggesting that his friend Tom Maguire of Leeds (also aged about twenty-one) should succeed him in that office. Morris in the next letter replies that he may be a candidate. Actually H Halliday Sparling (who married May Morris) took on the secretaryship.
8 May 1885
My dear Mahon
Of course I know nothing of Maguire, except for a letter or two I have had from him which showed sense: of course also I cannot answer his money question, you and some of the others might do so: again as to the other questions, they would have to be considered by us in meeting; of course you wouldn’t hurry us in going.
I think we must put off consideration till next Monday: I mean to say we can’t answer him; he must be considered a candidate subject to certain conditions.
Yours fraternally
William Morris
To the opening months of 1885 there may also be ascribed the following letter, the only one in the correspondence with a heading other than that of Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith.
Morris & Company: Painted Glass, ‘Arras’ Tapestry, Hand-made Carpets, Furniture Prints, Damasks, etc, etc, Merton Abbey, Surrey
Friday [1885] [3]
My dear Mahon
I forgot like a fool about this Bill; the lecture is to be a special one, and will show how utterly the capitalist would exploit the worker if he could: everybody allowed that it would be a good thing to bill this lecture: so I agreed to tell you to get it printed – and forgot it like an ass.
W Morris
After May there is no further letter until the very end of 1885, when Morris had received a request from Mahon that he should come to speak in Leeds where Mahon had now found work. A glimpse is given of the thronging obligations that leadership of the Socialist League had thrust upon Morris.
26 December 1885
My dear Mahon
I am afraid I shall not be able to manage Jan: look here, engagements (League of various kinds) on 3rd, 6th, 10th, 12th, 17th, 20th, 24th, 27th: that doesn’t seem to leave much space for you. You had better arrange for a date in Feb: and book me at once: you must remember that going to Leeds and coming back means the heart of three days at least. I am glad to hear that you think things look well; I would by all means take a small room: you can’t expect to increase the branch without it. If all your 12 men could speak, it would do pretty well: they will have to learn. I am glad also that you have found work: I didn’t know that they made guns at Leeds. Yes I am pretty much all right again; can’t go a long walk yet, but that will come soon I think. On Monday Bax produced his evergreen resolution of a Weekly Commonweal, after some necessary chaff (Bax wanted it brought out in January). It was agreed that we would start it when we could raise £100: I really think we ought to start it as soon as we can, so I am busy writing cadging letters for cash to everybody that I think good for a guinea. This cadging doesn’t concern the country branches as they have more than enough to do to keep themselves going: I think we may bring it out weekly by March. Keep your eyes open and write us things for it fresh and new. The Hyndman muck-heap is going on seething; I am not sanguine about getting rid of his lordship however; humbugs are as hard to kill as cholera-germs.
Thanks for your greetings on behalf of myself – and the Council. The like from me to you and all friends. I thought we looked a little hopeful at our last Monday meeting. The Parliamentary mess could not be going better than it is considering the times.
Yours fraternally
William Morris
1 January 1886
Dear Mahon
The numskull post office people have sent back my letter to you (after keeping it a week) with not known on it because I wrote Arnley instead of Armley: damn them! So I send back again as I have nothing fresh to write just yet. I hope you will get my letter this time. Best wishes to you and all friends.
Fraternally
W Morris
In the next letter there is a fairly comprehensive tableau of the prominent personalities amongst the few hundred socialists in London, divided into three warring sects.
It appears that Mahon or the Leeds branch had raised some questions about the leading Fabians. Morris is amused at the suggestion that he had written to Bernard Shaw that: ‘I would punch his head.’ Shaw at this stage had not yet completely accepted the standpoint of Sidney Webb: and it was some time ahead before Shaw was to reach the intellectual position that he expressed in 1889 in the well-known Fabian Essay. Morris, however, thought that Shaw had come ‘under the influence of Mrs Besant’ and of course it is clear that Annie Besant, who had become so well known as a disciple of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh MP, was herself attracted to Shaw at this time. Bradlaugh, however, seems to have remained always a firm anti-socialist. Another stalwart of atheism mentioned was Edward Aveling, who, along with Marx’s youngest daughter Eleanor, was prominent in the Socialist League. Morris has heard something to Aveling’s discredit: and actually wishes him out of the League and into ‘the Hyndman muck-heap’.
15 January 1886
My dear Mahon
Many thanks for your letter: mine must be short in return as I am busy (as usual). I am not sure that I can promise the whole week but will do as much as I can: we must arrange definitely further on. I am glad ‘tis put off till March, as my old bones don’t agree with too much winter travelling. Mrs Besant? M'm well: I never wrote to Shaw, did I, that I would punch his head? If I did it was a joke. I am still on good terms with him: but, do you know, I came to the conclusion on Wednesday night when he spoke after my lecture and rather defended parliamentarism (as if he were ashamed of himself) that he was rather under the influence of Mrs B and on the whole I agree with you that that lady is on the look-out for a berth for Bradlaugh, and thinks the Fabian may serve. However I'm glad some people think I'm headstrong. What about B and the Labour statistics bureau? I haven’t seen it. Weekly Commonweal. I am trying to collect some money for it, have got some £70, Glasse not in it. As to reorganisation the main idea is that we should look after our finances better, I drop the Treasury, and try to get people not to depend on me. The only thing is that I don’t see how we can shorten expenses except by giving up our premises, which I cannot do for two years or more as you know. If we can make the Weekly Comm pay its expenses it would be making some use of the place: I mean to say some paying use. I think it a risk but that it ought to be tried: only I cannot and also should not pledge myself to find the money to pay its losses if they are heavy. A circulation of 3000 would cost us a loss of £3 a week, 5000 would bring us home. What’s your opinion, and could you circulate it up there? Aveling – hem hem! He has been behaving more than queerly to the Woolwich people about some science lessons he was to have given there. They however couldn’t quite make a hanging matter of it, and weak attacks strengthen the object of them: so they have dropped it, wisely I think. But I wish he would join Hyndman and let them have a hell of their own like the Texas Ranger. However don’t say anything about it.
SDF family party came off on Sunday last: it must have been ‘a sweet thing in entertainments’. The claque was there in full force, and sung out ‘go it boss!’ when H came on. They settled nothing. How could they? The SDF is Hyndman and Champion. Matters political are flat in London: that damned election has lowered us as I was sure it would. Also the London working men are as a rule a very inferior lot. Meantime trade seems bad enough in all conscience, and it seems probable that the Government are going to put their backs to the wall in the matter of Ireland: fancy that stingy abortion of a Westminster Duke turning truculent! The beggars are getting afraid. Well we must stick to it though I confess that there is plenty of food here for discouragement in the present. Well good luck to you in all ways.
Yours fraternally
William Morris
PS: Haven’t seen your MS, am afraid it must stand over till next month.
Some solicitude was apparently expressed by Mahon: for in the next letter Morris is ‘neither ill nor angry, thank you’: but extremely busy. As to style of utterance, he echoes Snorro Sturleson in the sagas on ‘the troubling of kings and scoundrels’ and says ‘unluckily people are so used to rogues and politicians, that when a man speaks plainly they cannot understand him’. Meantime he tells that Philip Webb, architect, had become Treasurer of the League. Fred Pickles, mentioned last, was the founder of the Socialist League branch in Bradford.
Mahon’s proffered article, like that on the same subject seven months later, would go before Thomas Binning, foreman printer of The Commonweal, and afterwards Father of the Chapel at the Kelmscott Press. Binning was also the member of the League responsible for propaganda on trade-union matters, on which as Morris writes later that year he had ‘some quite curious superstitions’.
7 February 1886
My dear Mahon
I am neither ill nor angry, thank you: but am so busy that I am in despair of getting through my work. As to the matter of Commonweal I partly agree and partly not: as I have told you before to write quite plainly and simply what you have to say is the crown of literature, and has not been done in English since the Norman Conquest: still it is what all reasonable men aim at (including myself) who are not rogues or politicians. But unluckily people are so used to rogues and politicians, that when a man speaks plainly they cannot understand him. I should be very glad of your article on the TU provisionally I should say that it should not be later at the office than the 18th but I will ask Binning tomorrow.
I think you (the Leeds Branch) were rather precipitate in answering the Fabians: the Council has agreed to send speakers properly furnished with instructions; but will lay the matter before the branches: of course the Fabians ought not to have sent to the branches except through us: at first I scented a plot therein, but I think now it was only stupidity. I don’t see why we shouldn’t attend this conference and put our own position plainly there. We are in no doubt about our position, and commit ourselves to nothing but what we say there through our delegates: this was the universal opinion up here.
I am very glad that you are so active. I am no longer Treasurer: Webb has taken my place, as on all hands it was thought necessary to pull up as to money matters.
Well I am hurried too so with good wishes
I am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
If you see Pickles tell him I will write to him in a day or two.
It was on 8 February 1886 that a crowd led by HM Hyndman from Trafalgar Square in London broke the windows of the clubs in Pall Mall and also shop windows in Oxford Street. These incidents (recorded in more detail in the Glasse letters in this volume) are ‘the riots’ referred to in the next letter: but not in any detail. Morris was too busy to be able to spare time for a lengthy epistle. He was writing a pamphlet. This, duly advertised in the March 1886 issue of The Commonweal as A History of the Commune of Paris, ‘ready by 15 March’, contains some of Morris’ noblest writing, particularly in the opening pages. Seven days before the end of February he had found the job ‘not a little troublesome’ and was able to get help (presumably on the military detail) from two collaborators whose names were duly added to the title page. Meanwhile in the pages of The Commonweal his serial poem The Pilgrims of Hope was reaching its tragic climax amid scenes of the Paris Commune.
20 February 1886
My dear Mahon
I am sorry; but we must get you to stand over till next month: we have had to get in some articles about the riots. This won’t matter for your article as its subject will by no means be stale. I think the article good and straightforward, and it will carry on my idea of ‘our policy’ which starts this month. I quite agree as to the trades unions and think it good to take up that line.
I could write a longish letter if I had time but am desperately busy: have got the job of writing a pamphlet on the Commune to appear by 18 March, which I find not a little troublesome.
We are still in a muddle up here and are trying to flounder out of it: don’t bully us too much till I tell you it is hopeless, which I don’t think it is. Go on working at the branch.
With best wishes
Yours fraternally
William Morris
Morris, a month before the fifteenth commemoration of the Commune of Paris on 18 March 1886, was, as we have seen, troubled about the preparation of the pamphlet on it. But after the meeting was held in South Place, near Liverpool Street in London, Morris was very happy, as appears both from a letter written to John Carruthers in Venezuela on 25 March ('a great success, the place crowded’) and from the following letter.
25 March 1886
My dear Mahon
I don’t see how I can say no after all the talk about it: so be it therefore as to coming. As to subjects there is my lecture called now ‘Socialism’ and which I am to deliver substantially at Dublin as the dawn of a new epoch; I can touch it up and make it serve your turn I think and you may call it the present and future of the working class. My political outlook is a good lecture to people who know something of the subject. And then I suppose you will want an open-air address or something of that kind. I haven’t much time to write just now but will do my best. As to your Bradlaugh note, I basely prigged the sense of it and adopted it myself making it much shorter, as was necessary. Commune meeting as I daresay you have heard a great success. By the by I don’t feel sure of the Tuesday as I have to go to Glasgow also, and how I can manage it all I don’t know. All right as to my travelling expenses: as to my lodging I will stay with our friend with pleasure.
I am almost afraid that the Fed have got hold of Kropotkine: at least I am going by Hunter Watts’ invitation to meet him tonight. But of course he is an old bird and not easily caught with chaff.
Excuse haste
Yours fraternally
William Morris
The Commune meeting [4] over, there comes a period of nearly four months in which there is only one letter. But this letter is very revealing. Morris by the autumn of 1886 was finding himself in the midst of squabbles of the kind that two years earlier had led to the secession from the Social-Democratic Federation. Some differences were on matters of principle: but others were not, and to such an extent that Morris writes: ‘I really cannot stand it much longer.’ Nevertheless, Morris held on week after week until the twenty months’ life of the Socialist League had stretched out to thrice that length and more. But from this time on the work of fighting for socialism taxed every ounce of patience and of skill. Morris in this letter gives some hints of his experiences since he had first plunged into active politics ten years earlier. ‘I now see the absolute necessity of discipline in a fighting body’, is his conclusion, with the proviso that this in no sense resembles the conditions of a Communist society. Of great interest also is his attitude to the trade unions which are ‘not necessarily hostile to socialism’. Sir Charles Warren, mentioned in the letter, was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
4 September 1886
My dear Mahon
Yes please do the Trades Union Congress: I think we ought to take the ground that the unions are not necessarily hostile to Socialism, and might be made use of when we get to reconstruction: this I fancy you agree with. Your note I weakly suppressed because Binning objected and said that he would have to answer it if it appeared. Though he is sound really on the unions he has some quite curious superstitions on the subject which fairly puzzle me. For the rest I didn’t want to have another controversy in such a very public place as the paper between two Leaguers.
Your letter to the Council was amusing, but I think you have not quite hit the bulls-eye on the matter of the open-air meetings. As to writing to Warren: I voted against it, but saw some reason in it too: because it might have drawn from him an emphatic condemnation of all meetings in the streets, and that would have done us good with the public: and as is now clear it is only by the sufferance of the public, or indeed by their help, that we can hold these meetings at all. On the whole I still think that some of us have made too much of the whole affair: this principally came of our being mixed up with the SDF in the Bell St case. They stuck to Bell St because it was a bad pitch; since all they wanted was a row to advertise them and they wanted to do just what we don’t want to do, drive the police into a corner.
As to the Council, it really is not so much their fault as the fault of those who want to prevent the Council from acting: what they are driving at I scarcely know, but if they don’t look out they will end by breaking up the League. There is such dog-worrying goes on at Farringdon Rd: now that only the sternest sense of duty makes me go there at all: business of course gets neglected amidst all this: they act as though we were a large body with a following of 100,000 at our heels, instead of a sect striving to enmesh a prosylite [sic] here and there. I really cannot stand it much longer, the quarrelling is generally about nothing at all: just merely a few people, each one of whom cuts up rough if he don’t have all his own way. I shall have to withdraw to my own branch and literature if it goes on so. I now see the absolute necessity of discipline in a fighting body, which of course in no sense resembles the society of the future. I think we ought to have an executive smaller than the present composed of really picked men, who either agree thoroughly or are quite resolved to keep their points of disagreement in the background and who will stick to business: supplement that by the monthly meetings and constant correspondence with the Branches (detailed at that) and we might get something done. Only the members must make up their minds to abide by the decisions of the Council, and support it, which at present they make no pretence of doing. If this goes on we might as well break up if it were not for the scandal of the thing and the discouragement it would spread. I shall do my level best to hold the League together; but some of the members are so silly, and some so contentious that I think I might as well hold my jaw altogether. Mind you both sides are to blame in these squabbles, so that I really can take service with neither, though of course I put my foot down on the parliamentary business. I can’t think what Donald means by that.
I don’t know if you heard of me and the SDF. Lane thinks they want me to join them again; they have excommunicated the League – which I think a good job.
I shall be in town till Friday and can give you a bed if you will come over: I shall be very glad to see you.
Yours fraternally
William Morris
Eight months later forebodings about differences leading to schism have been realised. The Council of the Socialist League in the autumn of 1886 had been trying to reach an agreed policy on the question of participation in parliamentary elections. It was in vain. So the main and growing conflict in London in the early months of 1887 was between ‘parliamentarians’ and ‘anti-parliamentarians’. Meantime JL Mahon had been carrying on an agitation in the big cities and in the coalfields which reached a climax of successful meetings amongst the Northumbrian miners. Morris, delighted with this activity of Mahon, with its results in organisation that seemed solid enough at the time, agreed to go to Northumberland where in April 1887 he found some of the most responsive audiences he had ever addressed.
The Third Annual Conference of the Socialist League was now approaching. It was to be held at Whitsuntide on 29 May 1887, and was preceded by a fierce discussion and much canvassing of opinions amongst the members. The Croydon branch headed by Belfort Bax proposed that every available means of realising the objects of the League should be pursued, ‘parliamentary or otherwise’.
At this moment Morris became aware that Mahon, who had been a strong ‘anti-parliamentarian’ in the autumn of 1886 and even in the beginning of 1887, had swung right over. Mahon had been convinced by his experiences among the Northumbrian miners and elsewhere of the need for a change in policy. Morris himself had been in favour of deferring decision for another twelve-month. These anxieties are reflected in the following letters.
5 May 1887
My dear Mahon
I don’t agree with your optimistic views about the Conference. I think there will be a split in fact: because if we carry our resolution your side will do nothing to help the League; and if you carry yours some of our best men will leave it: and as to myself I shall only belong to it in name and shall probably soon be driven out of it altogether; as I don’t see how I can belong to a body advocating a set of ‘stepping stones’, in which none of us really believes. In any case one thing is certain as a result of the parliamentary move, that is, the extinction of Commonweal. In the lightness of your heart you may say that doesn’t matter; but I can’t agree with you; any new paper started will have to make its way up to the point at which the old one was stuck. As to the declaring ourselves collectivist no one is likely seriously to object to that, as everyone can interpret that idiotic name as he best pleases. You talk of one branch being parliamentary and another not: that is nonsense: the new Council (if the resolution is carried) will speedily expel any branch which does not accept the parliamentary programme which they will be bound to produce; and from their point of view, rightly so. The whole League and every member of it will be bound by a resolution affirming the necessity for parliamentary action, which is a distinct change of policy on the part of the League: and as it can only change its policy in the SDF direction, I don’t see the use of its existing as a separate body if that change takes place. So I hope your side will be beaten, since no compromise seems possible. As to the success at Blythe, of course it must come to the miners joining one body or another or else doing nothing in propaganda. May all turn out better than I fear.
Yours
W Morris
To this letter, eleven days later (as appears from an annotation upon it in JL Mahon’s handwriting), an answer was sent, on 16 May 1887. This brought an immediate lengthy reply from Morris who is very perturbed about the possible outcome of the approaching annual conference of the League.
17 May 1887
My dear Mahon
I don’t suppose anybody wants to get rid of me out of the League: but I may be obliged to leave it for all that. Bax stated to me explicitly that if the Croydon Branch’s resolution were carried, the new Council on meeting would at once proceed to draw up a parliamentary and palliative programme. I told him that this ought to be put into the resolution, and he agreed and said it should be done if possible: nor can I see any other possible outcome of the declaring, either in the Croydon resolution or in yours, for parliamentary action. Now if you will turn to the first weekly number of the Commonweal you will find what I then thought of this matter, which was signed by Bax, never called in question by anyone in the League, and which is still my opinion. I should have been contented with the acceptance of the Ham compromise of letting the matter alone for a year, if it could be carried out; but it seems that that cannot be done, therefore there is nothing for it but to oppose a direct negative to the Croydon resolution; and as the League will not be the body that I joined if the programme in question is sanctioned by it, I shall then have to leave the League, though I would not do so merely for the passing of a vague resolution as far as I can see at present. You see the matter is very simple: the branches, you say, are all parliamentary; if so I do not agree with them, and therefore cannot help them in making what I think a blunder without being in plain terms a liar, which I do not choose to be. As to your amendment, it might mean either one thing or another; if passed it would leave us where we were, and fighting as to the meaning of the sentences: whatever we pass should be clear either for the new departure, or against it, or for shelving the discussion of it. If you are in favour of sending socialists to Parliament without a palliative programme (an absurdity to my mind) this ought to be stated. If you think that one branch might act parliamentary, and another abjure such action, this also ought to be stated. (Of course there need be no central body in that case beyond a literature committee.) You see once more if you don’t intend the League to put up parliamentary candidates with a programme which they are to try to carry, I cannot see why you should make all this pother; why you shouldn’t let us go on as we have been going on till some kind of action is forced upon us: we should gradually shake off the quarrelsome part of our ‘ways and manners’ and settle down to what (I think) is our work, getting the workmen to organise genuine revolutionary labour bodies not looking to parliament at all but to their own pressure (legal or illegal as the times may go) on their employers while the latter lasted. I am at least sure that this must be done whether socialists go in for parliament or not.
For the rest I am, as you very well know, more averse than anybody to the breaking up of the League. In fact I must say plainly that the knowledge that this is so has been played on by the ‘parliamentary section’ who, I cannot help thinking, would not have gone so far if they had understood that I cannot be driven further than a certain point. I do not complain of this, as I believe it is at least as much my fault as that of other persons, but I state it.
Finally you must not forget that whatever open steps I might take, I personally would have nothing to do with politics properly so called. The whole business is so revolting to a decent quiet body with an opinion of his own, that if that were our road, I should not be able to help dropping off it.
Finally second. If you (I mean plural) are in earnest in not wanting a palliative programme you can set us right on that point by pledging yourselves against such programme, in which case the whole damned dispute will come to an end and we shall be able to get to work.
As to being anxious about the matter, I am naturally somewhat anxious; since if things go at the worst it is a case for me of beginning again. However I hope they won’t and shall as a matter of course do my best to get people to agree to some course of action without dividing (I mean voting) on the matter.
Yours
William Morris
After the defeat of the ‘parliamentarians’ in the Socialist League congress at the end of May 1887, Mahon and others formed a ‘cave’ which sought for a special conference. Engels, who was consulted, was opposed to this – as appears from his correspondence [5] with FA Sorge in New York. Meanwhile Mahon had organised in Northumberland a new body, a North of England Socialist Federation, and sent a report of it to The Commonweal – dealt with by Morris in the opening sentence of the next letter.
14 June 1887
My dear Mahon
I will put the N of E SF in next week’s issue: it is too late for this: I must of course make a remark about the programme. Pray do your best for Commonweal up there: this will be of use to you, you know, against the day when Aveling gets it out of my hands. I am sorry to say that your writing to the Bloomsbury Branch seems to have done no good: Donald, challenged as to the money collected as you were, instead of referring us to the BB as you rightly did, set on the Sec of the BB to write a letter which was ill-mannered, impudent and evasive: however the Council took it very coolly, and simply asked the BB to explain the matter further. Still we cannot submit to the BB claiming to boss the League. Send the articles and I will see I can’t tell beforehand can I? At the same time I don’t want to make the Commonweal sectional so I will probably put them in. As to the subscription – No. Not that I couldn’t find the money or that I grudge it to Donald (though think he has behaved very ill throughout) but that I think it better to give what I do give through the League’s treasurer, and henceforward shall not give anything except that way. I don’t think things will go smooth, but rather that the League will disappear if a special conference is called, and you beat us of course that will end it, which I think will be a pity. I shall do my best to keep what remains of it together, and work in London all I can; not because of any theory but because it lies near my hand. If the League does disappear, I shall try to get a dozen men together whom I can trust, and who have definite ideas about socialism and decline anybody who doesn’t really hold these views: I will speak and write wherever I can: but I will not give one penny to support any set of people who won’t come up to the test.
Lastly to you personally get into work if you can and don’t become a hack of any party.
Yours very truly
William Morris
Three days later Morris gives an account of the Fabians whom he is beginning to recognise as the real theoretical opposition to his own standpoint. There are pen-pictures of the Fabians. Hubert Bland, husband of Evelyn Nesbit, is described as an ‘offensive snob’ – a description which accords with the writer’s own recollection (of fifty years ago) of a monocled Bland revealing himself as a Bismarckian State-Socialist. For the rest Morris’ description bears out what Engels said of the Fabians at that time that they (including Bernard Shaw) were ‘high-nosed’ (hoch-nasige).
17 June 1887
My dear Mahon
All right about the Commonweal: that would be very useful. I can’t see any objection to your proposal if you think it likely that you will get rid of six quires and upwards as I suppose you would. In any case tis worth trying. The programme in this week with a mild word from me. The debate at the Fabian last night was a very absurd affair only enlivened by a flare-up between me and that offensive snob Bland: otherwise I was as mild as muffin’s milk, and I think rather more coherent than anybody else, except Mrs Besant, who spoke in her usual ‘superior person’ style. Shaw was bad and languid, but also ‘superior’. He has once again got a pocket full of conundrums which he pulls out from time to time: his real tendencies are towards individualist-anarchism. Well this is gossip – So good luck.
Yours
W Morris
PS: Once again I think (if you will excuse advice) that you had better settle down in Newcastle and nurse your new Socialists there.
Ten days later a letter begins by upbraiding Mahon for being ‘unbusinesslike’ about the sales of The Commonweal: and is followed the next day by another letter warning about the danger to the paper as a weekly, and also giving political advice to Mahon.
26 July 1887
My dear Mahon
The note about Federation shall go in; and I will hand in your letter to the W & M. I must say I consider it bad business, because it comes to this that the papers which you professed to have sold were really disposed of gratis: it is this kind of thing which is sinking Commonweal, and I cannot see why you should not have sent up the money for the copies actually sold, which is all that we can expect anyone to do: it is excessively stupid of us to be unbusinesslike. Well in return do please try to collect some money for Commonweal: if we can’t get a good deal together it will not live through the autumn, I mean as a weekly.
I heard a rumour that Donald is going to Birmingham to agitate not for the League but for the ‘Midland Socialist Federation’. Is this true? If it is, it shows treachery I should not have thought Donald capable of though I don’t rate his morals high. I don’t know whether you think I have any right to give you advice, but Birmingham brings Sketchley to my mind, and I hold him out to you as a warning as a man who has to live on the party by – well by cadging. I think that a bad business, and strongly advise you to get to your work again and stick to it for fear you might drop into that line. It’s all very well for a time, at some special crisis to do as you have been doing; but it can’t last in a reasonable way. It is perhaps possible that the party might at some time or other have paid lecturers, but I don’t know; anyhow it cannot keep them now.
I am sorry I didn’t meet you when you were in town, as I should have said this to you instead of writing it. Wishing you luck and again begging you to do your best to save the Weal from extinction.
I am
Yours truly
W Morris
27 July 1887
My dear Mahon
Other article received with thanks. As to our sending to Northumberland, I think if we are sending anyone anywhere it should be to recruit for the League definitely. You have set the Northumbrians going with the help of literature and an occasional visit they ought to be all right. I was in doubt at the time about the expediency of starting a new organisation there; I now think it was a mistake and that it would have been better to let the SDF take over if we (the League) could not. In fact in no spirit of hostility I recommend the parliamentary section of the League to join the Federation: you would be powerful there, and would be able to prevent such follies as you are telling me about: of course I say this on the assumption that your section is irreconcilable.
We are sending out subscription cards for Commonweal which please note if we can’t get them pretty well filled up ‘tis all over with the weekly issue.
Yours truly
William Morris
Advice to Mahon from an older man seems to have been like a red rag to a bull. So three days later Morris writes to the offended Mahon placably enough: but it is clear that Morris has been thoroughly put out by the behaviour of Mahon’s friend, the young AK Donald.
30 July 1887
My dear Mahon
Knowing my friend, I rather expected you to be offended by my last letter if you are speaking of that in which I was so rash as to offer you advice. But I cannot say that I think I was severe: or that your explanation makes matters better. I fail to see why the struggling Commonweal should be fined because the Strike Committee thought it inadvisable to keep you on as an emissary in the North. It seems to me as if this were disorganisation rather than organisation. Of course I admit that you acted for what you thought the best: but lord! if we all take to the same game why should we take to an organisation at all? This is anarchism gone mad. I admit cheerfully your capacity for hard work in the movement, and have always praised you for it: but (here comes the knock on the nose to me) I have always thought that though you were good at propaganda, you had a knack of setting people by the ears only second to Donald’s. Only you see he likes it, and I don’t know that you do: all this I don’t think is fruitful of organisation. As to Donald, I am pleased that you should stand up for your friend; and also pleased to hear that he is not engaged on the nefarious transaction I heard of. You will observe I asked you to contradict it, but I admit I ought to have asked him: I will do so next time. As to his general morals that was partly a joke which even a half Scotch-man cannot be expected to see: but also as you admit later on he does not profess a high standard and people must expect to be taken at their own valuation. As to brags about the relative amount of work we do; let’s remember the old proverb and wait till we are dead before we raise that question – and meantime do all we can. Yes, please consider my advice not because it’s mine, but because it’s good. For my part I don’t like the idea of professional agitators, and think we ought to be able to do without them: but at any rate no loose organisation can manage with them; they must be employed either by a well-organised body, or by some private person, and be either kept in very strict order, or be perfectly free to go their own ways. As to looking at you with suspicion. I think I know what you will do up there, almost as well as if I were with you, and I think you will do some good and some harm: my hope is that the good will much overbalance the harm: there is no room for suspicion, since I know all about it.
I am not in the least in an ill-temper, but I am vexed that the road to organisation should lie through the breaking up of the League, and the snuffing out of Commonweal, if that must be so. However I shall go on with my work as if that were not to be, and perhaps we may escape by the skin of our teeth.
Fraternally and good temperedly yours
William Morris
Of what followed thereafter there is no record in letters. But six or seven weeks later Mahon had made some complaint which brought down upon him Morris’ wrath in the following letter.
21 September 1887
My dear Mahon
You are in some respects a very foolish young man and overwhelmed with the idea of your own importance, or I should be angry with you. But as I have really been on friendly terms with you, and also since I have known all about you from the first, and have never expected more than I have got out of you, it would not be fair of me to turn round on you as if your little ways were a surprise to me: therefore I answer your letter as a proof that I think no worse of you than I did, except perhaps that you have turned out a little more quarrelsome than I expected.
I have never written or communicated to any one of the Edinburgh people since I was last in Scotland at which time, as you had not become so great a man as you are now, your name was not mentioned I believe.
I write and receive letters from Glasier sometimes, but I don’t remember ever mentioning your name to him or he to me. In a letter I had from him not long ago he expressed, what many of us feel, annoyance at the shoving forward of the name ‘Scottish Land and Labour League’: but I advised him to take no notice of it, since the Edinburgh people were stirring in some direction. Otherwise the subject matter of our letters has been the general affairs of the League and of his own branch, and as far as I am concerned you or anybody else are perfectly welcome to read my letters.
So you see my dear Mahon, that it is probably your own manners and ways that have drawn this opposition on you; indeed I have noticed, that though I think you are good natured enough, you do always seem to have a genius for setting people by the ears; doubtless without intending it. Anyhow nothing that I have said can have had anything to do with it as to your friends I have said nothing. At the same time I have of course criticised you in conversation among our friends up here: do you by any chance consider yourself to be above criticism? I don’t think you can complain of my usage of you in the C either; I have stuck in anything you have sent me in the way of notices etc and have let you advertise your SL and LL as much as you pleased. Well – there – you must believe or not as seems good to you when I say that I have said the worst that I have said of you to you. As to metropolitan ways, I must tell you that we have got very peaceable in the metropolis, and if you or others don’t stir up the quarrel again I think it is likely to drop – which would be a great blessing.
Now please to lay by your unreasonable suspicions, which are not worthy of a brisk young chap like you, and do your damnedest against the enemy, and sell Commonweal all you can: I agree with you in thinking it very foolish to think that you or anybody can nobble the movement.
Your article is rather short and rough for such an important subject, but I will print it, as it is all right as far as it goes, and I agree with its suggestions.
By the way I believe now I think of it that I have written to Tuke since the Conference; but I don’t think there was any controversial matter in the letter. I mention this lest your suspicions should be again aroused. You may show my letter to anybody you please, or any letters I write to you.
Wishing you success, and calm
I am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
Three weeks later Morris writes once more and in a very kindly mood. But this is the last of the regular correspondence.
14 October 1887
My dear Mahon
I am sorry, but it is really impossible for me to make the northern tour this autumn. I have several engagements, and for the rest I really cannot afford the time, or indeed the money: for business is slack, and my chance of not being driven into a corner lies in my working at it hard personally. I shall hope to be able to come north in the spring, and perhaps I should be as useful then as now. I am glad to hear that you are doing so well: but please get the branch to pay regularly (I don’t know if they owe much). If you can get them to do that and sell additional numbers (as you are doing) it will be better than donations. I will speak to Binning about his notes. I am in hopes we shall yet turn our backs on our quarrels; only there is one not back but Bax who is being steeped in the Marxite pickle over at Zurich who I fear will want some sitting upon when he returns. It would be very foolish to let him embroil everything again merely to get a compact adherence to the German Social Democrats.
Fraternally
W Morris
Six months later, in the spring of 1888, there is one more letter. Mahon had become interested in the Mid-Lanark by-election which marked the rejection by the Liberal Party organisation of the Liberal candidature of Keir Hardie, who then persisted in standing for election independently of the party organisation. Keir Hardie afterwards joined with RB Cunninghame Graham MP to form, in 1888, the Scottish Labour Party – a forerunner of the Independent Labour Party of five years later. Morris is curt about Hardie: but ends the letter to Mahon on a friendly note.
3 April 1888
My dear Mahon
Thanks for your letter and explanation; I have no sort of quarrel with you, though I disagree with your tactics partly: I don’t want to contend with anyone whom I believe to be sincere in pushing any side of Socialism or even democracy; if I have had any contention with persons whom I believe to be genuine it has been because I have wanted the SL not to be swamped under the general flood of opportunism, which I will not deny is necessary. Outside the League I have no contention with anyone who is attacking the present society: inside I must contend, though mostly in a friendly way, against those who would make the League parliamentary and opportunist.
You no doubt will be ready to admit that you have made some mistakes in your Northern propaganda, and I believe on the other hand that you have done much service in agitation there. I am glad to hear that you are going to get to your work (grind) as I don’t see how the party can pay for agitators and organisers from its present poverty. About Keir Hardy I know nothing: his candidature will only be useful I think for raising a rumpus and splitting the Liberal Party.
Wishing you luck in all ways
I am
Yours fraternally
William Morris
PS: If ever you come up to town I shall be glad to see you.
There is no record of letters from or of visits to Morris after this: and, apart from an Engels – Mahon correspondence [6] in the later 1880s, there are no outstanding published letters. But for several more years Mahon was active with one venture after another. In 1888 there appeared A Labour Programme by JL Mahon, a 100-page pamphlet with a lengthy preface by RB Cunninghame Graham MP.
Although Mahon was present at an early ILP conference, when it came to the General Election of 1895 he was not one of the twenty-eight ILP candidates who (together with four candidates from the Social-Democratic Federation – among them George Lansbury) suffered electoral defeat along with Keir Hardie. At Aberdeen, where he received 608 votes, Mahon stood as a ‘Labour’ candidate.
In his later years Mahon, by this time domiciled in London, devoted much attention to the memory of Morris. The Kelmscott Fellowship with May Morris as President was inaugurated on 13 March 1918: and a year later Mahon was added to the Fellowship’s committee of ten members. He played a considerable part in the preparation and publication (at the Twentieth Century Press in September 1919) of The Commonweal ‘founded by William Morris in 1885: New Series no 1’. There never was a second number. Thereafter Mahon was always ready to help in any way connected with William Morris. He married in his early twenties. His son, John, after a period in the workshop, became a leading figure in trade-union and political activity and for the last sixteen years has been the secretary of the London District of the Communist Party.
JL Mahon, who was born on 8 June 1865, as McMahon, had between the age of eighteen and thirty played a not inconsiderable part in the growth of the socialist movement. He died on 19 November 1933.
1. See selected list of books at end of Chapter Six.
2. All the letters to Mahon, with one exception, are from this address.
3. The date is conjectural.
4. In the celebration of the Commune, held in the South Place Institute, members of all socialist bodies took part: but the initiative had come from the Socialist League. The following resolution was moved by F Kitz (SL) and seconded by Tom Mann (SDF): ‘That this meeting of International Revolutionary Socialists, assembled in London on the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Commune of Paris, has met to commemorate the heroic devotion of the Parisian working-classes in the Spring of 1871 to the cause of the people, as embodied in that forerunner of the socialised administration of the future – the Paris Commune, and to record its gratitude to those who fell in defence of freedom and the emancipation of labour. That it declares its determination to strive without ceasing for the overthrow in all countries of the system of class-domination founded on force and fraud, and maintained by the folly of the workers, and to establish instead thereof a condition of society based on principles of social justice and international brotherhood. That it fully recognises that the lesson to be learnt from the events of 1871 is that this can only be achieved by simultaneous and organised forcible action, and, therefore, it calls upon the wage workers of the world to unite. Furthermore, it desires to record abhorrence of the malicious lying of the capitalist press with reference to this struggle of the people for their own emancipation.’ After tributes had been delivered in German, Italian and French, Eleanor Marx (Socialist League) spoke, followed by P Kropotkin. Then, ‘after brief speeches from Headingley (Fabian), Quelch (SDF), Lessner (Communistischer Verein) and Mowbray (SL) the meeting ended with the singing of the Marseillaise’ (The Commonweal, April 1886).
5. ‘No movement absorbs so much fruitless labour as one which has not yet emerged from the status of a sect. You know that just as well as I. At such times everything turns to scandalmongering. And so once more my letter is about English affairs. The Sunday before last saw the conference of the Socialist League. The anarchist element, which had been allowed to get into it, and is supported by Morris (who hates everything Parliamentary like poison, is hopelessly muddle-headed, and as a poet is above science), have won. A resolution, seemingly innocuous, to the effect that today there can be no talk of Parliamentary action, was passed by 17 votes to 11... But in reality, the decisive circumstance was Morris’ threat to leave the League if any kind of parliamentary struggle be recognised in principle. And as Morris covers the weekly £4 deficit of The Commonweal, that outweighed all else by far. Our people now want to organise the provinces, and after three or four months to call an extraordinary congress to overthrow the decision. That would be a failure. In the manufacture of voting sections the anarchists are far better than our people, and can make seven men into eight voting sections. But the comedy has its good aspects, and with the presence of the workers in the League it is not to be ignored. Naturally, Bax is with us, and from the workers, Donald, Binning, Mahon and others – the best. None of our people stood for election to the Executive Council.’ (4 June 1887)
6. EP Thompson, William Morris, Appendix II.