From 1789 to 1848 the social history of England is a dramatic story of working-class revolt against the terrible exploitation resulting from the Industrial Revolution[1] and also against the political repression to which the workers were subjected.
The first wave of revolt, which found organized expression in the Corresponding Society, was inspired, as we saw, by the cosmopolitan egalitarianism of the French Revolution, embodied so notably in the writings of Thomas Paine. There followed, after a gloomy and desperate interlude of reaction, the revolt of the machine-breakers. After that was suppressed, there developed the co-operative Socialist movement of Robert Owen; after its failure, the rebirth of trade unionism; and finally, the powerful struggle of the Chartists to win for the workers the right to vote.[2]
These were movements of an immature working class, whose mental horizons were still for the most part those of the villages from which farmers and craftsmen, ruined by enclosures, had migrated to the new industrial towns. There for a number of years they felt, puzzled and helpless, the disintegrating and demoralizing pressures of modern capitalism. By trial and error they sought continuously to find effective means of defending themselves against the punitive, almost slave-like conditions which they experienced in the early factories. Out of this struggle against misery and degradation the working class developed the notions of proletarian solidarity, an idea which stemmed from their growing realization that there was no escape from individual wretchedness save through organized struggle as a class.
The concept of working-class solidarity in one country contained by implication the idea of solidarity on an international basis: the unity of the oppressed of all countries. This message had been conveyed by the first political movement of the working class in England—the Corresponding Society. Revolutionary developments on the Continent caused the idea to revive.
The first impulse came from the revolutions in France in July 1830, and in Poland in 1830 and 1831. On the first anniversary of the July Revolution, the workers' paper, the Poor Man's Guardian, called on the London workers to celebrate this 'glorious and immortal deed' in a banquet, as a demonstration of the solidarity of the English and French working classes. 'It must always be borne in mind,' ran the appeal, 'that it is the victory of the working classes in the streets of Paris that we want to immortalize in our memory—this victory which led to the freedom of Belgium, Switzerland and glorious Poland, betrayed but still awaiting a triumphant destiny.'[3]
This appeal, and the mass meeting called by the Poor Man's Guardian on 1 August 1831, marked the re-emergence of international solidarity among the English working class. The Poor Man's Guardian and, later, the Northern Star, the official organ of the Chartists, kept the idea alive. The London Working Men's Association, a political organization of Chartists founded by William Lovett in 1836, also embodied the spirit of international working-class solidarity. 'Our oppressors are united; why should we be divided by national and religious prejudice?…Without international agreement we shall never be able to free humanity,' ran one of their statements.[4]
London was at that time a sanctuary for many political refugees from France, Italy, Poland and Germany. They had their own organizations and many of their leaders were in touch and on good terms with leading Chartists such as William Lovett, George Julian Harney and Ernest Jones. On the initiative of Karl Schapper of the League of the Just, and the Polish revolutionary, Colonel Louis Oborski, Lovett founded the Society of the Democratic Friends of All Nations at the beginning of 1845, together with a number of Polish, German and French émigré. This was the first international organization in England.
It did not last long. Lovett, a carpenter by trade, was a highly skilled worker, a convinced Socialist and disciple of Robert Owen. He drafted the series of demands for working-class freedom which came to be known as the Charter, and from which the movement derived its name. Inside the movement, the leadership of which he shared for a time with Feargus O'Connor, Lovett expounded the idea of 'moral force' as an instrument in the fight for freedom, and the tactic of an alliance with the middle class in the campaign for a general extension of the franchise.
The inaugural manifesto of the Society of the Democratic Friends of All Nations which Lovett drew up was in the same spirit. It summoned 'all the oppressed' to a united struggle against 'citadels, armies and prisons'. It appealed to the common humanity of all classes and rejected, in accordance with Lovett's humanitarian, pacifist approach, any revolutionary methods. But this was not the spirit animating the refugees. They aimed at a new revolution and the forcible overthrow of the ruling classes and governments which had exiled them. The revolutionary refugees withdrew from the society. It collapsed soon after it had been formed.
In the same year, however, the Society of Fraternal Democrats was established. Founded on the initiative of Harney, it has gone down in history as a forerunner of the International.[5]
George Julian Harney (1817–97) was one of the most striking figures produced by the British working class. He was an orphan. His father had been a merchant sailor, and he himself felt drawn to the sea. From the age of eleven to fourteen, he attended a school for seamen, but could not stand up to the harsh conditions and gave up the sea after his first trip. He became a newspaper-boy on the Poor Man's Guardian. But distributing a working-class paper was a hazardous occupation. Henry Hetherington, who founded the paper, published it in defiance of the law. In order to discourage the sale of working-class papers, a stamp duty of 4d. was levied on each copy. The Poor Man's Guardian appeared unstamped, and at the top of the front page was the announcement: 'Founded contrary to law, to try the power of right against might.' Every copy had to be smuggled to its readers through a network of police agents. Anyone caught distributing the paper went to gaol. When still scarcely seventeen Harney received his first sentence, and at the age of nineteen his third, for a term of six months. Though conditions in English prisons were at that time diabolical, he faced them without fear. At his third appearance before a judge he announced, without trepidation, that he would again distribute the paper illegally on his release. It was his duty to do so, he explained, in the struggle against the 'tax on knowledge' which the ruling class had imposed on the workers.
It was the Poor Man's Guardian which made Harney, while still a young man, into an enthusiastic Socialist. The paper was edited by James Bronterre O'Brian (1805–64), a son of well-to-do parents who had given up a promising career as a lawyer in order to serve the working class. This he did in conditions of deepest poverty. Intellectually, he was the most important of the Chartist leaders. A brilliant writer and an effective speaker, he was the man who first tried to give Chartism a coherent Socialist ideology. Among the Chartists, who held in high esteem as a philosopher, he was known as 'the schoolmaster'.
Harney admired him greatly. He read every word O'Brian wrote and gladly accepted his intellectual leadership. O'Brian's Socialism was rooted in the Jacobin traditions of the French Revolution. He saw in Robespierre an ideal leader of the people. He wrote an elegy to him and a small fragment of his biography. From the teachings of Babeuf, O'Brian derived his theory of Socialism. He also translated Buonarroti's book on Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals. O'Brian's enthusiasm for the French Revolution was transmitted to Harney, who took Marat, Babeuf and Thomas Paine as his models. In the spirit of these men he founded in 1837 an organization of left-wing Chartism, the London Democratic Association. In the inaugural manifesto which he wrote for the Association, Harney gave as its task the fight for working-class emancipation by 'disseminating the principles propagated by that great philosopher and redeemer of mankind, the immortal Thomas Paine'.[6]
The organizations which Harney served as secretary, and which soon embraced thousands of London dockers, weavers and Irish labourers, was to fulfil in his view the same functions as the Jacobin clubs in the French Revolution—that is to say, it was to push forward the broader Chartist movement towards a social revolution. And, as the French Revolution had championed the cause of humanity, Chartism was to be the vanguard of working-class freedom all over the world. The movement's aim, he insisted, must be 'freedom in a world of republics'.
Soon after founding the London Democratic Association, Harney began his extraordinarily swift rise as leader of the Chartist left. Two years later when he was still scarcely twenty-three he was elected delegate to the first Chartist Convention by the workers of three large industrial districts. In 1843 he became editor of the Northern Star, and in the same year Engels visited him in the newspaper's office. The two men became friends, and it is clear that Engels, who now began to write for the paper, strengthened the notions of international working-class solidarity and encouraged in the mind of Harney the idea of an international workers' organization—which was to become the Society of Fraternal Democrats.
Harney announced the society's formation at a banquet held on 22 September 1845 to celebrate the anniversary of the first French Republic. The banquet, which had been called by the Society of the Democratic Friends of All Nations, meeting under the presidency of the Chartist poet Thomas Cooper, had itself a distinctly international character. Speakers included representatives of the French, Polish and German refugees, including Moll and Weitling.
The Society of Fraternal Democrats was formally established on 15 March 1846. To avoid any suggestion that it might be a rival to the Chartist movement, it was first loosely organized and without rules. Its object was 'the mutual enlightenment of its members and the propagation of the great principle, contained in the motto of the society, that "all men are brothers"'. Its programme was formulated by Harney at a meeting to celebrate the first anniversary of its foundation, in the following solemn declaration:
We renounce, repudiate and condemn all political hereditary inequalities and distinctions of caste; we declare that the earth with all its natural productions is the common property of all; we declare that the present state of society which permits idlers and schemers to monopolize the fruits of the earth and the productions of industry, and compels the working class to labour for inadequate rewards, and even condemns them to social slavery, destitution and degradation, is essentially unjust.…Our moral cred is to receive our fellow-men without regard to country, as members of one family—the human race, and as citizens of one commonwealth—the world.[7]
Harney was secretary of the Fraternal Democrats, and as editor of the Northern Star he placed this working-class paper at the disposal of the society. He published their declarations, the speeches made at their meetings and the articles of Engels on the Socialist movement in Europe. The paper became, in fact, a powerful means of propaganda for the idea of international working-class solidarity. Harney was no orator, but in spite of this he was one of the most popular speakers among the Chartist leaders. At meetings he campaigned tirelessly to spread the idea of the Fraternal Democrats; he formed local branches and tried to win the co-operation of the Chartist leadership. Philip McGrath, president of the National Charter Association, and two other members of its executive, joined the committee of the Fraternal Democrats, and by the middle of 1847 the society had local branches in more than twenty towns.
The Fraternal Democrats met regularly on the first Monday of each month. Every important revolutionary anniversary such as the storming of the Bastille, the announcement of the first French Republic, and the Polish insurrection, as well as contemporary revolutionary stirrings such as the uprisings in Cracow, the revolution in Geneva and the rising of the Portuguese Junta, became occasions for meetings and proclamations which were reported far beyond England in the democratic societies and newspapers of Europe.
Once the reputation of the Fraternal Democrats was firmly established, the society developed along more formal lines. The rules agreed to in December 1847 laid down a membership fee of a shilling. The general secretary and the corresponding secretaries of each affiliated national organization formed the executive. The first executive consisted of the corresponding secretaries, Julian Harney for England, Karl Schapper for Germany, Jean Michelot for France, Peter Holm for Scandinavia, August Nemeth for Hungary, Henri Hubert for Switzerland and Louis Oborski for Poland, together with the Chartist leaders Philip McGrath, Ernest Jones, Thomas Clark, Charles Doyle and William Dixon.
In its organizational structure the Society of Fraternal Democrats was a complete prototype of the later, historic International. As later, on the General Council of the First International, the national sections were represented on the central council of the Fraternal Democrats by their corresponding secretaries, each in direct touch with his own section.
In aim and spirit, the organization of the Fraternal Democrats was a true forerunner of the historic International. It was a genuine workers' International, which upheld the ideal of international solidarity. Two years before the publication of the Communist Manifesto and two decades before the founding of the historic International, the Fraternal Democrats proclaimed the idea of a militant association of workers throughout the world.
To a meeting of German Communists in February 1848, Harney expounded the Fraternal Democratic conception of international working-class solidarity. 'I appeal,' he declared, 'to the oppressed classes in every country to unite for the common cause.' But what was the common cause? Was it the liberation of Poland from Russian rule, or the freedom of Italy from Austria? Harney explained that 'freedom from the Russian and Austrian yokes is not the end of the matter. We do not need a King Czartoryski.[8] We need no kingdom of Italy. We need the sovereignty of the people in both countries.' But who were 'the people'? The people, he continued, were the workers and peasants, and the cause of the people was 'the cause of labour, of labour-enslaved and exploited.…In all countries there are people who grow corn and eat potatoes, who make clothes and wear rags, who build houses and live in wretched hovels.…Do not the workers of all nations have the same reasons for complaint and the same causes of distress? Have they not, therefore, the same just cause?'
The idea that the cause of the working class in all countries was inexorably linked—the idea which inspired the historic International—was vigorously expressed, rather earlier, by the Fraternal Democrats. To a large meeting called in sympathy with the Portuguese revolution, Harney declared: 'A blow against freedom on the Tagus is a blow against all friends of freedom on the Thames; a success for republicanism in France would seal the fate of tyranny in other countries, and the victory of the English democratic Charter would lead to the liberation of millions in the whole of Europe.'
The Society of Fraternal Democrats established a close working relationship with the left-wing revolutionary refugee organizations in London—the German Communist Workers' Educational Society, the Union of French Democrats and the left wing of the Polish Democratic Society. It set up a Democratic Committee for the Regeneration of Poland for the special purpose of popularizing the Polish revolution in England. Harney became secretary, the Chartist leader O'Connor treasurer, and Hetherington and Ernest Jones, as well as Schapper and Oborski, became members.
The first international organization with which the Fraternal Democrats made contact overseas was the Democratic Association (Association Démocratique) in Brussels, which was led by Marx. It was Marx who took the initiative. In the summer of 1847 the first workers' representative, O'Connor, had been elected to the British Parliament. In a letter signed by Marx, Engels and Philip Guigot, the Brussels Democratic Association congratulated the Fraternal Democrats on the election victory and declared their solidarity with the Chartists. In their reply the Fraternal Democrats referred to 'an impending union of the democrats of all nations in the great struggle for political and social equality'. In fact they celebrated the second anniversary of their establishment with an appeal to the democrats of Europe to arrange an international congress of working-class democrats—in opposition to the bourgeois International Free Trade Congress which was then meeting. Marx welcomed the proposal. He came over to London as a delegate from the Brussels Democrats to the meeting in commemoration of the Polish rising of 1830 organized by the Fraternal Democrats.
The anniversary meeting took place on 29 November 1847, just before the congress of the Communist League. Schapper read out the message from the Brussels Democrats. Then Marx spoke, to tumultuous applause. He told the meeting that he had been instructed by the Brussels Democrats to propose the calling of a congress, together with their brothers in London, for the following year in Brussels, a 'congress of the workers of all nations to establish freedom throughout the world'. Belgian Democrats and English Chartists were the real exponents of democracy, and if the English could succeed with their charter, 'it would open the way for the freedom of all'. 'Workers of England,' Marx concluded, 'fulfil this mission and you will be praised as the liberators of the whole of humanity.'
In reply to Marx's message, an address from the Fraternal Democrats to the Brussels Democrats declared:
Your representative, our friend and brother Marx, will tell you with what enthusiasm we welcomed his appearance and the reading of your address.…We accept with the liveliest feelings of satisfaction the alliance you have offered us.…We recommend the formation of a democratic congress of all nations, and we are happy to hear that you have publicly made the same proposal. The conspiracy of kings must be answered with a conspiracy of the people.…We are convinced that we must address ourselves to the real people, to the proletarians, to the men who drip sweat and blood daily under the pressure of the existing social system, if we are to achieve general fraternity.[9]
The international congress which was due to assemble in Brussels on 25 October 1848 on the proposal of the Fraternal Democrats was frustrated owing to the events of that year. The outbreak of revolution in France and Germany in February and March 1848 bore witness to the pressures which had been building up since the spring of 1847. Switzerland was swept by a wave of revolutionary feeling; in Italy there were actual outbreaks; Ireland was simmering; and in England the Chartists were preparing for a decisive battle.
On the day that the revolution broke out in Paris, the Fraternal Democrats were holding a mass meeting to commemorate the Cracow uprising. In London they did not yet know of the developments in Paris. Harney however felt confidence enough by then to announce the imminent outbreak of the European revolution. He added that its only worthwhile aim was the emancipation of the workers from economic exploitation. The mass of the people must conquer political power so that 'those who till the soil are also their own masters'. Up to that time, the workers had shed their blood in all revolutions, while the bourgeoisie had enjoyed the benefits. The time had come for the rule of the bourgeoisie to be overthrown.
The Fraternal Democrats were thrown into feverish excitement by the outbreak of revolution in France. An eye-witness described the scene when, in the middle of the meeting, news of the abdication of Louis-Philippe and the proclamation of the French Republic was brought to them. 'Frenchmen, Germans, Poles, Magyars sprang to their feet, embraced, shouted and gesticulated in the wildest enthusiasm.…Flags were caught from the walls, to be waved exultantly amidst cries of "Hoch! Eljen! Vive la République!" Then…the whole assemblage…with linked arms and colours flying, marched to the meeting-place of the Westminster Chartists.'[10]
A few days later, a mass meeting called by the Fraternal Democrats met to celebrate the revolution. It decided on a message of congratulations to be sent to the provisional government of France. Harney, Jones and Philip McGrath, president of the Chartist executive, were selected to deliver the message. The delegation, joined by Schapper, Moll and Bauer, representing the Communist League, arrived in Paris on 4 March. Next day it was received in the name of the government by Ledru-Rollin, Louis Garnier-Pagès and Armand Marrast. The delegation also took part in the famous meeting of the German colony, under the chairmanship of Herwegh, on 6 March, when they met Marx.
The enthusiasm generated by the French revolution gripped the entire working class. England was suffering from a serious economic crisis in the 1840s, known to social historians as the 'hungry forties'. On the achievement of the Charter—the right of the workers to be represented in Parliament—the workers built their hopes of ending their misery. Twice, in 1839 and in 1842, the government had rejected petitions carrying millions of signatures, calling for the general extension of the franchise. The revolutionary events in Europe touched off once again a powerful movement to secure the Charter. Placards on the walls of London announced meetings in support of the French Revolution under the slogan: 'For the Republic in France, for the Charter in England!' A series of stormy, open-air meetings by night were held in Trafalgar Square in the heart of London, and in fields and open places in the outlying districts, since no meeting-hall in London was big enough to hold the huge crowds which flocked to the demonstrations. Manchester, Glasgow, Plymouth, Newark and other towns saw scenes of tumult during this period. Signatures were again collected for a petition. The executive called a convention in London for 3 April, to consider the next steps.
Forty-two delegates from all parts of England and Scotland attended the Convention. Among them were O'Connor, Harney, Jones and O'Brian. The Convention at once expressed the principles on which the petition was based in the following declaration: 'Labour is the source of all wealth. The people are the source of all political power. The worker has the right to the produce of his labour. Taxation without parliamentary representation is tyranny. The resources and economic means of a country are best developed and administered most advantageously by means of laws which are made by the representatives of the working and the industrial classes. In recognition of these principles the Chartists demand that the People's Charter should become the law of the land.'[11]
The Convention then declared itself in permanent session and called on the workers to gather on 10 April at Kennington Common, a large open space in the working-class district in south London, and to march in procession from there to Westminster to hand in the petition.
Both the government and the middle classes were deeply disturbed. All over Europe, from the streets of Calais to the plains of Hungary, the people had risen in revolt. Would the revolutionary flood not spread to England in turn? The middle classes were afraid that the demonstration planned by the Chartist Convention would be a signal for revolution. Lod Campbell, a member of the government, conveyed the mood of the bourgeoisie in a letter to his brother the day before the Chartist demonstration: 'This is perhaps the last time I write to you before the Republic is established.'[12]
The government prepared for a decisive battle. On 7 April they issued a proclamation declaring the Chartist Convention an illegal organization, and warned people not to take part in the demonstration. At the same time they declared martial law over London, turning the capital into an armed camp. The troops of the Southern Command were concentrated in London; marines guarding home waters were alerted; reliable elements were given arms, 170,000 volunteers joining the auxiliary police as 'special constables'; the Duke of Wellington, victor at the battle of Waterloo, was given command of the army. The Tower of London, the Bank of England and government offices were fortified with sandbags and the larger shops were closed. Wellington blocked the bridges leading from the working-class suburbs in the south to the centre of the city. On the day before the demonstration, the Morning Chronicle warned the Chartists: 'Great masses of cavalry and infantry, supported by artillery battalions, stand ready for a signal to intervene. …'
Despite the warning, a crowd of about 100,000 gathered at Kennington Common on 10 April. Before they could open the meeting, however, a police officer arrived. He told O'Connor and McGrath that, while the government did not object to the meeting being held, it could not allow the demonstrators to march on Parliament, since even the suggestion of intimidating Parliament was a punishable offence under existing laws.
There had been a good deal of revolutionary speech-making at the meetings held prior to the demonstration. The crowds assembling at Kennington Common expected revolutionary action. But the Convention had no plans for revolution. The people were unarmed, and in view of the massive display of armed strength by government forces, the Chartist leaders gave up their plans for a mass demonstration. O'Connor, the popular hero, begged the crowd to disperse peacefully, which it did.
The petition, as later revealed by a parliamentary commission, had 1,975,469 signatures. It was taken to Parliament in three carriages by members of the Chartist executive. But Parliament postponed a debate on the matter for fifteen months when, by a majority of 222 to 17, the petition was rejected for the third time.
This abject end to the demonstration of 10 April broke the back of the Chartist movement. The third attempt at forcing the Charter through Parliament had failed abysmally, and the disillusionment of the workers was intense. In despair, the Chartist leaders tried to rebuild the workers' confidence and inspire them to continue the struggle. They called mass meetings in the provinces, made inspiring speeches and threatened to organize a National Guard. In some places there were violent outbreaks. The government had the Chartist leaders arrested, among them Ernest Jones, who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for 'incitement'. The Chartist movement, defeated, persecuted, humiliated, and deprived of its leaders, fell to pieces.
Its decline was hastened by the defeat of the revolution in Europe. The English workers had followed with intense interest the course of the revolution in France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Hungary. Its triumph, they fully expected, would be followed by their own. These hopes too were now dashed. During the year or two following 1848, the once victorious leaders of the European revolution were forced to seek asylum in England—among them, Marx and Engels. In the inaugural address which he later wrote for the First International, Marx described the moral effects of the failure of the European revolution on the English workers, as he had seen it at first hand. 'The defeat of the continental working classes…soon spread its contagious effects to this side of the Channel.…The rout of their continental brothers unmanned the English working classes, and broke their faith in their own cause.…Never before seemed the English working class so thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity.' As late as 1861, Richard Cobden, one of the pioneers of bourgeois radicalism, was found complaining: 'I cannot understand why the workers remain so quiet under the taunts and insults offered them. Have they no Spartacus among them to head a revolt of the slave class against their political tormentors? I suppose it is the reaction from the follies of Chartism which keeps the present generation so quiet.' The collapse of the working-class movement was inevitably a serious blow to the Society of Fraternal Democrats. In addition the government had passed an Aliens Law, directed against the political refugees, empowering the Home Secretary to expel any foreigner without more ado as 'undesirable'. When the executive of the Fraternal Democrats met in May 1848, it found it advisable to change the rules and to formally release foreign members from all obligations towards the society.
Harney, undaunted and tireless, still kept the idea of international working-class solidarity alive in the pages of the Northern Star. He was sure, as he wrote in an address to the Fraternal Democrats on the second anniversary of the February revolution in March 1850, that a new revolution on the Continent was very near, a revolution 'which is destined to bring about the destruction of class rule and class slavery'.
But the addressees and meetings of the society were becoming few and far between. The Fraternal Democrats had once been able to fill large halls with their supporters, but by July 1850 their membership had sunk to 261. They had one more success, with a mass rally to welcome Kossuth, who arrived in England as a political refugee in the autumn of 1851. But this was their last effective appearance and the society had ceased to exist by about the end of 1852.
The Society of Fraternal Democrats was the first organized expression of international working-class solidarity, the first international workers' organization to be rooted in England, itself the centre of the strongest Labour movement of the day. Rightly, Theodor Rothstein ends his account of the society's history with the remark that, but for the frustration which stemmed from the triumph of reaction in 1848, the Society of Fraternal Democrats would have developed into the First International.
1. There is a very impressive description in the first volume of Das Kapital by Marx, particularly in cha. 8, 12 and 23. The best account of English working-class conditions during the Industrial Revolution is The Bleak Age (London, 1934) by J. L. and Barbara Hammond.
2. For these phases in the history of the British working-class movement, see Max Beer, op. cit., Part 2.
3. See Theodor Rothstein, Aus der Vorgeschichte der Internationale, supplement to Die Neue Zeit, no. 17 (1913), p. 3
4. Beer, op. cit., vol. I, p. 273.
5. For the best account in German of the history of the Fraternal Democrats, see Rothstein, op. cit.
6. Quoted by A. R. Schoyen, The Chartist Challenge—a Portrait of George Julian Harney (London, 1958), p. 14.
7. Quoted in G. D. H. Cole, Chartist Portraits (London, 1941), p. 284.
8. Leader of the revolutionary Polish aristocracy.
9. Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: the Story of His Life (translated by Edward FitzGerald, London, 1936), pp. 142–3.
10. Schoyen, op. cit., p. 157.
11. Max Beer, A History of British Socialism (London, 1940). The English edition of Beer's Geschichte des Sozialismus in England is not a mere translation of the German material but a newly written book with partly different material.
12. Raymond Postgate, Story of a Year: 1848 (London, 1955), p. 118.