Rebel Clerkenwell

Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
Clerkenwell has long been the epicentre of many of
the radical struggles in the capital's history.
Close to the City of London, and with its open spaces, the area has
been used as a gathering point for demonstrations and protests going
back as far as The Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Clerkenwell has held
Chartist uprisings, Tolpuddle Martyr protests, radical socialist presses
and, since 1890, annual May Day marches.
Rebel Clerkenwell examines many of the events, groups and individuals
which have given the area its radical reputation.
Chartist Meeting in
Clerkenwell Green, 1848.
Plan of the parish of St James Clerkenwell, as drawn and engraved by J & H Storer in1827.
The gathering of the May Day Parade in Clerkenwell
Green, 2010. (Photograph: Alan Ainsworth)
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
Clerkenwell: Revolutionary HQ
Radical roots
By the 12th century Clerkenwell was an area comprised of open spaces near to the developing City of London. Along the
south side stood the Priory of the Order of St John, which was burnt down by the people of East Anglia and Essex during
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. At the north side was the Benedictine Nunnery of St Mary, founded in 1144 and dissolved by
Henry VIII in 1539. Beyond Clerkenwell Green, to the north, houses were later built for City merchants. To serve their
needs, Clerkenwell encouraged an artisan class, notably watch-makers and labourers, living in densely populated and poor
conditions.
Life in the parish
To exacerbate the overcrowding and poverty of Clerkenwellians during the latter part of the 17th century, the parish of St
James Clerkenwell was fast expanding. By the 18th century the area was teaming with small workshops. Trades such as
clock and watch-making, gin distilling and brewing, bookbinding and carpentry spread and became major local employers.
Although skilled, and producing goods for the wealthy, the workers in these industries were often poorly paid. Victorian
author and social commentator George Gissing said of Clerkenwell:
“Wealth inestimate was flowing through these workshops, and
the hands that have been stained with gold-dust may, as likely
as not, some day extend themselves in petition for a crust.”
Impetus to act
Near to Clerkenwell’s working and living quarters, which were often one and the same, were Coldbath Fields, Spa Green
and Clerkenwell Green. These open spaces close to the City were ideal areas for unions to hold meetings and protests.
The area’s local coffee houses, pubs and workers’ clubs gave proletarian activists places to meet to discuss and organise.
The overcrowding and appalling conditions in the ‘rookeries’, along with the recessions of 1813-1815 and 1817, led to
Clerkenwell becoming the centre of radical London throughout the 19th century and beyond. During the 19th century,
socialist organisations would form in the parish giving rise to Clerkenwell becoming what the City press termed the
“Headquarters of republicanism, revolution and ultra-nonconformity.”
The burning of St John’s Monastery,
Clerkenwell during The Peasants’
Revolt of 1381.
The Red Star Coffee House on
Clerkenwell Green was one of its
many pubs and taverns. Here,
working men and women could meet
and discuss the ideas of the day.
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
'Commit outrage!': The Spa Fields Riot
Arms
On 15 November and 2 December 1816 two of the largest public meetings and demonstrations in decades were held in
London at Spa Fields, Clerkenwell. The scale of the first meeting so surprised the organisers that they reconvened on
2 December. Pikes and guns were also purchased for the rescheduled event.
Post Napoleonic-war unemployment, recession, poverty and food shortages had led to public anger and unrest throughout
the country. Towards the end of 1816 leading ‘Spencerians’, a group advocating public land ownership and universal
(including female) suffrage, began to plan a different kind of public meeting in London – one which would be huge in scale
and specifically designed to feature physical force.
Protest
Home Office papers detail the start of events of what would be later called the ‘Spa Fields Riot’:
“On Monday 2 December 1816, a large crowd say about 2000 assembled opposite the Merlin’s Cave
Public House about half past eleven o‘clock a still greater concourse however was dispersed
in various parts of the fields but particularly in the direction of Cold Bath Fields.”
Riot
In fact around 20,000 gathered. After rousing speeches, a majority of the protesters headed for the Bank of England,
although one group under the chant of “To the Bastille!” made their way to Newgate Prison. The rebels attacked the Royal
Exchange, Somerset House and the Minories. An armed band led by Arthur Thistlewood, a former soldier and farmer,
marched in military fashion to the Tower of London. Thistlewood climbed the wall and addressed the soldiers – inviting
them to surrender the Tower.
Trial
The uprising was ultimately suppressed. Following the earlier rioting, organisers Watson, Thistlewood, Hooper and Preston
were charged with high treason. The London jury, however, showed its radical sympathies and all were found not guilty.
Until 1820 Spencerians continued to meet in a tavern in St James Walk only a ‘musket’s range’ from Spa Fields. London's
radical belly would barely rumble again for the next decade.
“Shall men, who once
Conquer’d at famed Trafalgar,
Begin at Spa-Fields, then, to
civil war.” Taken from the
above address, 1816.
Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt (17731835). He was a hugely popular
public speaker at Spa Fields.
Hunt became an inspiration to
the Chartist movement.
Arthur Thistlewood (17741820), Lincolnshire-born
leading Spencerian. He was
hanged at Newgate for treason
in 1820.
Report of Spa Field Rioters’
trial from the European
Magazine,1817.
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
Chartism: The Fight for the Vote!
“Tis the voice of the people I hear it on high,
It peals o’er the mountains-it soar’s to the sky;
Through wide fields of Heather, it wings it’s swift flight.”
The Voice of the People (traditional chartist folk song)
Power to the people
Clerkenwell was at the centre of much of London's radical politics in the 19th century. The greatest routine agitation was the
fight for the vote, spearheaded by the Chartists. They used Clerkenwell Green for many of their demonstrations and
protests, as wells as fighting numerous clashes with the still fledgling Metropolitan Police in the area.
The People’s Charter
Formed in opposition to the 1832 Reform Act, Chartism was what later Clerkenwell resident, Lenin, would call “the first
broad and politically organised proletarian-revolutionary movement of the masses.” When asked in parliament, Thomas
Duncombe, radical MP for Finsbury said, "those who were originally called radicals and afterwards reformers, are called
Chartists." Chartism derives its name from the six basic reforms called for in the People's Charter of 1838 in order to make
the political system more democratic.
Physical force Chartism
The physical force wing was led in large part by the East London Democratic Association. It was founded on 29 January
1837— the centenary of the birth of Anglo-American political activist Thomas Paine. The following year the organisation
became the London Democratic Association. Until it joined the wider movement in 1841, it remained one of the most
militant of the radical organisations. Its membership cards read, “Our rights peacefully if we may, forcefully if we must."
The association’s members were to fight many of their battles in Clerkenwell.
Fighting on the streets
Many Chartists lived and worked locally and their protests were often held on Clerkenwell Green. PC Cornish was a young
constable stationed in Clerkenwell during the height of Chartism and he explained the nature of the fighting:
“In those days there were fields around and many open spaces, and Clerkenwell
generally was a rustic sort of suburb… there was plenty of ammunition going, because
the streets were not what they are now, and there was heaps of rubbish at hand.”
Impact
By 1848 Chartism had faded and, while the People's Charter was not enacted, Chartism
was to foreshadow the social democratic parties of the future and influence further
generations of Clerkenwell radicals.
Numerous Chartists demonstrations took
place on Clerkenwell Green.
The demands of the People’s
Charter of 1838.
The Metropolitan Police fight
Chartists on the rooftops above
Clerkenwell Green, 1848.
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
The Fenians and the Clerkenwell Explosion
Irish Independence
During the 19th Century the English working class had shown growing sympathy towards the cause of Irish independence.
A catastrophic event, however, occurring in Clerkenwell during latter part of 1867 that severely damaged this support.
On 20 November [that year] two men had been arrested in London: Richard ‘O'Sullivan’ Burke and his companion Joseph
Casey. Both were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB); its counterpart in the United States was known as
the Fenian Brotherhood, or Fenians. The IRB was dedicated to the establishment of an independent, democratic republic
in Ireland. Burke, a leading member of the organisation, was charged with treason and Casey with abduction. They were
remanded to the Middlesex House of Detention in Clerkenwell to await trial.
Escape
Members and supporters of the IRB organised an escape attempt, which was planned with the use of smuggled notes
written in invisible ink. On 13 December 1867, four individuals were seen to be placing what appeared to be a barrel of beer
alongside a prison outer wall; the barrel, in fact, contained gunpowder. A light was obtained from a child, who was playing
nearby, in order to ignite the powder. The result of the explosion were a huge hole blown in the wall, the near-immediate
deaths of three people living in adjacent tenements, with nine more to later die of their wounds, and over 40 left seriously
injured. The public was outraged.
Karl Marx and the Fenians
Marx described the explosion as a “colossal stupidity”:
“The last exploit of the Fenians in Clerkenwell was a very stupid thing.
The London Masses, who have shown great sympathy for Ireland, will
be made wild by it and driven into the arms of the government party.”
The last public hanging in England
The explosion was attributed to Irishman Michael Barrett and he was hanged in front of 2000 people at Newgate Prison on
26 May 1868. This was to be the last public execution in England. Barrett’s execution was a very contentious issue, as
many believed that he was not involved in the failed breakout attempt and was, in fact, in Glasgow the time of the
explosion. The day after Barrett's hanging, the socialist newspaper Reynold’s News reported:
“Millions will continue to doubt that a guilty man has been hanged, and the future historian
of the Fenian panic may declare that Michael Barrett was sacrificed to the exigencies of the
police and the vindication of the good Tory principle, that there is nothing like blood”
Irish men become ‘Micks’
It is thought that the name ’Mick’ became a derogatory term for the Irish due to the alleged actions of Michael Barrett.
Colonel Richard
Burke, head of the
IRB in England in
1867.
Aftermath of the Clerkenwell Explosion. This
view shows damaged housing in
Corporation Lane. (Illustrated London News,
21 December 1867)
The hanging of Michael Barrett
outside Newgate Prison, 26 May 1868.
The explosion was not the end of
Fenian activity in Clerkenwell. In 1882
a large IRB arms cache was found in
stables in Rydon Crescent, opposite
Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
The Russian Revolution in Clerkenwell
In exile
Many of the main organisers of the 1917 Russian Revolution had associations with Clerkenwell. The most prominent of
these was Lenin, aka Dr Jacob Richter. This was the name that he went under whilst disguised as a German doctor in
London. Other revolutionaries who visited the area included Trotsky, Martov and Stalin. In 1902 and 1903 Lenin and his
wife, Krupskaya, lived in London, including Clerkenwell: Holford Square and Percy Circus. In the 1930s Krupskaya
reminisced of their time in the capital:
“Ilyich studied living London. He liked taking long rides through the town on top of the bus.
He liked the busy traffic of that vast commercial city. There were other places too –
mean little streets tenanted by London's work people, with clothes lines stretched
across the road and anemic children playing on the doorsteps… Ilyich would mutter in
English through clenched teeth: ‘Two nations!”
The Spark
In 1903 Lenin moved the publication of Iskra (‘The Spark’), the newspaper of the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party, to the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) headquarters at 37a Clerkenwell Green; this is now the Marx Memorial
Library. Harry Queltch, editor of the SDF’s journal Justice, lent his first floor office to Lenin to work on Iskra and today
the room remains a shrine to the first leader of the USSR.
Impact
Many years later, Russian-born Berthold Lubetkin, communist and modernist architect would sculpt a bust of Lenin to sit
opposite his newly designed Bevin Court, Clerkenwell. As the building sat on the site of Lenin’s former residence it was
originally planned to be named Lenin Court. However, after the Second World War, with sympathies fading towards the
Soviet Union, it was decided that the development should not honour Lenin. Consequently it was named after the
politician and anti-communist Ernest Bevin. In protest Lubetkin buried the cast of his sculpture underneath the build.
The bust of Lenin is now on permanent display at Islington Museum.
Unveiling of a
commemorative plaque
to Lenin by the Soviet
Ambassador Ivan Maisky
at Holford Square, 1942.
Lenin edited Iskra, or ‘The Spark’, from 37a
Clerkenwell Green. Since 1933, the address
has been home to the Marx Memorial
Library.
Lenin’s British Museum reader’s
card, under his nom-de-plume
Jacob Richter.
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
The Green turns red
Worker’s Parties
The 1880s saw the emergence of new political groups such as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the Socialist
League (SL) and various anarchist groups. Marxist and anarchist class struggle theory started to entrench itself into working
class culture with formation of working people's parties. Many of the proto-organisations had formed during the 1860s when
workingmen’s clubs were mainly free-thought or ‘radical’. This implied republican rather than socialist sentiment but
socialism began to take more of a hold two decades later.
Social Democratic Federation
The SDF was by far the most important socialist organisation in London during this period. Three years after its formation in
1881, the SDF had a more defined communist focus and its Clerkenwell branch was Branch Number 1. This was lead by
the Henry Mayers Hyndman, a divisive character, neither working class nor enamored by the poor. In his autobiography he
explains:
“I always consider that I first stripped myself of my class prejudices when I
addressed a gathering largely made up of rather debauched looking persons
round the old pump at Clerkenwell Green. I laughed at myself standing there in
the full rigout of the well to do fashionable holding fourth to these manifest degenerates.”
Regardless of his unlikely background and apparently autocratic stylings, Hyndman helped create a party with broad
appeal, attracting many working men, alongside wealthy intellectuals, including William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax.
Labour
Although its paying membership was only around 600, the SDF’s influence spread far and the two most important branches
were Clerkenwell and Battersea. The Independent Labour Party would eventually outstrip the SDF in terms of members and
influence but, for 20 years, the SDF was dominant and an ever present political force in Clerkenwell.
H M Hyndman (1842-1920),
London-born political activist. He
founded the Social
Democratic Foundation.
Clerkenwell Green, c1900.
The drinking fountain on Clerkenwell
Green - a vantage point for speakers
at political rallies, 19th century.
Rebel Clerkenwell
A history of dissent and radicalism
The Marx Memorial Library
37a Clerkenwell Green
A physical cornerstone of Clerkenwell’s radicalism is the Marx Memorial Library at 37a Clerkenwell Green. It was named in
1933 both in honour of Karl Marx on the 50th anniversary of his death and in defiance of the Nazi Party’s burning of socialist
literature then taking place in Germany.
Welsh school
The building was erected in 1738 as a Welsh charity school. It educated the children of impoverished Welsh artisans living
in Clerkenwell. After the school became too large for the premises in the 18th century, 37a and 38 Clerkenwell Green
became a 'manufactory', a private residence, The Northumberland Arms public house, a grocers, a beer retailer and dining
rooms.
Socialist beginnings
From 1872 until 1892, the address became the home to the London Patriotic Society, sponsored by John Stuart Mill. During
the society’s 20-year tenure it was involved in the advancement of republicanism, the building of unions and the developing
campaign for equal rights for women.
Printing Press
In 1891 the Twentieth Century Press (TCP) was founded by the Social Democratic Federation as printer for its journal
Justice. An early benefactor was William Morris, who guaranteed the rent of the Patriotic Club to the TCP. It was the first
socialist press on the Green; it produced several of the earliest English editions of the works of Marx and Engels. The TCP
occupied 37a and 38, expanding into 37 by 1909 – thereby returning the house to single use for the first time since its days
as a charity school. The Twentieth Century Press remained at the address until 1922.
Today
Since 1933 the Marx Memorial Library has remained a library of socialist literature. In 1969 the façade was restored to its
original 1738 design. Amongst its holdings is the International Brigade Archive and an extensive photographic library. In
2012 the library continues as an independent organisation, and a registered charity, financed by its members and affiliates.
A selection of newspapers
and journals published
from 37a Clerkenwell Green.
May Day marchers gathering outside the Marx Memorial
Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, 2012.
The Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, 1941.