 10 February 1900 | |
| Type | Newspaper |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Robert Blatchford |
| Founded | 1891 |
| Political alignment | Socialist |
| Ceased publication | 1934 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
The Clarion was a weekly newspaper published by Robert Blatchford, based in the United Kingdom. It was a socialist publication with a Britain-focused rather than internationalist perspective on political affairs, as seen in its support of the British involvement in the Anglo-Boer Wars and the First World War.
Blatchford and Alexander M. Thompson founded the paper in Manchester in 1891 with capital of just £400 (£350 from Thompson and Blatchford, and the remaining £50 from Robert's brother Montague Blatchford). Robert Blatchford serialised his book Merrie England in the paper, and also published work by a variety of writers, including George Bernard Shaw, and artwork by Walter Crane. The women's column was written initially by Eleanor Keeling Edwards and, from October 1895, as the women's letters page by Julia Dawson, the unmarried name of Julia Myddleton-Worrall. It was Julia Dawson who pioneered the Clarion Vans, which toured small towns and villages throughout England and Scotland from 1896 until 1929, spreading socialist messages. [1]
A large number of associated clubs and societies (cycling, rambling, handicrafts, field, drama and Cinderella clubs, as well as "vocal unions" or choral societies) connected with the paper were created, of which the National Clarion Cycling Club still survives, as does the People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, which began its life in 1911 as the Newcastle Clarion Drama Club. The Sheffield Clarion Ramblers were founded in 1900 by G. H. B. Ward, a Labour politician; [2] it is recognised as the first working class rambling club, [3] and survived until 2015.
On 27 June 1904, three weeks before the King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra opened Liverpool Cathedral, Jim Larkin and Fred Bower, workmen on the site, composed a message "from the wage slaves employed on the erection of this cathedral" to a future socialist society, and, along with a copy of the Clarion and the Labour Leader , placed it in a biscuit tin deep inside the brickwork and covered it.
Emil Robert Voigt (1883–1973), an English-born engineer and former activist in the Clarion movement in Manchester, was one of the pioneers of the Australian broadcasting industry in the early 1920s and the man behind the birth of the progressive radio station 2KY.
The paper enjoyed sales of around 30,000 copies a week for many years, but some readers gave it up after it argued in favour of the Second Boer War and against even limited women's suffrage. Circulation rose again as it became associated with the Labour Party and by 1907 it had reached 74,000. In 1912, Rebecca West became a contributor to The Clarion. [4] The paper again lost readers when it supported the First World War. It closed in 1931.
Despite, or because of, its popularity, the Clarion was viewed with suspicion by both parliamentary and Marxist socialists, and has been treated as little more than a footnote in histories of English socialism. Margaret Cole wrote: "There never was a paper like it. It was not in the least the preconceived idea of a socialist journal. It was not solemn; it was not highbrow … It was full of stories, jokes and verses, sometimes pretty bad verses and pretty bad jokes, as well as articles." [5]
Robert Blatchford stated in his book My Eighty Years:
I will go as far as to say that during the first ten years of the Clarion's life that by no means popular paper had more influence on the public opinion in this country than any other English journal, The Times included.
The Clarion was also popular in some other countries in the British Empire, especially New Zealand and Australia. A Clarion Colony was established in New Zealand in 1901 by William Ranstead. At least one Clarion Cycling Club was established in New Zealand, at Christchurch in the 1890s.
The New Clarion, founded in 1932, carried similar socialist and recreational content. Many of the cycling, rambling, theatre and other social clubs associated with the original Clarion continued, leaving a diverse legacy.
The title The Clarion was adopted by another left-wing publication in late 2016. It is produced monthly as a "socialist magazine by Labour and Momentum activists". The magazine's editorial board consists of activists from various socialist traditions.
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates. A sitting independent MP and prominent union organiser, Keir Hardie, became its first chairman.
Socialism in New Zealand had little traction in early colonial New Zealand but developed as a political movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Much of socialism's early growth was found in the labour movement.
Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford was an English socialist campaigner, journalist, and author in the United Kingdom. He was also noted as a prominent atheist, nationalist and opponent of eugenics. In the early 1920s, after the death of his wife, he turned towards spiritualism.
Tory socialism is a term used by some historians, particularly of the early Fabian Society, a socialist British organization, to describe the governing philosophy of the prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. It has been used by Vernon Bogdanor to describe the thinking of Ferdinand Mount, and was used by Arnold Toynbee to describe the beliefs of Joseph Rayner Stephens and Richard Oastler. The phrase was also used to describe both Stanley Baldwin and Harold Macmillan in the 1930s, and by Tony Judge in his biographical study of Robert Blatchford, and in a wider study of Tory socialism between 1870 and 1940.
Merrie England is an influential collection of essays on socialism by Robert Blatchford under the pseudonym "Nunquam", published in 1893. The first issue by Nunquam was priced at one shilling. It sold over two million copies worldwide. It was said that for every one convert to socialism made by Karl Marx's Das Kapital there were a hundred converts made by “Merrie England” – though even this may be an underestimate.
The Cinderella Movement was a late nineteenth century British movement to provide food and entertainment for poor children. Individuals formed "Cinderella Clubs", named after the fairy tale character Cinderella, to address specific problems associated with children's welfare.
William Crawford Anderson was a British socialist politician.
Thomas Alfred Jackson was a founding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and later the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was a leading communist activist and newspaper editor and worked variously as a party functionary and a freelance lecturer.
George Herbert Bridges Ward, known as G. H. B. Ward or Bert Ward was an activist for walkers' rights and a Labour Party politician.
The National Clarion Cycling Club is a British cycling club founded in 1894, and which retained strong links with the labour movement through the 20th century. At its peak, in 1936, it had 233 UK sections and 8,306 members. In 2021, it replaced its “support for the principles of socialism” with support for “fairness, equality, inclusion and diversity”. Today it has some 30 member sections across Great Britain and over 1,900 members.
The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fabian Society was also historically related to some of the furthest left factions of radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition.
Alexander Mattock Thompson, sometimes credited as A. M. Thompson, was a German-born English journalist and dramatist. From the 1880s, Thompson wrote for socialist newspapers and journals, co-founding The Clarion in 1891. He became an important librettist of Edwardian musical comedies in the early 20th century.
Socialism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 19th century from roots arising in the English Civil War. Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopian philanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the Labour Party that was founded in 1900 and nationalised a fifth of the British economy in the late 1940s.
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury, James Connolly and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture. Many of its early leading members had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League.
The Western Clarion was a newspaper launched in January 1903 that became the official organ of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). At one time it was the leading left-wing newspaper in Canada. It lost influence after 1910–11 when various groups broke away from the SPC. During World War I (1914–14) the Western Clarion was internationalist and denounced a war in which workers fought while others profited. Following the Russian Revolution it adopted a pro-Bolshevik stance, The paper was banned in 1918, but allowed to resume publication in 1920. Its circulation dwindled as SPC membership dwindled, and the last issue appeared in 1925.
Frederick Victor Fisher was a British political activist.
Eleanor Barton was a British co-operative movement activist from Manchester.
The Sheffield Clarion Ramblers was a rambling club founded by G. H. B. Ward in Sheffield in 1900. It was one of many clubs and societies inspired by the popular socialist newspaper, The Clarion. Its first ramble was in the Peak District around Edale on Sunday, 2 September 1900 with fourteen people from Sheffield. By the early 1920s the club were claiming to be the "largest and most influential Rambling Club in the British Isles".
Dora Julia Myddleton Worrall, known by her pen name Julia Dawson was a British journalist, socialist, and editor of the women's section of The Clarion. As an editor, she has been highlighted as an important example of women journalists turning the traditionally domestic 'Woman's Page' to feminist ends. She is notable for pioneering the use of the Clarion Van for spreading the ideas of socialism around Britain.
