Category: Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries Page 1 of 3

Myles Hobart was the Member of Parliament for Marlow in Buckinghamshire for a very short time:1628-29.

I love seventeenth century history, not least because at this time the English language reached its apogee, so that every Act of Parliament, every Petition and Protest, is couched in the most eloquent and elegant English, as much a work of lucid literature, as a dry document. But in the seventeenth century the business of Parliament never was dull or mundane. On the contrary, acts of high drama were leading slowly but inexorably to the demise of absolute monarchy and the genesis of a Parliamentary democracy. Myles Hobart had a walk on part in one such drama.

Charles I, like his father, had an elevated view of his status as God’s chosen appointee. He ran an extravagant household, had a bloated army…and expected other people to pay for his amusements. In 1626 Parliament refused to grant the taxes he sought. Charles promptly dissolved Parliament and raised money through forced loans, imprisoning without trial those who refused him. Billeting his soldiers in private homes, he obliged people to feed, clothe and accommodate them.

But as increasing numbers of people faced prison rather than “lending” him money, he was compelled to call another Parliament in 1628. The Members were ready for him. Edward Coke had drawn up the Petition of Right confirming that there should be no taxation without Parliamentary consent, no imprisonment without trial, and no forced quartering of soldiers in private houses. As a condition of their voting taxes Parliament demanded the King’s formal assent to the Petition.

Charles attempted to fob them off with a verbal consent. The Parliamentarians were not impressed; they sought written guarantees:

Not that I distrust the King but that I cannot take his trust but in a Parliamentary way,

observed Edward Coke wryly.

Charles then tried to add a proviso stating that the terms of the Petition prevailed through his grace, and not as of right, hoping through this expedient that in future disputes the Petition would have no force of law. But Parliament was packed with men who had legal training, they knew the power of words, and they stood firm. Reluctantly Charles gave his formal assent to the Petition in June 1628.

But he then prorogued parliament, and had the Petition of Right rewritten so that it could only be enforced “according to the laws and customs of the realm,” a loose phrase which he could interpret to suit himself. He proceeded to collect the indirect taxes of Tunnage and Poundage* without seeking authorisation and to prosecute merchants who refused to pay.

When Parliament reconvened in January 1629 and took issue with this illegal levy, the Members anticipated that another adjournment would presage a dissolution. As they expected, in March, on instructions from the King, the Speaker rose to announce an adjournment. Immediately Denzil Holles and Benjamin Valentine pushed him back into his chair and held him down ** while a furious debate ensued as angry members defied the king and his supporters in the House. John Eliot thundered,

Mr. Speaker there never was the like of this done in the House…It is the fundamental liberty of this House that we have ever used to adjourn ourselves.

When the King sent his messenger, the ludicrously named Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, to order Parliament to disperse, Myles Hobart had his moment of glory: he locked the door and pocketed the key leaving an impotent Black Rod standing outside. John Eliot then read out the declaration which he had prepared. After condemning Charles’ actions, he sought and secured assent for the Three Resolutions anathematising anyone levying or paying Tonnage and Poundage without the consent of Parliament, or promoting Popery or Arminianism (the religious groups supporting the king). Anyone breaching the Resolutions was declared

a capital enemy of the Kingdom and Commonwealth…betrayer of the liberties of England and an enemy of the state.

In short, such people would be guilty of treason. Having completed their business, the Members then voted for their own adjournment.

Charles’ response was swift. Nine of the leading protagonists, including John Eliot and Myles Hobart were arrested and imprisoned in the Tower.

Some few vipers that did cast the mist of undutifulness over most of their eyes,

spat Charles, inaccurately, for a majority in the House were firmly behind Eliot. As the MPs had foreseen Charles then dissolved Parliament. He ruled as an autocratic, absolute ruler for eleven years raising money by royal prerogative…but he was to get his comeuppance in 1649.

Meanwhile Eliot died in prison. Myles Hobart was released in 1631 but was fatally injured a year later when his carriage overturned on Holborn Hill.

He was buried in All Saints Parish Church, Marlow, where a monument, situated too high up for comfortable viewing, features a bust of Hobart resting on a cushion. An admonitory homily references his youth; he was only thirty-four when he died,

Wryte not a daye this spectacle thee charms,

Death from thy byrth doth claspe thee in her armes.

Youthful as he, thou mayest be, yet he’s gonne

And thou must followe, no man knows how soone

Learn this of hym, prepared thou be to dye

Then shalt thou lyve, though through mortality.”

Memorial, Myles Hobart, All Saints Parish Church, Marlow

The cause of his death is not spelled out but illustrated by the charming carving of a runaway coach.

I was disappointed that despite the monument having been erected by vote of Parliament in 1647 there was no reference to the day Hobart locked Black Rod out of the Commons. But I sent him a silent word of thanks for his theatrical contribution to the long fight for Parliamentary democracy.

*****************************************************************

*If you have forgotten your school history, Tunnage and Poundage were respectively the indirect taxes charged on each tun of wine imported and on other goods imported or exported as determined by weight.

**There is a wonderful painting of the incident by Andrew Garrick Gow in the Parliamentary Art Collection see https://artuk.org >discover>artworks>House of Commons 1628-29, Speaker Finch held by Holles and Valentine.

Robert Owen: Capitalist, Political Philosopher, Social Reformer.

By Gravedigger

On August 3, 2025

In Political Theorists, Philosophers and Economists, Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries

1960s planning law led to the expansion of Newtown in Powys, formerly Montgomeryshire, but the heart of the stolid little market town remains huddled in a bend of the river Severn, impervious to the late twentieth century developments which stretch beyond it. The main street is a cheerful jumble of Victorian redbrick and arts and crafts timbers; there are three museums, a contemporary art gallery, and a theatre. And outside the ruined church of St. Mary on the south bank of the river I found a jewel. For there, against a backdrop of ivy-draped stone walls, sat a splendid contrivance of wrought iron swirls and twists, as though an exotic Parisian fantasy from the Belle Epoque had been dropped into the unpretentious Welsh town.

It is the grave of Robert Owen (1771-1858), variously acclaimed as The Father of British Socialism, a Capitalist Paternalist, and the Inspiration of the Co-operative Movement.

Owen was born in Newtown, leaving school at ten years old to become an apprentice draper in Lincolnshire. After working in London and Manchester he opened and managed his own mill. In 1799 he bought the New Lanark Mill in Scotland. There 2,000 people, five hundred of them children, were employed in cotton spinning.

Conditions in cotton mills were harsh: workers, including children, worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, the machinery was dangerous, discipline brutal, and wages low. Orphans and young children from poor families were often not paid at all, receiving only basic food and a place to sleep. By this exploitation of labour mill owners accrued substantial profits and accumulated great wealth.

Owen’s approach was different. He and his partners, who included Jeremy Bentham, chose to limit themselves to a 5% return on their capital. Owen transformed the factory, introducing the eight-hour day, and campaigning for its introduction elsewhere under the slogan

Eight Hours Labour, Eight Hours Recreation, Eight Hours Rest.

Setting an example in his own mill, Owen campaigned for the introduction of child labour laws, outlawing the employment of children under ten years old. He increased wages, improved working conditions and housing, and reformed the truck system. Under the latter workers had received their pay in tokens which could only be used in the owners’ truck shops where high prices were charged for shoddy goods. Owen did not abolish the system, but his shops sold quality goods at just above wholesale price, passing on savings from bulk purchases. With the profits returned to the community, Owen’s shops were the forerunners of the Co-operative Movement later established by the Rochdale Pioneers.

Espousing the philosophy that character is not inherent, but formed by environment, Owen sought to provide a sound physical, moral, and social background for the children of his workers. At New Lanark he funded schools, including the first nursery schools in Britain for four- to six-year-olds, with a curriculum which included dancing and music.

For Owen’s workers there was the opportunity for adult education, with lectures and concerts. There was recreation on the allotments and free health care.

New Lanark was not perfect: Owen was an autocrat, his workers constantly subjected to his scrutiny, he even inspected their houses for cleanliness; the work was still hard, monotonous, and dangerous; and the Silent Monitor was an alienating presence located above each machinist. The monitor was Owen’s own invention, a four-sided block with each side painted a different colour, it was turned to represent the quality and quantity of the worker’s output.

Nonetheless New Lanark flourished, more efficient than other factories, the output reflected the better working conditions, and it achieved an international reputation. It was a reputation which Owen hoped would appeal to the self-interest of other capitalists, illustrating to them that if they extended the same care to their workers as they did to their machines they might be rewarded with greater productivity.

By the 1820s Owen had embraced the more radical ideals of Utopian Socialism. Moving to the United States, he expended his by now considerable fortune to buy up an existing town of 180 buildings and several thousand acres in Indiana. He renamed the town, previously owned by a religious group which had relocated, New Harmony. In this experimental socialist Utopia, he pursued his belief that a clean, safe environment founded on moral values and equal opportunities would foster mutual respect in a prosperous society. To this end, he poured money into schools and libraries, established communal kitchens and dining rooms, promoted scientific research and the arts.

Yet New Harmony was as spectacular a failure as New Lanark had been a success, and after two years the community was dissolved.

Accounts for the failure vary. There were disagreements within the community and suggestions that some of its members were parasitic upon others, exploiting goodwill to their own selfish advantage. In common with other self-contained communities of the time New Harmony foundered in the absence of members with practical skills. Josiah Warren, the American Philosophical Anarchist who had joined Owen at New Harmony, later rejected Owenism suggesting that self-preservation and the desire for personal property would always prove stronger instincts than commitment to the common good.

Marx, while agreeing that the working class were creating the wealth from which they were not benefitting, did not share Owen’s view that a Socialist utopia within existing society would prove its superiority over time. He reasoned that it was not possible to circumvent international capitalism with small scale communes. The overthrow of the capitalist system could only come via a revolutionary party independent of all capitalist influence.

Owen returned to London with his fortune dissipated, but his beliefs untarnished. No longer wealthy, but increasingly radical, he dedicated the rest of his life to political propaganda in support of trades unionism, the Co-operative Movement, better housing for workers, legislation to improve wages and working conditions, the abolition of child labour, aid for the unemployed, free co-educational schools, the abolition of corporal punishment, equal opportunities, the establishment of libraries and museums, and secularism. He spoke tirelessly at public meetings, churned out pamphlets and periodicals… and died penniless.

Towards the end of his life, he had returned to Newtown seeking to be buried near his parents. There were protests at the prospect of such a dangerous radical and avowedly non-Christian individual being buried in sacred ground. But by good fortune the thirteenth century church of St. Mary, having served five hundred years as the parish church of Newtown, had been abandoned two years previously after repeated flooding when the winter Severn burst its banks. With his congregation relocated to the new St. David’s, the rector proved amenable to Owen’s burial beneath the south wall outside the nave of the old church.

Forty years later Owen’s friend and fellow reformer, George Jacob Holyoake, revisited the grave to find it neglected and decaying. He exerted his influence on the Co-operative Union to restore the tabletop slate tomb and erect the ornate Art Nouveau iron railings, awash with foliage and neo-classical symbols, around it. The tomb bears the Co-op motto

Each for All, and All for Each

and a quotation from Owen himself

It is the one great and universal interest of the human race to be cordially united and to aid each other to the full extent of their capabilities.

At the dedication ceremony in 1902 Holyoake reminded the assembled trade unionists that

Due to Owen – Knowledge is Greater; Life is Longer; Health is Surer; Disease is Limited; Towns are Sweeter; Hours of Labour are Shorter; Men are Stronger; Women are Fairer; Children are Happier.

No mean achievement.

Today a public garden has been created. It runs from the riverbank, through the now roofless church whose walls are lined with old gravestones, surrounds Owen’s tomb, and spills on towards the town in a summer riot of grasses and flowers.

The Partisan Necropolis, Mostar: A Tale of Two Cities

By Gravedigger

On June 8, 2025

In Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries

Mostar’s inhabitants regarded it as an old soul that connected the two parts of the city together through a simple and friendly gesture.

Writing of the Stari Most, the bridge designed in the sixteenth century by the Ottoman architect Hajrudin, destroyed during the Bosnian war in 1993, and reconstructed in 2004, Arna Mackic continued,

Due to the city’s current extreme segregation…the connection has disappeared. The old bridge is no longer a connection but rather a separation of the city.*

Though there are still pock marked buildings and roofless carcasses with trees growing through them, the centre of Mostar today is picture-book pretty. Cafes are packed with tourists, their attention focused on the bridge in the hope of witnessing a high dive. Yet there is a dark underside to the town; the segregation of which Mackic speaks remains and is exemplified in the two schools under one roof policy, whereby Croats and Bosniaks enter by separate doors, attend segregated lessons with different teachers, and learn different versions of history and religion.

Leaving behind the riot of souvenir shops and ice cream parlours, I walked to the western outskirts of the city in search of something else. During World War II, Mostar had been known as the Red City on account of its particularly strong resistance to the Nazis. In 1965 the Serbian architect, Bogdan Bogdanovic, who had himself been a Yugoslav Partisan, designed and supervised the construction of the Partisan Necroplis to honour the 810 Yugoslav Partisans – Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and Jews – from Mostar who had fought against the Axis powers occupying Yugoslavia and against Ustasa, the fascist organisation operating a Nazi puppet state in Croatia.

The necropolis is set on a hillside overlooking the city and Bogdanovic designed it to mirror the town, explaining that “the two cities” would forever

look each other in the eyes: the city of the dead antifascist heroes, mostly young men and women, and the city of the living, for which they gave their lives.**

Speaking of the purity of their motives and their self-sacrifice, he sought to give the young Partisans, who were mostly aged between eighteen and twenty-five, something beautiful:

I thought that the fallen Mostarian antifascist fighters, all still boys and girls so to say, have the right, at least symbolically, to the beauty of dreams…Their small superterranean city overlooked, as I had promised their families, the heart of old Mostar and the then still existing bridge built by the great architect Hajrudin, once the most beautiful and daring stone bridge in the world.**

The City of My Friends, as Bogdanovic called it, was built by stone masons from Korcula in Croatia, assisted by voluntary youth brigades. Often, they worked through the night to avoid the heat of the day, and something magical emerged. Five terraces built into the side of the hill are reached by stone staircases. On the top terrace a cosmological sundial features the sun, planets, and moon. From beneath this a fountain once cascaded down the hillside to a pool at the base of the hill, symbolising the Neretva river flowing through Mostar and the tears of the Partisans. Domestic herbs – rosemary, lavender, cistus, sage – were planted.

There was deliberately no religious, nationalist, socialist or war imagery, no symbols of any ideology, the memorial was to honour all victims of fascism. Abstract stone grave markers, which have been likened to felled trees symbolising fallen youth, were laid on the terraces, each one commemorating a partisan. The stones bore only a name, age, and place of birth and death.

Tito was present to celebrate the completion of the memorial, and as Bogdanovic had intended, it became not just a necropolis but a loved and much used park, a picnic place, a playground:

The lilting, heathen character of the Partisan Necropolis could not remain unnoticed. Its terraces were quickly seized by children, whose playful voices echoed in a choir…sometimes until deep in the night.**

In an interview in 2009 the architect recalled,

Once a girl from Mostar told me that her parents had conceived her in the Partisan Necropolis. For me it was the most beautiful thing that could have happened there.***

Bogdanovic spoke out strongly against the nationalism which tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, he was subject to defamation and physical attacks which led him to self-imposed exile in Vienna.

During the Bosnian war, between 1992-95, the memorial was severely damaged. After the war it suffered neglect, malicious vandalism, and deliberate acts of desecration. Bogdanovic wrote from Vienna in 1997,

the only thing I could still wish for is…the right to, as honorary citizen of Mostar, create a secret niche to the left of the entrance gate, to accommodate my future urn. However, it now seems like I will not be in the company of my friends that way: the gravestones have cold-bloodedly and sadistically been crushed in a stone grinder. All that is left of my original promise is that the former city of the dead and the former city of the living still look at each other, only now with empty, black, and burned eyes.**

Bogdanovic died in Vienna in 2010. He was cremated there and his ashes returned to Belgrade where they were buried in the Sephardic cemetery next to his monument to the Jewish victims of fascism.

Partial repair and reconstruction of the Partisan Necropolis took place in 2005-2006 but later it was again subject to rubbish dumping, and destructive defacement. Overgrown and littered with beer bottles, it was described as a dangerous place, host to drinking and drug taking, and people were advised against visiting. In 2022 nationalist graffiti and swastikas, Ustase symbols, slurs against Bosniaks, and vilifications of Tito appeared, and the grave markers were again deliberately smashed. A British newspaper article in June 2023 reported,

When anti-fascists visit the site to lay flowers they need police protection, as there have been clashes with right wing groups on commemoration days… It can be dangerous even to talk about the necropolis now, never mind to visit it.****

And yet I had visited the Partisan Necropolis less than a month before that article was published. There were no signs to guide me and the unmarked approach from the road lay across an unpromising, scrubby expanse where a couple of cars appeared abandoned rather than parked. It was hot, silent, and uninviting. But beyond the inauspicious lower gateway, any sense of unease dissipated. Two men were determinedly scything the overgrown vegetation, and twenty metres above me I could see the terraces reached by worn paths winding through the trees. It was like entering an ancient site dominated by a great theatre.

Weeds grew through the pathways, the fountain and pool were dry, and the stone grave markers still lay smashed on the terraces. But the evil graffiti had been removed and the entire site cleaned of debris.

In two hours walking around and sitting in the sunshine, I encountered few other people: a couple of other tourists, two local people walking their dog, a small group of teenage boys. For all the desecration caused by the despicable attacks, it remains a beautiful place, albeit a quiet, melancholy beauty today, with none of the joyful, exuberance of its early days. Sead Dulic describes it:

This is our statue of Liberty, our triumphal arch, out Taj Mahal. It is a celebration of life and Mostar. It was built as a city of the dead mirroring the city of the living for a city that lost so much.*****

The fountain was shaped as four layered gears, symbol of a driving force. The Necropolis overlooks old Mostar

Grave markers placed on the terraces have been scattered, crushed, and broken

Again “the gravestones have cold bloodedly and sadistically been crushed”

They have been likened to felled trees symbolising fallen youth

Each stone bears only the name, age and places of birth and death of the Partisan

Mostar may still be a city divided. Fascist groups may wreak repeated destruction on the stones of the Partisan Necropolis and mount ugly, violent attacks on their political opponents. But though bruised and battered the Necropolis is still there, still treasured, still embodying the memory of the Partisans, their bravery, their self-sacrifice. Visit them if you are in Mostar, however short your time there, for despite Bogdanovic’s late despair, their necropolis remains not just a memorial to their courage and ideals but an inspiration and encouragement, a symbol of hope for a better world.

And although Bogdanovic’s ashes may lie in Belgrade, if there is such a thing as a spirit, his is surely here alongside his comrades.

*******

*Arna Macki, The Partisan Necropolis: Mostar’s Empty Stare, 6 October 2015, https://failedarchitecture.com>the-partisan-necropolis

**Bogdan Bogdanovic, The City of My Friends, translated by Arna Mackic and reprinted in The Partisan Necropolis.

***Quoted in Mostar, Spomenik Database, https://spomenikdatabase.org >Mostar. There is also more information about the architecture of the necr0polis and some wonderful photographs here.

****Chris Leslie, Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Anti-Fascist Legacy, 2 June 2023, https://www.theguardian .com>Protecting Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Anti-fascist Legacy

*****Sead Dulic, theatre director and head of the National Association of Anti-Fascists, quoted by Chris Leslie, above.

Gavrilo Princip – Still One of My Heroes

By Gravedigger

On February 20, 2025

In Activists, Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries

In the 60s and 70s all our secondary schools followed the same history curriculum. We began with Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain and made our way systematically through England’s vicissitudes from 55 BC up to 1914, skimming the extreme edges of classical antiquity and contemporary history. The former was held to be the remit of the classics department, and of the latter we did not speak. My history teacher justified this on the basis that objectivity was impossible without a certain distance; my youthful cynicism judged it more likely a reluctance to engage with criticism of the status quo.

In those final history lessons in the fifth form, as we edged towards the First World War, I developed a wild enthusiasm for Gavrilo Princip. This can certainly not have been the intention of my history teacher, a firm supporter of law and order, who would without doubt have been an apologist for the Austro-Hungarian Empire against the upstart Serb from Bosnia.

But to me Princip was a romantic hero, striking a blow against Austria’s occupation of Bosnian territory in 1878 followed by its aggressive annexation in 1908. Young Bosnia was a revolutionary movement seeking to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia-Herzegovina and to establish an independent state. The political assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the representative and heir of an unelected ruler at home and a foreign oppressor in Bosnia, was entirely justified. Princip was a freedom fighter.

If there had been posters of Princip for sale in English provincial towns in 1968, one would undoubtedly have adorned my bedroom wall alongside Che Guevara.

Two years ago, I visited a museum with the cumbersome designation Museum of Sarajevo,1878-1918. The dates mark the period of Austro-Hungary’s occupation, and it was from outside this building that Princip fired the shots which killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Until the collapse of Yugoslavia it had been called the Young Bosnia Museum, and Princip and his fellow members of Young Bosnia had been glorified as revolutionary idealists. Outside the museum a footprint was set into the cement to mark the spot where Princip stood to take aim at the Archduke, and there visiting Yugoslav schoolchildren used to pose for photographs.

The Museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918, located in a former delicatessen beside the Latin Bridge, formerly called the Princip Bridge.

Today a discreet sign set into the pavement marks the place where Princip stood. Formerly Yugoslavian children would pose for photographs standing in Princip’s footsteps

Today, the museum’s approach is more subdued. It records the history of resistance to Austro-Hungarian oppression, and the assassination. There are clothes, photographs, and weapons on display, and two uncomfortable looking waxworks of the archduke and his wife. But the tone is factual, and the historic significance of the museum’s location is not stressed.

For the recent history of the former Yugoslavia has cast a shadow which has led to the past being rewritten in some of the former constituent republics. Under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic ethnic cleansing of Croats took palace in those parts of Croatia controlled by Serbia. Milosevic’s ultra nationalism, his irredentist and revanchist attempt to seize Bosnia for the Serbs, combined with Radovan Karadzic’s genocidal massacre at Srebrenica, and the brutal siege of Sarajevo, have cast the Serbs in an ugly light.

And Princip has become a polarising figure: while still a hero in Serbia, he is now perceived in Croatia as a Serbian nationalist terrorist rather than a liberty loving revolutionary. He is even held responsible for the First World War rather than his actions being understood as a catalyst and excuse for further Austrian aggression.

There is no commonly held view in Bosnia. Two different versions of the truth are expounded alongside each other. School texts in predominantly Bosniak and Croat areas describe Princip as a Belgrade backed terrorist, while the children of Bosnian Serbs are taught that his cause was a just one, seeking liberation from colonised serfdom.

It is unwise to rewrite the past in the light of the present. It is true that in 1914 there was in Serbia a desire for a union of southern Slavs under Serbian hegemony, and that the Bosniaks and Croats had no desire for this greater Serbia. But Princip was no Milosevic or Karadzic, his loathing for Austrian oppression was legitimate. At his trial he argued,

I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free of Austria.

Asked why he had shot the archduke he replied,

People suffer because they are so poor and because they are treated as animals. I am the son of a peasant; I know how people live in the villages and that is why I wanted revenge.

Princip risked his life for a revolutionary ideology of social justice. Austrian rule was feudal and oppressive, political opposition brutally suppressed. Moreover, the Serbian government was not involved in the assassination, and the members of Young Bosnia were drawn from all three ethnic groups in Bosnia: the Bosniaks, the Bosnian Serbs, and the Croats.

The museum, located in predominantly Bosniak Sarajevo, displays understandable discretion. But I was happy to see that Princip’s grave in the Holy Archangels Cemetery in Sarajevo still receives care. At the time of the assassination, Princip was only nineteen, a year too young to be subjected to the death penalty, so he was given the maximum sentence of twenty years in an Austrian military prison. There, chained to a wall in solitary confinement, he died of TB in 1918. In 1920 he and his comrades were exhumed and reburied below the Vidovdan Heroes Chapel. Today there are flowers on the grave, and it bears a quotation from the Montenegrin poet, Petrovic-Njegos,

Blessed is he who lives forever; he did not die in vain.

Grave of Gavrilo Princip and his Young Bosnia comrades

Vidovdan Heroes Chapel, Holy Archangel Cemetery, Sarajevo

Gavrilo Princip, photograph in museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918

Newport Rising! John Frost and the Newport Chartists

By Gravedigger

On November 24, 2024

In Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries

“You should come to Newport in November,” urged the lady on the Chartist bookstall at Tolpuddle, “You’ll love it.” In the height of summer, Tolpuddle was putting forth its chocolate-box best: a Dorset village of plump thatched cottages, a riot of flowers in the gardens, tea and cakes served outside the village hall, pints drunk in the pub’s beer garden, and Songs of Praise being recorded in the twelfth century church. Newport, I knew, had been a major port in the nineteenth century for the export of coal from the South Wales Valleys, but the decline of the docks had begun in the 1920s, and whenever I had viewed Newport from the train the river Usk had looked bleak and deserted, brown water flanked by huge, oozing, brown mudbanks.

The Newport I had often seen from the train

This in November, one of the darkest and dampest of months? But the lady on the bookstall was adamant, enticing me with words as seductive as the Sirens’ honeyed song: “Torchlit Procession” and “Chartist Uprising.”

For Tolpuddle and Newport have a radical history in common: Tolpuddle has the agricultural labourers persecuted for attempting to form unions, and Newport has the greatest of the Chartist uprisings seeking political reform. And both host festivals to remember and celebrate those who gave their lives and their freedom to advance democracy.

Chartism rose out of bitter disappointment with the 1832 Reform Act. The latter had adjusted the boundaries of Parliamentary constituencies, removing political corruption in the form of rotten boroughs in the pockets of local aristocrats, and creating new constituencies in the cities of the industrial revolution. A very modest extension of the franchise however still left the right to vote dependent upon a substantial property qualification: only one fifth of adult males could vote and women were specifically barred. The working class had been betrayed by the middle class.

The London Working Men’s Association, and in Wales the Carmarthen WMA, were founded in 1836, and in 1838 the WMA drew up the six points of the Peoples’ Charter: a secret ballot, votes for all men over 21, payment for MPs, equal size constituencies, no property qualification for MPs, and annual parliamentary elections.

Chartism, the first mass movement driven by the working class, flourished as its members sought to implement their goals by constitutional means, believing that representation in Parliament as well as being a democratic right would also furnish them with an agency to alleviate their economic distress. Circulating Chartist papers and periodicals, they held meetings in the East Midlands, the Potteries, the Black Country, Glasgow, the north of England and the valleys of industrial South Wales where Chartism gained widespread support in the iron and coal mining villages. At contested elections Chartists gathered at the hustings where their candidates won by a show of hands but were disqualified from standing in the actual election. In 1839 they took their first national petition, signed by 1.3 million working people, to Parliament. MPs rejected the petition, and Chartists, including the leading orator Henry Vincent, were arrested and imprisoned for making “inflammatory speeches” and using “seditious language.”

Against this background, attitudes hardened and there was rioting. John Frost, a former mayor of Newport, planned the Newport Rising. Sources differ as to whether this was a peaceful protest petitioning for the release of imprisoned Chartists or an armed uprising with the aim of taking the town as the first step towards a nationwide rising. Surely both objectives must have existed in the minds of different men. Of the 10,000 who marched from the valleys of S.E. Wales, some were carrying homemade weapons. They marched through heavy rainstorms during the night of 3^rd November 1839 seeking to converge on Newport from three directions at dawn on the morning of the fourth. The column from the west was led by John Frost, that from Blackwood by Zephaniah Williams and that from Pontypool by William Jones.

In Newport the authorities, informed of the marches by government spies, had already arrested local Chartists, and imprisoned them in the Westgate Hotel. Armed soldiers were also concealed in the hotel. When the first marchers arrived, they surrounded the hotel demanding the release of their comrades. No one knows for certain who fired the first shot, but when the soldiers with their superior arms opened fire, they killed more than twenty men, injuring around fifty. The Chartists were forced to retreat.

Ten of the dead were buried in unmarked graves in the churchyard of St. Woolos parish church, now Newport Cathedral. Two hundred Chartists were arrested and twenty-one charged with high treason. The three leaders were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, the last time this sentence was passed in England and Wales. Nationwide protests and petitions, combined with the fear of uprisings elsewhere – there were attempted risings in Sheffield, the East End of London and Bradford – led to the sentences being commuted to transportation for life.

In November 2018, on the anniversary of the rising, the first Chartist Festival was launched. Newport Rising! celebrates Chartism and seeks to inspire action and engagement in democratic processes to promote positive change, as part of the ongoing struggle for liberty, humanity, and equality. There is music, film, performances, workshops, a Chartist Convention with historical and academic talks, a radical book fair, and… A Torchlit Procession Through The Streets.

And so I went to Newport in November, 185 years after the Chartists marched into town, and it was glorious. On the Saturday evening, following music, fire and speeches in Belle Vue Park, a momentary stillness and quiet witnessed the lighting of the first torches, and, as the flame was passed on, a 2,000 strong procession began to wind around the serpentine paths, pouring out into the streets and down Stow Hill with torches blazing, to the Westgate where more speeches and music culminated in an exuberant, joyful rendering of the Welsh National anthem. The people of Newport did their Chartist ancestors proud.

Two days later, on the anniversary of the original march, primary school children paraded around the town with their hand made Chartist banners, and in the evening a ceremony was held in St. Woolos churchyard where a plaque honours the ten Chartists buried there. Again, there were speeches and readings, in Welsh and English, before everyone laid a flower on the memorial. For those of us unfamiliar with the tradition, the organisers, with the gracious and generous spirit of inclusivity which epitomized the celebrations, had brought extra red roses.

Stone in Saint Woolos churchyard dedicated to the memory of Chartists shot at the Westgate Hotel, Newport

Preparations have been made for the evening ceremony

What Happened to the Chartists after the Newport Rising?

Two more Chartist petitions were presented to Parliament. In 1842 a petition with over three million signatures was again rejected by Parliament. There were riots, strikes, and arrests. In 1848 a mass meeting of Chartists was held on Kennington Common in London, but the government prohibited the planned procession to Parliament to present a third petition. Fearful of demonstrators being killed and wounded if soldiers opened fire, O’Connor cancelled the procession; he and other Chartist leaders walked alone with the petition. This third petition was also rejected.

But the Chartists had sown the seeds of change and by 1918 five of the Charter’s demands had been enabled. The Reform Act of 1867 extended the vote to some working men; the secret ballot was introduced in 1872; payment of MPs came in 1911; and full manhood suffrage at twenty-one, plus a vote for women over thirty and subject to a property qualification, was achieved in 1918.

The three leaders who had been transported from Newport were pardoned in 1856. William Jones remained in Australia where he worked as a watchmaker. Zephaniah Williams remained in Tasmania where he mined coal. John Frost returned from Tasmania but went to live in Stapleton in Bristol where his wife and children had moved. He continued to publish articles about reform until his death in 1877 at the age of ninety-three.

In the 1980s Newport historian Richard Frame learned from Frost’s will that he had requested to be buried in the grave where his son, who had died in 1842, lay in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Horfield, Bristol. Frost had buried his wife, who died only a year after his return, in the same grave. Frame located a badly weathered and partially buried stone bearing the name of Frost’s son, Henry Holman Frost. Newport Council paid for a new headstone of Welsh slate with a granite surround. It bears a quotation taken from a letter which Frost wrote to Lord Tredegar;

“The outward mark of respect

paid to men merely because

they are rich and powerful…

hath no communication

with the heart”

The original headstone is in Newport museum along with other artefacts from the Newport Rising.

New headstone for John Frost, Holy Trinity, Horfield, Bristol

Remains of original headstone with name of John Frost’s son, Henry Holman Frost, just discernable. Newport museum.

Reproduction of wording on original headstone, Newport museum.

And in Newport now?

The Newport Rising Hub is open at 170 Commercial Street, Tuesday-Saturday 10am -4pm

www.newportrising.co.uk

There you will find an exhibition of radical history, leaflets on the Chartist trail, books and other Chartist merchandise, and details of more events in Newport.

Come with me into the graveyard, all human life is here

Category: Reformers, Radicals and Revolutionaries Page 1 of 3

Myles Hobart, Parliamentarian: a Moment of Glory eclipsed by a Runaway Coach

Robert Owen: Capitalist, Political Philosopher, Social Reformer.

The Partisan Necropolis, Mostar: A Tale of Two Cities

Gavrilo Princip – Still One of My Heroes

Newport Rising! John Frost and the Newport Chartists