By Terry Liddle
English radical poetry has a long and honourable tradition dating back to at least the 17th century. Paine played a small but significant role in this tradition. He was a great influence on the Chartist movement which arose in the 1830s to demand the vote for working men. One of the leading Chartists was Deptford-born George Julian Harney.
In the 1850s Harney produced two papers, The Red Republican, which was followed by The Friend of the People. An essential feature of both publications was a poetry for the people column. Some of the contributors such as Shelley, Walt Whitman, the French political writer Armand Carrel and Ernest Jones were well known. Jones wrote some of his poems in his own blood while in prison. Some used pen names such as Bandiera, Spartacus, John The Workman, Voteless Traveller and the initial R. Some seemed distinguished such as George Sydney Smith MP and the Rev. John Jeffrey. About some of them, like Sheldon Chadwick and George Hooper we know little or nothing.
Although he appears to have contributed to neither of Hamey’s publications, a friend and prolific poet was John Bedford Leno. Leno was born in Uxbridge in 1826. He had very little formal education and was taught to read by his mother. He graduated from rural post boy to printers’ apprentice becoming works foreman. At one time he financed his out of work activities by gambling at which he was quite good.
He came under the political influence of the Chartist Fred Farrell and set up a local branch of which he became secretary. Finishing his apprenticeship he took up various printing jobs. He claimed to have tramped a thousand miles and often supported himself by singing and reciting poetry. With £40 raised at a benefit concert he bought his own press. On this he printed the Spirit of Freedom and Working Man’s Advocate, which was edited by Gerald Massey. Eventually he moved to London where he set up shop in Drury Lane. There he met the Russian Revolutionary Alexander Herzen who persuaded him to print literature to be smuggled into Russia. Alas this never happened. Herzen was arrested by the Tsarist authorities and exiled to Siberia. In 1851 he became a member of a committee appointed to meet the Magyar revolutionary Lajos Kossuth.
Leno helped form a group called the Propagandists which offered to give lectures to working men free of charge. Out of this emerged the Universal League for the Material Elevation of the Industrious Classes. Leno was the chair. This in turn led to the formation of the Reform League which again advocated the franchise for more working men.
Leno took part in its demonstrations, the biggest since Chartist times, as did Charles Bradlaugh. Some of these turned into violent confrontations between the people and the police. The railings at Hyde Park were torn down and used as weapons against the police. Leno must have felt some sense of justice. On coming to London, one of his first experiences was to be battened by a plain clothes policeman at a demonstration.
In 1864 he was part of a committee appointed to welcome to London the Italian revolutionary Garibaldi. Previously when the Emperor Napoleon III had visited, Leno had led the protests. During the 1868 General Election he was the agent for former Propagandist member George Howell who was contesting Aylesbury. But Liberal finance, while it kept independent working class candidates out of the contest, was not much for wealthy Tories who could afford to have their voters driven to the polls.
In the 1870s Leno was a member of the Manhood Suffrage League and the Democratic and Trades Alliance Association consisting mostly of Soho tailors and shoemakers. Leno recited his poetry at many of the dubs which sprung up to cater for the political, educational and recreational needs of working people. In his old age and riddled with gout Leno was warmly welcomed by William Morris when he went to attend one of the socialist lectures held in Morris’s home in Hammersmith. Leno described this event as “an oasis in the desert of an old man’s life”. Writing in the Socialist League’s Commonweal he described himself as “an old socialist”. No longer able to work, he was financially supported by several Radical MPs and received a gratuity of £50 from the Prime Minister William Gladstone. Leno died in 1894.
Gerald Massey had a poem The Red Banner published in the very first issue of The Red Republican and made several more contributions mostly to The Friend of the People. One poem was entitled Kings are but giants because we kneel. Over two issues The Friend of the People April 26 and May 3, 1851, reviewed his Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love published when he was just 22. The reviewer wrote: “Gerald Massey is a partisan of the right against the wrong-justice against oppression-liberty against tyranny-the suffering many against the pitiless few.”
Massey was born near Tring in 1828. At a tender age he was put to work in the local silk mill for a shilling a week for twelve hours a day and more. When the mill burned down he took up the equally arduous job of straw plaiting. This afflicted him with ague. Later he secured more congenial employment only to lose it for attending the Chartist demonstration on Kennington Common in 1848. But he soon found more congenial work as secretary of the Tailors Association. Massey was a self-taught Egyptologist. He was one of the first to make comparisons between the myth of the Egyptian God Horus and the Christian myth of Yeshua Bar Yosif. Both were allegedly born of a virgin on December 25 (The Greek word for virgin in the New Testament is a mistranslation of the Old Testament Hebrew word which just means a young woman). Both raised the dead, both were crucified and rose again on the third day. His work opened the way for later investigations by secularists.
William Morris was himself no mean poet — after Tennyson’s death he was seen as a potential poet laureate. Queen Victoria would not have been amused. Morris was invited to speak in Oxford by William Hines, a chimney sweep active in agricultural trade unionism, and founder of the Oxford and District Socialist Union. He published Labour Songs for the Use Of Working Men and Women, stating : “It is time labouring folk had their own song book. There is no other way of keeping up good fellowship and brotherhood between labouring folk than by song and music.” In 1887 the Socialist League had published Echoes of the Coming Day: Socialist Songs and Rhyme. It had been edited by Fred Henderson who became a leader of the Independent Labour Party.
Sadly many of England’s radical poets have been hidden from history by neglect. It is time to rescue so that their calls to resist tyranny and fight for freedom can inspire new generations.