Category: Counter-Heritage

Selsley Hill

May 17^th 2025 and May 21st 1839

Climbing up to Selsley Hill,
Stroud’s Lord John Russell’s 1839
Electoral Message in our minds –
Lofty admonishment of the poor:
You “know not the general laws by which profit and wages are regulated.”

Then Henry Cartwright’s letter to Russell,
The Ham, near Stroud, March 11th, 1839:

“My Lord…On Saturday Evening last a meeting of the Chartists was held in Stroud …out of doors … dimly illuminated by two lamps …the language of the two principal speakers …was of a most violent and inflammatory description, very, very little short of seditious and treasonable. I need hardly express to your Lordship their usual practice …
a long tirade of abuse the most gross and false against your Lordship.”

Henry Vincent, the Chartist leader, who spoke
At that nocturnal meeting on the bowling green
At the Golden Heart Inn, Stroud, said:

“When I asked the people how it was they sent such a little pettifogger as Russell to parliament, they exclaimed,“we did not send him – we had no votes.” “The people are very poor – wages being low, and work not over plentiful. The women complain bitterly of their sufferings, and express their determination of aiding the men in any measures.”

But Henry Burgh wrote to Russell later that month:

“Today about quarter past two about 500 marched up Rodborough Hill by my house with 9 Flags and a strange Band of Musick …I have stopped the Beer Shops and Publick Houses …There are several policemen placed…”

 

Imagine that crowd of 3,000 people
Gathered around a wagon up there on the common,
Listening to Vincent and John Frost of Newport Rising fame,
Then wait a month before Russell receives another epistle:

“ill feeling amongst the People is greatly increasing, specially at Wotton, and they are buying up all the guns they can get and that a sample of a Bomb, sufficient to blow up any House, has been sent from the North to Dursley”; ‘Your most obedient servant’ Henry Burgh adds: “heard they were making hand grenades at Wotton … they are making Pikes and also at Stroud, Cainscross and King’s Stanley.”

No wonder, then, that a few days later:

“May 14th, 1839”, “ROYAL COAT OF ARMS WHEREAS a Royal Proclamation has been issued against certain illegal meetings, we the undersigned magistrates…do hereby warn all persons from taking part in or being present at such Meetings. And we call on all well-disposed persons to be aiding and assisting us in our object, as well as by giving us information…And for the discouraging and preventing such unlawful practices, and for the protection of the public peace, we do hereby make known our determination to use our utmost endeavours to prevent, put down, and suppress such Meetings…”

The response?

GRAND DEMONSTRATION
To the Men and Women of Gloucestershire Take Notice! That a county MEETING of the Inhabitants of Gloucestershire, will be holden on SELSLEY HILL In the Borough of Stroud, on Whit Tuesday, May 21st to take into consideration the best means to be adopted in order to secure the passing of the PEOPLE’S CHARTER And to give Effect to the present Agitation A Deputation from the “General Convention” consisting of Messrs. Carpenter, Mealing and Neesom, will attend, also Deputations from various Associations in the County. The Chair will be taken at 12 o’clock. We particularly urge the attendance of all those who value their Political Freedom, and who have at heart the welfare, prosperity and happiness of the Nation, and let them remember “For a Nation to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.” In order to remove any misapprehension respecting the legality of the Meeting, we beg to state that we shall be entirely regulated by the Motto
PEACE, LAW and ORDER and sincerely hope that all those who attend will be guided by the same principles.

Unsympathetic newspaper reports tell us:

‘The first party which reached the ground was a procession of the Working Men’s Association of Wotton-under-Edge and the Radical Women’s Association of the same place in some numbers and with music, and with Banners bearing inscriptions of “Liberty”, “Equal Rights and equal Laws”, “For a Nation to be free it is sufficient that she wills it” … Mr. Beecham, secretary of the Working Men’s Association of Cirencester…spoke…in favour of what he called the People’s Charter…prophesying that a Firebrand would be raised … A delegate from Bath, a Mr. Meacham spoke thus:
“You have made up your minds that universal suffrage shall be the law of this land – you will have ballot and no surrender, peaceably if you can, but forcibly if you must.” ‘
The Gloucester Journal belittled this mass-meeting (‘The greatest number of people …was from three to four thousand’), yet expressed admiration for the magistrates, who ‘procured the aid of a troop of Lancers and some troops of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry…In addition…a great number of special constables were sworn in…on the ground on horseback…’

But let us leave the last word on 1839 to JP Peter Leversage, in his letter to Lord John Russell about another meeting held at Selsley: ‘A Sermon supposed to be one of the notorious Stephens” (the nationally famous Chartist preacher) “was there read by a person named Evans, a foremen in a pin manufactory at Lightpill near Stroud: “An infidel Church and an infidel Government – compared the Bishop of London to Judas Iscariot… an oppressor…the Poor Law …wives were separated from their husbands …Church must very shortly be put down.” ‘

So, the next time you go for a walk on Selsley Common,
Give a thought to those brave women and men
Who gathered there in May 1839;
Their baton is up there by the long barrow,
Pick it up if you wish and remember them in stone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 5 Ws and the H of Chartism

(A free verse narrative)

(Please read and but please leave on the table)

It was a political movement for the ‘People’s Charter’ (‘Universal Suffrage, No Property Qualification, Annual Parliaments, Equal Representation, Payment of MPs and Vote by Ballot’), With three petitions to parliament in 1839, 42 & 48.

It grew out of disappointment with the 1832 Reform Act, The national suppression of trades unions (The Tolpuddle Martyrs), The government’s response to the Captain Swing riots, The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and the workhouses –The hated New Poor Law ‘Bastilles’(Which criminalised poverty with the principle of ‘less eligibility’: Conditions inside the workhouse should be worse Than from the worst paid job outside);Then there was the workplace: The unregulated working hours, the high prices, the low wages, The unemployment and short time working, The loathing of the Benthamite ‘felicific calculus’; It grew also from eighteenth century Tom Paineite democratic ideas, Previous beliefs and practice of the revolutionary Spenceans, The memories of Peterloo, the hatred of both Tory and Whig, But the Chartist preacher, the Reverend Stephens, asserted: Chartism is ‘a knife and fork question … A bread and cheese question’, Whilst Richard Gammage, the contemporary Chartist historian, Provided the long-standing division of the movement into ‘Moral Force’ and ‘Physical Force’ Chartists.
But why, in particular, was there such a Chartist presence in Stroud in 1839,

And why was there such a commotion with the meeting on Selsley Hill?

Well, apart from the generalities of the above, Lord John Russell was not only Stroud’s MP, but also the Home Secretary And responsible for law, order and the suppression of Chartism; He was also partly responsible for the terms of the 1832 Reform Act, Which carefully extended the vote to the middle class (From the aristocracy), And deliberately excluded the working classes – Even though they had borne the lion’s share of the campaigning To bring about an extension of the franchise; In addition, areas of declining cloth trade in the south-west (Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire), Were just the type of localities that led women and men to the Charter, So when the Chartist National   Convention was set up in London (Partly to influence Parliament with the First Petition, Partly to act as an alternative parliament should the Petition be rejected), It was no surprise when the JP for Newport, John Frost, Was chosen to appear on Rodborough Hill in March 1839, As the prospective Chartist parliamentary candidate For the next general election, So as to challenge Russell in a blaze of national publicity; Meanwhile, the circulation of the Chartist newspaper the Northern Star Was reaching 50,000 a week – and its influence far exceeded that: Read and discussed in home, the workplace, the pub, the chapel, the church, ‘Each copy would go through many hands. Those who could not read would listen as others read to them; and all could discuss’ (Edward Royle: Chartism); The National Petition was ready for Parliament in early May (Nearly three miles long with nearly 1.3 million signatures); Mass meetings were held all over the north in May, And so Selsey’s mass meeting of 5,000 in May 1839 Slots nicely into view and perspective … The springtime of 1839 was in some ways the high time for Chartism: The Petition was rejected in the summer, Plans for a general strike petered out, Confused plans for armed insurrection Such as Newport, November 1839(Partly to try and free Henry Vincent from prison – He had been so active in Stroud and the Valleys in the spring), Only led to Frost’s transportation, And by 1840, over 500 Chartists were in jail.1842 saw waves of strikes (the ‘Plug Riots’),But also widespread use of the telegraph and railways To speed troop movements; The Second Petition, with a claimed 3.3 million signatures Was rejected by parliament, And the National Charter Association held the movement together, As it developed so many different local strands: Teetotal Chartism, Temperance Chartism, Chartist Churches, Chartist Chapels, The Chartist Land Cooperative Society, Groupings with middle class organisations such as The Complete Suffrage Union and the Anti Corn Law League …The April of 1848 (‘the Year of Revolutions’) Saw the Third Petition and a state of high alarm in London: Queen Victoria took refuge in the Isle of Wight, As parliament sniggered at some of the nearly 2 million signatures – ‘Victoria Rex’, ‘Duke of Wellington’ and ‘Mr Punch’ indeed; But as Royle points out, Such names were often used to conceal identity and reprisal; Or to laugh at, gull and guy authority; And if some signatures were written in the same hand, These were not forgeries, But reflected the opinions of the ’30 per cent of society’ who used an X;
‘Other signatures were dismissed because they were those of women’, But as Royle points out: ‘Even if the … Commons did underestimate the number of petitioners, a figure of around two million – out of a total population of seventeen million over the age of ten – remains very impressive.’ And even though the events of April are usually portrayed as a damp squib, Riots continued in the north, A silent march of 80,000 took place in London, Street fights with the police broke out in the East End, Information from police spies and agents provocateurs Suggested a metropolitan uprising as a national trigger, But the movement declined and then disappeared into history …
A failure. Or was it? It gave the working class confidence and self-belief; It helped develop a national political culture Whilst invigorating local diversities; It politicised factory, mill, workshop, smithy, forge, furnace, loom, lathe, kitchen, bedroom, railway, canal, pub, spinning wheel, club, church, chapel, mechanics’ institute, evening schools, Sunday schools – In short, it helped develop a working class consciousness, And it forced the governments of the 1840s to bring in reforms (Mines Act, Factory Acts, Public Health Act et al)
That otherwise would have been delayed. Post Script: Bronterre O’Brien 1837:
‘Knaves will tell you, that it is because you have no property you are unrepresented. I tell you, on the contrary, it is because you are unrepresented that you have no property.’

‘Address of the Female Political Union of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to their Fellow-countrywomen’, Northern Star, 9 February 1839: ‘We have been told that the province of woman is her home, and that the field of politics should be left to men; this we deny … For years we have struggled to maintain our homes … greet our husbands after their fatiguing labours. Year after year have passed away, and even now our wishes have no prospect of being realised, our husbands are over wrought, our houses half furnished, our families ill-fed, and our children uneducated … We are a despised caste, our oppressors are not content with despising our feelings, but demand the control of our thoughts and wants!’

‘The Christian Chartist Church’, Chartist Circular, 29 August 1840; ‘Christian Chartists! … Let us march triumphantly forward on the sacred way that leads to civil and religious liberty, equality and happiness. Let us press towards the glorious goal of Universal Suffrage.’

 

The Newport Rising of 1839

A Newport Declamation:

These are the women and men of Newport,

The charged and imprisoned;

We shall remember them.

Saint Leonard of Noblac,

Patron saint of prisoners,

Hear our roll call:

James Aust, Thomas Ball, John Batten, Richard Benfield, Thomas Bolton, Solomon Briton, John Britton, Charles Bucknell, Joseph Coales, John Charles, Dai ‘the Tinker’,

Thomas Davies, Thomas Davies, Thomas Davies, William Davies,

Isaac Davies, Edmund Edmunds, Samuel Etheridge, Evan Edwards,

Thomas Edwards, John Fisher; Edward Frost, John Frost, George George,

John Gibby, John (Job) Harries; Henry Harris, William Havard, Moses Horner, William Horner, Thomas Keys, William Jones, Thomas Lewis,

John Lewis Llewellin,

Thomas Llewellin, William Llewellin, John Lovell, Jack ‘the Fifer’,

Amy Meredith, James Meredith, James Moore,

Jenkin Morgan, Thomas Morgan, John Owen, John Partridge, Isaac Phillips, John Rees,

Benjamin Richards, Edmund Richards, Lewis Rowland,

William Shellard, George Tomlins (Thompson),

George Turner (also known as George Cole), Frederick Turner,

Charles Waters, David Williams, Ebenezer Williams, William Williams, Zephania Williams.

And at the going down of the sun,

And in the business of a Newport morning,

We shall also hear an echo

From the roll call of the dead:

Collier-men, Evan Davies and William Farraday

And Abraham Thomas,

Miners such as William Evans and John Morris,

Men of stout heart such as John Codd and David Davies,

And John Jonathan and William Griffiths,

Robert Lansdowne and Reece Meredith and William Williams,

And Isaac Thomas of Nantyglo,

And John, ‘the Roller’, of Nantyglo,

The tinker, David Morgan,

William Aberdare,

Private Williams, deserter from the 29^th Regiment of Foot,

And the carpenter,

John Davis, of Pontnewynydd,

And the cabinet-maker, young George Shell of Pontypool.

The crimes of these men and women as defined

By the time in which they lived included:

High Treason, Burglary, High Treason & Sedition, Being Illegally Armed, Making Bullets, Being Armed with Guns, Spears and Other Offensive Weapons, Unlawful Combination and Confederacy, Assault, Conspiracy and Riot, and Riotous Assembly.

The causes for which these men and women

 Suffered imprisonment, now constitute the law of the land.

The causes for which these men and women

Were imprisoned, transported,

Sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering,

Also, now, constitute the law of the land –

Let the living answer the roll call of the dead.

 

 

 

 

 

Selsley 1839

I’ll never forget last Tuesday, even if I live to seventy.

We all woke up so excited, never eaten porridge so fast.

We put on our best blouses, aprons and hats,

The men shaved their chins, put on their caps,

Moleskin trousers and fustian waistcoats,

And out we strode into the lane.

Such a sight you never did see!

The men and women and children,

All marching in an orderly line past our cottage;

Then when we got to Stroud, we couldn’t believe our eyes:

Serpentine lines climbing up every valley side,

There must have been thousands!

All laughing and cheering, but sore determined,

To get our rights and right our wrongs;

Bread has never been so dear and wages are down,

With long hours for those who do have work;

Then there was the Tolpuddle Martyrs,

Then there was the New Poor Law and the Workhouse.

The Bible tells us to nurture each other in sickness and in health,

But the Workhouse rents us all asunder!

So it was such a joy to see them all,

See them all streaming from

Sheepscombe, Steanbridge and Slad,

Stroud, Stonehouse, Woodchester, Uley, Wotton,

The Stanleys, Selsley, Cainscross, Minchinhampton, Painswick,

Rodborough, Stonehouse, Randwick, Ruscombe, Bisley,

Nailsworth, Avening and Horsley,

Bussage, Brimscombe and Thrupp;

Bands playing, music flowing, banners billowing:

‘Liberty’; ‘Equal Rights and Equal Laws’;

‘For a Nation to be Free it is Sufficient that She wills it’.

Then the banners from the Working Men’s Associations,

And the Radical Women’s Associations,

Then the handbills and placards listing our six points:

Universal Suffrage; Secret Ballot; Payment of MPs;

Abolition of the property qualification for MPs;

Equal constituencies; Annual Parliaments;

Then the speeches up there on top of the common:

‘We must have the 6 points’;

‘Peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must’;

‘Those damnable Poor Law Bastilles are worse than prisons’;

‘May the Almighty inspire the people with vigour and energy’;

Then cheers for our Chartist leaders’ names,

And then the groans for Russell’s;

It was such a day and life will never be the same again:

Russell says we do not understand the laws of capital and wages,

But we do, my Lord.

We do.

What If?

What if the soldiers hadn’t fired

From the shutters of the Westgate Hotel,

But downed their weapons and deserted instead,

To join the ranks of the democrats?

 

What if George Shell hadn’t endured an agonising death

Through three long hours,

But was welcomed into the Hotel instead,

To fraternise with the special constables.

What if Newport had been taken,

The iron works and collieries too,

The canals and tram roads and turnpikes,

In common ownership.

What if the mail hadn’t got through from Newport,

So that Chartists rose from all over England,

In common cause for the Charter,

And the Sacred Month of strikes.

 

What if soldiers in all their barracks and billets,

Refused to move against their comrades,

Disobeyed their officers and orders,

But made common cause instead.

What if the Charter had become law in 1839?

Whatever next?

Just as the world copied the first industrial revolution,

And copied the habits of British capitalism,

So it would have copied the first industrial revolution,

And the manners of British socialism,

The world would have followed the example of British socialism.

That is how important the Newport Rising was:

Ever Remember the 4^th of November

And those anonymous burial plots.

 

So here I am in my front room in Rodborough, Stroud;

I looked out of my front room window,

To look for John Frost’s ghost climbing up Rodborough Hill,

3,000 gathered up there on the common,

Where I so often picture them,

John Frost on the horse drawn cart,

Addressing the crowds.

I took an evening walk to gaze at Sugar Loaf,

Far beyond the silver Severn,

Thinking of Stroud’s Five Valleys,

And the valleys of Newport,

The rush of rivers,

Topography, Industry,

The rush of history …

A few days later at the Chartist Convention:

There we were, like two old Chartists

Plotting in the churchyard at St. Woolas,

John, puffing on a roll up, like it was an old clay pipe,

Me, talking scripts, John Frost, cameras and our film,

Right by the Chartist memorial plaque,

When you, Pat, suddenly appeared, smiling,

With a gift, a volume of Thomas Cooper’s

The Purgatory of Suicides,

Written in prison after the Plug Riots:

Close to a thousand Spenserian stanzas

Of ‘Prison Rhyme’,

Expressing the radicalism

Of ‘The Hungry Forties’

(‘SLAVES, toil no more!’),

Ideas that made Disraeli stop and ponder,

And influenced Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke,

Let alone thousands of Chartists by their firesides.

I was quite overwhelmed –The fading afternoon sun, The memorial, The autumnal leaves,

The setting, The generosity of the gift, The utter unexpectedness of such a gift, The sensitive symbolism of such a gift –Tears welled up in my eyes, And stayed with me though the afternoon twilight.

After I left the Chartist Convention,

I travelled by train under a Hunter’s Moon,

The Severn a floodtide of moonlight,

Wondering whose hands had first opened that book,

Whose fingers had first turned over those pages,

Whose eyes had first scanned the words by candle-light …

Reading aloud and sharing the words,

As I shall do to link space and time:

Newport and Stroud and Past and Present.

The Pubs and Inns of the 1839 Newport Rising

I sing a song of tram-roads, canals, and turnpikes,

A song of collieries, iron works and tin-works,

Of forge and smith and furnace,

Of chapel and beer house and wayside inn,

A song of club and pub and tavern

And working people’s societies,

A song of Union and Prudence and Energy,

Of horns and drums and flag and pennant.

I sing a hymn to all your Chartist Lodges,

And a hymn to all your Chartist pubs:

The Greyhound at Pontilanfraith,

The King Crispin at Brynmawr,

The Prince of Wales, Commercial Street, Newport,

The Star in Dukestown,

The Miners Arms near Nelson,

The Navigation Inn at Crumlin,

The Royal Oak at Blaina,

The Coach and Horses at Blackwood,

The King’s Head at Pontypool,

The Ship and Pilot at Newport,

The Bush Inn, Newport,

The Bristol House, Pontypool,

The Rolling Mill Inn, Blaina,

The Colliers Arms, Llanfabon-Llancaich,

The Colliers Arms, Nelson,

The Globe Inn, Tredegar,

The Horse and Jockey, Dukestown,

The Angel, Maesycwmmer,

The Maypole, Crosspenmaen,

The Boot, betwixt Ystrad Bridge and the Rhymney tram-road,

The Lamb and Flag beer-house at Blackwood,

The Old Bridge, Risca,

The Welsh Oak, Pontymister,

The Welch Oak, on the outskirts of Newport,

The Bush, Nantyglo,

The Six Bells, Stow Hill,

The Red Lion, Tredegar,

The Wyvern Inn, Sirhowy,

The Coach and Horses, Brynithel.

The Waterloo, Newport,

The Royal Oak, Mill Street, Newport,

The Trewythen Arms Hotel, Llanidloes,

The Red Lion, Sirhowy:

This is the song I sing.

Newport and Stroud Conjoined

So here I am in The Prince Albert,

After musing in late afternoon light

In my front room in Coronation Road,

Up the road from the Queen Victoria,

And the Lord John in Russell Street,

Reading a letter to the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell,

from Henry Burgh:

“Rodborough, March 29^th, 1839, 6p.m. My Lord I acknowledge receipt of Your Lordship’s Directions this morning. I have taken measures to have them put into Execution. Some of the Chartists came to Stroud yesterday Evening, and today about quarter past two about 500 marched up Rodborough Hill by my house with 9 Flags and a strange Band of Musick…I have stopped the Beer Shops and Publick Houses…There are several policemen placed…”

Newport’s John Frost was selected as the prospective Chartist candidate for the next election in Stroud at this meeting,

Selected to oppose Stroud’s MP, Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary –

And so, my wandering through time and space

In South Wales –

The pubs, the inns and my imagination,

Had begun in my own front room:

Before I decided to walk up to the Albert,

To look for John Frost’s ghost climbing up Rodborough Hill,

3,000 gathered up there on the common,

Where I so often picture them:

John Frost on the horse drawn cart,

Addressing the crowds,

The People’s Charter within their grasp;

The sun was setting,

My favourite time,

So, I got up out of the chair for a constitutional:

An evening walk to the common,

To gaze at Sugar Loaf,

Seventy miles as the crow flies,

Far beyond the silver Severn,

Thinking of Stroud’s Five Valleys,

And the valleys beyond Newport,

The rush of rivers,

Topography, Industry,

The rush of history …

But the next day took me away from my home,

On holiday to St. David’s,

And here I walked by streams and springs and rivers,

Woodlands, orchards and pastures,

Along the raging sea’s margins,

Across rocks and cliff tops,

By holy wells and cathedral bells,

At autumn twilight time,

With red furnace sunsets,

And burnished cumulus clouds,

Like some fiery iron works in the sky,

With coal black sky-scape splashes

Down there on the far horizon

Of Storm Brian’s maelstrom,

Trying to hear, in the wind,

The footfall of colliers, smiths, foundry-men, furnace-men,

Wheelwrights, carpenters, miners,

Women from the kitchen, laundry, loom and spinning wheel;

Then tracing a finger line on a Newport OS map,

Trying to forage my way through Time,

In search of that dreamscape Silurian Republic.

A week later I scuffed through the fallen leaves,

To catch the train from Stroud to Newport,

White hills west to Wales in the early morning mist,

The first frost of the season:

I arrived in Newport before nine,

Keen to see how the Rising would feature

To the casual passer-by, in the streets,

Going about the business of the day:

I followed my Chartist Heritage Trail map,

Crossed a couple of main roads at pelicans,

Nipped through a car park and was in the centre

In a couple of minutes,

And was straight into the centre of

‘The invention of tradition’:

The Queen’s Hotel, with an imperial Victoria,

Not the young queen of the Rising;

A statue of Sir Charles Morgan of Tredegar Baronet,

A memorial ‘erected AD 1850’,

‘The man whose “benevolence they admired

and whose loss they deplore”’;

Blue plaques from the Newport Civic Trust,

Lauding architecture and design,

But the former Six Bells lies dilapidated and unrecorded,

The only cottages standing on Stow Hill

That witnessed that unique and remarkable march,

Stand mutely and unremarked,

While passers-by in the street of whom I asked directions,

(All generations and backgrounds)

Were mostly unaware of the Six Bells or the workhouse

(‘Oh! I suppose it’s where the hospital is. You’re right!’),

But the memorial at St. Woolos,

Is, of course, deeply moving and arresting,

And, like the sculptures outside the Westgate Hotel

(‘UNION’ ‘PRUDENCE’ ‘ENERGY’),

Is a late twentieth century memorial to the Rising,

Where art and the past and the here and now

Intertwine in serendipitous ways:

The Chartist mural on the hotel front door,

Colourfully recreating the scene of November 1839,

Is ripped by a real security padlock,

Which juts out through the picture,

Keeping the covered boarded up doors beneath,

Safely locked shut against any contemporary George Shells

Seeking ingress by the Vaping Poundland empty shops,

In some sort of indeliberate trompe l’oeil;

Chartist drapes and tapestries fluttered in the wind,

On the side of the Baltica Lounge,

Opposite Argos:

‘GET WHAT YOU WANT TODAY’, ‘WE’RE NEVER FAR AWAY’

‘WE’VE MOVED’

While a solitary dog, tied up in the porch of the hotel,

Provided a mis en scene mirror

To the dog in the mural fleeing the gunfire,

The bloodshed echoed by the ketchup

On the wrappings strewn on the pavement;

Shoppers scurried past, seeking their bargains,

On past the pawnbrokers and BET FRED,

Past the maps of the shops at John Frost Square:

No memory here, nor near his birthplace or draper’s shop,

But back near the Westgate Hotel,

On the hotel side of H. Samuel’s clock,

Time stood still – the clock face lacked its hands –

But pointed the way to beyond the veil:

‘It was said of one man that he lay dying under the portico of the mayor’s house for up to one and a half hours, pleading for help and receiving none. Until the authorities in the Westgate decreed it otherwise, time stood still.’

(David J. V. Jones),

So, I sat down by the banks and the mobile phone shops,

Reading David Jones’ book on the Newport Rising,

Seeing the occasional grandparent stop to point at the mural,

Stop to explain the sculptures to another generation,

On the first day of the half term,

Walked back up past the Pen and Wig,

To study the memorial to the Monmouthshire Regiment,

Heroes of Ypres,

Wondering how many of those men did not have the vote …

And then met Pat, who showed me the milestone in the street:

To Downing Street 145 miles,

And talked of the plans to develop Stow Hill,

With Chartist and Citizenship memorials;

We walked and talked,

Had a cup of tea,

And I returned home on the train,

To scribble up my notes,

And develop my pub pilgrimage ideas

About an Ale Trail Constitutional,

A recreation of a Rising march,

That could have changed the constitution.

Thursday December 17^th saw me back on the GWR,

Rain-streaked carriage windows and leafless trees,

Bedraggled sheep, pasture and hedgerows,

Sodden brown earth ploughed arable fields,

Commuters checking weather reports about Storm Caroline –

But the sun was out when we got to Newport,

Sheets and towels billowing on the line

In the back gardens of the terraced streets;

I caught the X24 to Pontypool,

Drivers bending the rules and not charging me:

‘It’s an English pass. We’re supposed to charge.

But no worries mate. On you get.’

Young men behind me discussing drugs, prison,

Rehabilitation and Universal Credit,

And avidly reading books too:
‘There’s worse hobbies innit?’

I made my way to the excellent museum

(‘We have papers in our archive library showing that the Kings Head was in Crane Street; unfortunately it was not possible to pin-point the exact location. Trade directories merely indicate Crane Street, with no indentifying number. The Kings Head disappears completely from the Trade Directories in the 1870w’)

Just down from the UKIP offices –

‘I didn’t know we had a museum in Pontypool.’

And if those young men didn’t know of the museum,

Then how difficult it is to create for them

A parallel Chartist universe

Of rain-swept men marching through the night,

Through what is now a present tense landscape

Of roundabouts, dual carriageways,

Traffic jams, queues and traffic lights –

This is not a landscape for a pedestrian,

Let alone an ambulant dreamer:

Cars run past the signs tied to the lampposts:

‘NEED WORK? £450!’

This question of how to recreate and present

Our Chartist heritage so as to engage,

Inform, educate and entertain,

Preoccupied me when I returned to Newport,

Walking past the betting shop offering

Forty pounds’ worth of free bets,

Walking past the beggars in the shop doorways,

Walking past the sites of the Chartist ghost pubs,

For Commercial Street is for Christmas presents today,

And the Ghost of Christmas Present,

Not the Ghost of Chartism Past:

The traffic warden issuing tickets

Just near where George Shell fell …

‘”Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge.’

 

 

We are planning to hold a ‘Chartist Festival’ on May 17/18 as a fundraiser for the Heavens and the Trinity Rooms.

As many readers know, in 1839, the last armed insurrection on British soil took place: the Newport Rising of 5,000 Chartists, led by John Frost. He had been selected earlier in the year to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Chartists in Stroud at a meeting on Rodborough Common.

Each November, a torchlit procession at the cathedral in Newport commemorates the uprising and aftermath.

We in Stroud have done much to commemorate the mass meetings of Chartists in the Stroud area in 1839. There has been a community film. I received a commission from Newport to write a booklet and the textual piece has been performed both in Stroud and in the cathedral and a pub in Newport.

The links do not stop there: the Stroud Red Band were part of the Newport procession in November 2024 – and that visit has led me to the proposal below. A joint fundraiser for the Trinity Rooms and the Heavens.

An exhibition/festival starting with a morning walk to and along Selsley Common to commemorate the May 1839 Chartist meeting held there, attended by 5,000 people. Katie McCue to read up there in situ.

In the afternoon up The Prince Albert: the community film running continuously (people dropping in as and when).

Posters and photographs and words around the walls to contextualise, inform, educate and entertain. The Big Red Band.

An evening performance – poems and song before the main event: The commissioned Newport-Stroud performance piece.

Invitations have been and will be sent out to Newport and Bristol to build further links too.

We imagine, at the moment, that entry will be donations/pay what you can rather than ticketed.

Sunday will  feature Chinese Burn and The Forgetting Curve: both have recorded songs about the Selsley Hill meeting (Chinese Burn in situ) and both will, no doubt, include these in their sets. Their two Chartist songs were based on original Chartist songs and hymns.

More to come as time’s winged chariot does its usual job.

Take a Walk in my Boots

Stroud Walking Football Club

(SWFC)

 

History doesn’t have to be about the great and the famous and the extraordinary. It can be about ordinary people too. For it’s true to say that ordinary lives are extraordinary too: it’s how you look at it – as William Blake said: ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.’

Well, at ‘Take a Walk in my Boots’ at Broady’s in the High Street in Stroud, we don’t reveal a life and a history in an hour, but we do something similar in 40 minutes or so per person.

But what is this ‘Take a Walk in my Boots’ of which I speak, I hear you say or think.

The idea is that a member of SWFC takes the stage and a mic with another player who has a mic: one asks the questions and the other answers to reveal the backstory of their life. And what’s so weird and wonderful about that you ask? Hasn’t the format of This is your Life been on television since the distant days of two channels in black & white? Doesn’t contemporary television cosset itself and its viewers with the chat show format?

Well, this is what makes it different: we are a group of some thirty or so people who are all at least fifty; mostly in their sixties, with a smattering of over seventies. And we all play walking football at Stratford Park in Stroud with the Stroud Walking Football Club. This was originally set up to assist people with their mental and physical health – but like Topsy …

Some us play three times a week; some twice and some just the once. Some individuals are connected with others by family, the past and the Venn diagram of seven handshakes, but, in the main, people only know each other through the medium of the football match and a chinwag before and after playing. Thus, knowledge of another player is almost literally and metaphorically skin deep.

We are, in a sense, a company of strangers.

So, opening up about our lives before an audience is revelatory.

When I witnessed the first presentation on November 6^th 2024 from the audience and then when I witnessed the audience from the viewpoint of the questioner, I felt as though I and we were in a Ken Loach film where ‘ordinary’ people do the acting or in a Channel4 documentary of yore. It felt almost like a hyperreality and that was nothing to do with the lager I was sipping. It really was a People’s History William Blake moment: this truly was the much-vaunted beautiful game: but, oh so different from the usual meanings invoked by that trope.

And as I sat there as an interlocutor: listening and questioning and responding and extemporizing, whilst also studying and reacting to the audience, I began to think that this oral and consequently ephemeral personal history should be given some textual permanence. It was too valuable to lose: it was a Blakean moment where a world was seen in a grain of sand.

Hence this piece that you are reading at the moment.

In conclusion, so as to give all of this a bit of intellectual and historiographical heft, a few insights from Jonathan Meades’ An Encyclopaedia of Myself on the subject of memory and recall:

‘Every time I write once upon a time I am, anyway, already exhuming the disputable, conjuring a photocopy of a faded print made from a detrited negative. I am striving to distinguish the original from its replays. So why add to the store of the provisional? The forms and shades of what used to be are already hideously mutable, every act of recall is both an erosion and an augmentation. I remember therefore I reshape.’

My reply to that question: ‘So why add to the store of the provisional?’ is that we are recalling the past collectively and actively in the moment. This is no archival studious exploration in some candle-lit garret. This is individual recall as a collective experience. It’s epiphanic. It’s hyperreality.

In Broady’s. In the High Street. In Stroud. On a Wednesday night.

And as Raphael Samuel put it in Theatres of Memory Past and Present in Contemporary Culture,

‘…history is not the prerogative of the historian, nor even, as postmodernism contends, a historian’s “invention”. It is rather, a social form of knowledge…’

Penultimately, here’s Hilary Mantel on that hoary old chestnut, ‘What is History?’ ‘… history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.’

Finally. William Faulkner: “The past is not dead. It is not even past yet.”

So, take a walk in our boots and see what happens.