The roots of Socialism’s environmentalism go way back: Thomas Spence, for example, who thought enclosure and what we call now call factory farming should be replaced by ‘People’s Farms’.
John Thelwall – ‘that Jacobin fox’, ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’ – associate of Coleridge and Wordsworth, who stayed here in the summer of 1797. His studied observations of ‘Nature’ would foreground working people too. It wasn’t just the cult of the picturesque and the sublime for him.
The Chartists, too, had a programme that involved a back to the land strand. They saw the environmental degradation caused by unbridled capitalism, industrialisation and urbanisation. Let’s not forget the 5,000 who met on Selsley Common in 1839.
Then, of course, we have William Morris. Visit Selsley Church to remind yourself of his influence! And sit and reflect on the long history of Socialism’s embrace of environmentalism. Then read the below!
A Show at the Hustings in Stroud
To Play the Martyr
or Shooting Ourselves in the Foot!
For
The truth I think is all too plain to see:
If I vote Green, I end up with the Enemy.
For, alas, I think it all too true:
‘Vote Green, get Blue’.
Vote Green, get Blue?
A Plea to my Green friends:
We cannot vote with our heart,
We need to vote with our head:
We need to vote Red.
Surely a much better story –
Than ending up with a Tory.
The Best Show in Town:
For the Many
Not the Few!