Allen Davenport
Prologue
When you were there at the Hopkins Street political chapel,
Or the Archer Street chapel in Soho,
Or listening at the Mulberry Tree in Moorfields,
In those months before the Cato Street Conspiracy,
There, with Robert Wedderburn –
Your rhetoric celebrating atheism,
Denouncing Christian hypocrisy
And espousing armed sedition,
In this, the most revolutionary
Of all the Spencean and political chapels,
Did your mind ever wander madeleine-like,
To the green in Ewen where you taught yourself to read,
And where you taught yourself to write?
(‘I was born May 1st, 1775, in the small and obscure village of Ewen … somewhat more than a mile from the source of the Thames, on the banks of which stream stands the cottage where I was born … I was never in any school … I had to get the very alphabet by catching a letter at a time as best I could from other children, who had learnt them at school … The next grand object I had in view was to acquire the art of penmanship …’)
Part the First
You had been a friend of Thomas Spence,
Since you had first met him in 1804,
It was Spence’s Restorer of Society to its Natural State
That set you on the path to political prose and poetry,
Spence’s writings were an epiphany for you:
‘’Tis reason’s light – an intellectual sun,
Whose influence, none but fools and tyrants shun.
‘Tis human knowledge, and a sense of right,
That burst upon me like a flood of light’;
You would be Thomas’ biographer,
A prolific versifier and poet,
A delegate to the Shoemakers’ Union,
And in defiance of the Combination Acts,
A supporter of a general strike,
In 1813, just after the northern Luddites;
Later, a radical and revolutionary writer,
Turning towards physical force
After ‘reason’s light’ failed to sway ‘fools and tyrants’,
A government spy reported thus on the Spencean view
About the projected peaceful meeting at St Peters Fields
(When Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt famously declared:
‘Bring nought but your self-approving consciences’) –
‘They expect the Row to begin, and this they look upon as the signal to begin. They will be much disappointed if that meeting goes off quietly.’
Part the Second
There was a rush of Spencean publications
In the lead up to Peterloo:
Address of the Society of Christian Philanthropists to All Mankind,
on the Means of Promoting Liberty and Happiness’
More Plots, More Treason, More Green Bags,
But you, Allen, still remembered the quintessential
Principles of agrarianism:
‘Thus all the world BELONGS TO MAN,
But NOT to Kings and Lords;
A country’s lands the people’s farm,
And all that it affords:
For why? Divide it how you will,
‘Tis all the people’s still:
The people’s country, parish, town;
They build, defend and till’.
But, part of the web and fringe of Cato Street Conspirators,
You spoke thus in the wake of Peterloo:
‘War … has … been declared against us why then should we hesitate,
for my own part I am ready now … I compare the present time to the crisis of the French Revolution, we must arm ourselves as they did.’
A close confidante of Robert Wedderburn,
Radical atheist and physical force revolutionary,
Arthur Thistlewood ‘ says he depends more on
Wedderburn’s division for being armed than all the rest’;
Part the Third
After the failure of the Conspiracy,
In the quieter 1820s
(The decade of so-called ‘Liberal Toryism’),
You would write verse in praise of Owenism,
Extend the principles of the ‘People’s Farm’
(‘I have no doubt that it was the Agrarian fellowship in land
that presented to the minds of the ancients the idea of Paradise’),
To the wider industrial means of production
And transport infrastructure
(‘Manufacturing machinery’ should be ‘public property’),
Propose action redolent of an Amazon boycott:
‘the middle and lower classes of shopkeepers are as much dissatisfied with the government as the working people are. The plan by which I propose to form an alliance between the working classes and the lower class of shopkeepers or middlemen, is exclusive dealing’.
You would write a ‘Cooperative Catechism’,
Give lectures with fellow working class leaders,
Write for Richard Carlisle’s The Republican,
Write for the Cooperative Magazine,
Support the British Association for Promoting Co-operative Knowledge,
Become president of the Great Tower Mutual Instruction Society
At the Society for Scientific, Useful and Literary Information
(The Bowling Square chapel in Lower White Cross Street),
Support the Society for Promoting Anti-Christian and General Instruction,
Where three hundred could meet at the ‘Optimist Chapel’
(The clergy? ‘robbing the lower class of people
and not only them but the poor Farmers …
Tythes and Taxation all owing to them
by their Extravagance and Luxury’);
Part the Fourth
Speak at protest meetings at the Borough Chapel,
Support contraception on feminist grounds,
Speak for the National Union of the Working Classes,
At the ‘Finsbury Forum’
(Was it really in an old cow shed near St Luke’s,
Before moving to a house in Bunhill Row?),
But the Finsbury group was in the radical vanguard
Over the 1832 Reform Act:
‘Confiscate the estates of obdurate peers!’
It helped lead the unstamped press campaign;
It took the lead with the NUWC,
And led criticism of the new police in 1834 at Cold Bath Fields,
With AD once more in the vanguard:
‘The object of the Government was not to warn but surround and slaughter … this police mob … It behoves every friend of peace, order and good government to be on their guard against these common disturbers of peaceable society’,
Then you’re in Brighton Street at a ‘Mechanics’ Forum’,
Trumpeting the thoughts of Thomas Spence.
‘Author of the Spencean system, or Agarian Equality’
At the London Co-operative Society,
Then a founder member of the London Manufacturing Community,
Becoming its storekeeper,
But still finding the time to use your quill:
‘We manufactured boots, shoes, brushes, etc., and for a time, our little establishment inspired us with the most ardent hopes that it would realise our fondest anticipations, and convince the world of the superiority of the co-operative principle over that of competition.’
Part the Fifth
Your life bridged and fused together
So many different strands of thought,
In a span that stretched from the American Revolution
To the ‘Hungry Forties’ and Chartism:
Agrarianism; Revolution; Owenism; Secularism,
And, finally, metropolitan Chartism:
You were president of the ELDA,
And a founder member of the East London Democratic Association,
You campaigned, spoke and lectured all over London,
Your 1836 biography of the great pioneer,
Life, Writings, and Principles of Thomas Spence,
Was acclaimed by old comrades and new Chartist companions,
When you spoke on the celebration of Spence’s birthday,
Before a rerun of the rousing old songs of Spence,
And when the first Chartist Land Plan scheme
Came to fruition at O’Connorville in Hertfordshire,
You jubilantly declared that ‘The Jubilee is come at last’,
For ‘the Agrarian Revolution’ had seemingly commenced.
Part the Sixth
‘If there were no parks or pleasure grounds, the whole face of the country would present to the eye cornfields, meadows, gardens, plantations of all kinds of fruit trees etc., all to the highest state of cultivation.’
Post-script:
‘I feel I should add a few lines about just what I owed my wife. She was tireless in supporting my work as a cobbler and tireless in helping me develop as a thinker, polemicist and writer. She gave me confidence, love and a child.
When she died, my income though shoemaking plumbed the depths. She was my indefatigable partner in the industrious production of shoes, clogs and boots. And Thomas Spence was too, in a sort of numinous manner: with his dedication of some words to our patron saint, to the ‘Service of St Crispin’, after our 1812 strike failed to improve our lot in the metropolis.’
Post-post-script:
A government spy’s report of Allen’s words after Peterloo: ‘The Yoemanry had murdered our fellow Countrymen but had we in our own Defence shot even one or two of them it would have been called Murder and Rebellion, but [we] will put up with it no longer … we may loose a few lives in the onset yet what is the army compared to the Mass of the Country who are laboring under the yoke of Despotism … these Yoemanry are but few compared with us and it only wants the People to make up their minds as one Man for it is better to Die fighting in the cause of Liberty and freedom than be starved by our Oppressors.’
Post-post-post-script:
Concluding Remarks on Allen Davenport
The King, or Legitimacy Unmasked, A Satirical Poem
Printed by the celebrated exponent of the Spencean burlesque,
Samuel Waddington in Oxford Street in 1819;
This poem written by the son of a weaver in Ewen,
Was bought by a government spy from Robert Wedderburn;
This boy who taught himself to read and write,
Would become a noted writer for Sherwin’s Political Register,
But when he made his last recorded visit to Wedderburn’s chapel,
So he ceased to contribute to the radical press –
The Theological Comet asked:
‘What is become of A.D.?’
Followed by Davenport’s poem,
‘Saint Ethelstone’s Day’,
Which commented upon Peterloo’s
‘Yoemanry Butchers’ who
‘hacked off the breasts of women
and then cut off the ears and noses of men’,
Then his lines about consequent Christian hypocrisy;
So let us remember Allen Davenport with his own concluding words:
‘Every man should study Politics, for my part I study them all Day. I write on them, I dream of them at Night, I stand here twice a week preaching Blasphemy and Sedition (as they call it and will continue to do so unless they rob me of my liberty.’
And, finally, his speech from October 27th 1819: “Let us prepare to knock down this system of tyranny to rush upon the Cannon’s Mouth and if we should not succeed Die gloriously in the Struggle.”
Sources used:
Artisans and Politics in Early 19th Century London John Gast and His Times
Iorweth Prothero Methuen 1979
The Life and Times of Thomas Spence P.M. Ashraf 1983
The Poor Man’s Revolutionary ed by Alastair Bonnett and Keith Armstrong
The People’s Farm English Radical Agrarianism 1775-1840 Malcolm Chase
The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport With a further selection of the author’s work Compiled and Edited by Malcolm Chase Scolar Press 1994
The Muses’s Wreath, containing Hornsey Wood and other Poems Allen Davenport
Radical Underworld Ian McCalman Clarendon Paperbacks
Radical Culture David Worrall Wayne State University