Author: Stuart Butler

Charles Dickens Walk

Charles Dickens Walk

Radical Stroud will be starting their Charles Dickens series of walks on Tuesday March 19th. We shall board the 8.31 iron horse and return on the 18.34 train to Stroud. Those who wish to meet us at Paddington, if travelling from elsewhere, please try to reach the terminus by about ten o’clock.

The walk will commence at Embankment underground station and proceed along Villiers Street, John Adam Street, Buckingham Street, George Court, the Strand, Bedford Street, Maiden Lane, Southampton Street, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, Russell Street, Bow Street, Wellington Street, the Aldwych, the Strand: with a coffee stop at Somerset House.

We shall then visit Surrey Street, before making our way to Kingsway (via the Strand and Aldwych again), then Portugal Street, Sheffield Street, Portsmouth Street, Lincoln Inn’s Fields, Serle Street, Carey Street, Chancery Lane, Fleet Street, Clifford Inn’s Passage, Fetter Lane, Hen and Chickens Court, Johnson’s Court, Wine Office Court and then Ye Old Cheshire Cheese Public House for victuals and whatever takes your fancy.

We then process through Shoe Lane and St Andrew’s Street up to Holborn Circus. We then make our way via New Fetter Lane and Fetter Lane past the site of Barnard’s Inn to Staple Inn Square. We cross High Holborn, Gray’s Inn Road, and then turn into Warwick Close and then Gray’s Inn. We then walk towards the site of Furnival’s Inn to cross Theobald’s Road, before finding John Street and then the Dickens House Museum in Doughty Street.

 

After our visit and study there, the Dickensian Pilgrims might wish to write up their thoughts and observations for Ye Radical Stroude Gazette or visit the Cittie of Yorke Public House or make their way to the River Thames before once more congregating at Paddington.

 

Here’s Dickens, From The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.1857; it’s not about Paddington but it certainly captures the atmosphere of a busy railway station.

 

‘It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors … shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph bell was in a very restless condition. All manner of cross-lines came zig-zagging into it … and, a little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly going through the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a public-house bar. In one direction, confused quantities of embankments and arches … in the other, the rails soon disentangled themselves into two tracks, and shot away under a bridge and curved round a corner. Sidings were there, in which empty luggage vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other … and warehouses were there… Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and water were ready … the other, for the hungry and thirsty humans … who might take what they could get…’

Festival of Terminalia

Tuesday February 20th

Radical Stroud intend to contribute to the Festival of Terminalia with a visit to Bath and John Thelwall’s gravestone. We shall then recreate the events of Citizen John’s last lecture and his death as we slip down wormholes of time. This Terminalia Festival walk will follow in the wake of literary, historical and political topographers – in the words of Lee Jackson in Dickensland, “Literary tourism has itself been described as ‘necromanticism’ – a ghostly communion with the dead author and their work – the real world haunted by the ghosts of fiction.’

Meet outside the main door of Bath Abbey at 11.30. We shall then walk to Walcot Churchyard; thence to the site of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (no longer there, destroyed in the Bath Blitz of 1942, but it was near the Parade Gardens, Manvers and Pierrepont Streets.). This is where Thelwall gave his final lecture. The next part of the walk will take an additional 35 minutes or so: we then saunter up Sion Hill to Winifred House, the school & home of his regular host in Bath, the Rev. William Hutchins (bombed in WW2; now Bath Spa University).

This final lecture happened in late February 1834. Thelwall died, not quite seventy, on the night following this last lecture. Professor Judith Asta Thompson comments: ‘In his youth he had made a deal with his friend, Dr. Astley Cooper, that he would let him have his heart for scientific purposes (Thelwall’s heart beat so loud that it could be heard by passers-by in the street). This seems not to have happened. Maybe you can still hear it …’

The theme of this year’s Terminalia Festival btw is ‘Time’…

TERMINALIA WALK COMPLETED:

Our peripatetic faithfully followed the words of Professor Judith Asta Thompson and we were also delighted to have a guest appearance from Steve Poole, Chair of the John Thelwall Society.

From Professor Judith Asta Thompson:

If you want to recreate it (I didn’t have time last year but will return one day to do so)… he gave his final lecture at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on February 17 or 18, 1834 (no longer there, destroyed in the Bath Blitz of 1942, but it was downtown near the Parade Gardens, Manvers and Pierrepont Sts.). The lecture (one of his regular series on “Oratory and Elocution of the Bar, Pulpit and Senate, illustrated by appropriate Readings and Recitations; and by sketches, critical, characteristic and biographical”) started at 2 p.m. and ran for the usual 2 hours.

Afterwards (I expect he had dinner with friends first) he headed up Sion Hill to Winifred House, the school & home of his regular host in Bath, the Rev. William Hutchins (another victim of the Bath Blitz, it is now Bath Spa University, fittingly!) Google tells me it’s a 35-minute walk, and it must have been lovely. In my vignette, his friends urge him to take a sedan- or bath-chair (he’d had a fall in 1830), but with his usual peripatetic stubbornness, he insists he is perfectly capable of walking, and uses the occasion to think over his life’s journey. Later, in the dead of night, he stirs, then dies of “some affection of the heart.”  He was not quite 70.

 

In his youth he had made a deal with his friend, Dr. Astley Cooper, that he would let him have his heart for scientific purposes (Thelwall’s heart beat so loud that it could be heard by passers-by in the street). This seems not to have happened. Maybe you can still hear it …

 

I will be there in spirit …

Haunted by the words of his Night Walk (which is more easily accessible in my edition under its full title: “The Star that Shone when Other Stars were Dim. A Night-Walk in the Vicinity of Whitehall.”) But it is attached in full. I have just read it again, and I find it more moving every time, the older I get, and the darker and more glaringly gaslit is the world that surrounds us. How I long to hear even a bit from it, in your voice, bringing it to life.

 

If it were me, it would be that last few lines

 

for know

“Tho now oppression urge its meteor car                                       100

“Triumphant in a dazzled sphere below,

“Earth hath its Mina still, & Heaven its star:

“And they shall shine, & spread their glorious light,

“Victorious o’er the envious shades of night,

“When in primeval gloom extinct shall lie

“Those earth-deluding lamps that vauntful now

“Appear to merge all lustre in their brow.

“Nor think that, tho to the deluded sight

“One star alone of all the expanse seem bright,

“That all beside is dim. Thy way pursue                                         110

“As meditation leads; leaving behind

“This sense-confounding glare; & thou shalt find

“(The free horison opening to thy view)

“That not in isolated splendour I

“Maintain the regency of this deep sky,

“Nor solitary, tho transcending, he—

“The earth-star of fair freedom’s galaxy.

“A thousand & a thousand spirits still

“(Tho not the dazzled optic hence descry

“Their watchful fires) hover o’er stream & hill                               120

“Of gloom’d Iberia; & their light shall fill

“Even yet again the horizon, & re-shine

“(When fade the baser fires—as fade they will!)—

“In constellated glory round the shrine

“Of Liberty, eternal & divine!

“And Mina, with a patriot’s joy, shall own—

“Tho hail’d her brightest star, he shines not all alone.

 

I realize that even that bit is ridiculously long-winded (as of course he always was, and me too). But it and the whole thing brings tears into my eyes, as he faces old age (only 61 but hey, it was 1825) and walks “down into darkness / On extended wings” (to quote another of my favourite atheist poems, by Wallace Stevens), refusing to take the turn to religion made by so many of his erstwhile friends, but still holding on to his values, and pursuing his way.

 

What you are doing resonates with what I am, on a very benign, bright, snowless but cold winter day in my study. Just finishing one of the last paragraphs in ch 18 The Institution (which is too long and has taken far far far too long to finish, and I vow it must be done before we leave on Feb 5) in which I talk about his therapeutic prosody and pedagogy, which Julia Carlson aptly calls “therapoetics”, and which does the same thing. It is profoundly democratic (based in nature and the animal body, the common heritage of all) and activist (aiming to rouse intellectual energies and multiply national resources, by nourishing, liberating, empowering independence in living reader-speakers in collaboration with dead authors, to reanimate their words and the world). So what you are doing there is EXACTLY what his students did, not only in his Institution, but around the world (where copies of his Selections remain, marked up by his students to recreate his revolutionary voice, and energies in themselves.)

WE PLAN TO MAKE THIS AN ANNUAL EVENT ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF JOHN THELWALL’S DEATH ON FEBRUARY 17

 

Stroud Streets Walk Sunday January 21st

Some of us at Radical Stroud are giving whole hearted support to the Blue Lantern Homeless Project (led by Steve Gower of the Black Dog documentary film about homelessness). The project aims to develop sustainable temporary living accommodation for the homeless. If you fancy a walk around Stroud’s streets to discuss the history of homelessness, council and social housing; the problems of the present day and possible solutions … then we meet at the canal bridge at Wallbridge at 10.30 on Sunday January 21st. The walk will be on the level towards Paganhill along the canal and then return to town with an ascent to the old workhouse at Stone Manor. Free – but please feel free to make contributions on the day to the project or via a link that will be provided.

Fingers crossed that this does the job: just copy and paste:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-blue-lantern-homeless-pilot-project?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

 

 

Randwick Talk Thursday January 25th

.A presentation looking at the radical history of Stroud and the local villages in the 18th and early 19th centuries with a brief look at the links between local and global history. There will also be a focus on the ‘Was Great Britain close to revolution?’ question, looking at the period from the French Revolution to the 1832 Reform Act. These contexts will then lead to a focus on the tantalising seemingly utopian experiment in Randwick in 1832. All will be revealed at Randwick Village Hall on Thursday January 25th at 7.30. £5 cash entry: cake for that as well as an hour from me.

 

Titus Okere

Titus Okere,

Once captain of Lagos Railways FC,

Made history in 1953,

When he signed for the Railwaymen

Of Swindon Town FC,

Leaving what was still a colony,

Of the British Empire,

To plough a lonely furrow down the wing,

As the first Nigerian to sign up

For a football club in the continent of Europe.

Titus had already made a name for himself

In the dour days of austerity back in 1949

And, of course, in the wake of Windrush,

When he starred on the left wing,

For what was, in effect, the Nigerian team;

But in those colonial post-war days,

The team was named the ‘UK Tourists’;

Titus also scored against Sierra Leone,

In what was, in effect, an international fixture.

After leaving Swindon in 1953,

Titus lived in the county of Kent,

No doubt, wistfully recalling his early life:

His birth in March 1929 in Ngor Okpala,

His education at the Okrika Grammar School,

His teenage athletic and football skills,

His captaincy of Lagos Railways,

The cups and trophies won by him and them,

His captaincy of the Nigerian team against the Gold Coast,

In those far off days of King George the Sixth,

And a bomb-site Britain still with its Empire …

I was just one year old when Titus joined Swindon Town,

Signing as a professional early in the year of 1953,

Before moving elsewhere in Wiltshire,

To Chippenham United,

In the summer of that Coronation year.

And what do we know of Titus Okere in Swindon?

We’re told he, ‘Struggled with the British winter’,

And found those heavy studded football boots

More of a leathered hindrance than a help

The only recollection that appeared

When I appealed for recollections:

‘I watched him play for STFC in 1953,

A fast and tricky left winger …

as I vaguely remember it.

I was only twelve’.

But Titus was the first Black professional

At Swindon Town F.C., a trailblazer

Who should be remembered publicly,

Even if he didn’t make the first team,

Just appearing twice for the reserves,

And in Gloucestershire’s Northern Senior League,

Before playing elsewhere in Wiltshire football,

Making, again, a unique contribution

To the history of ‘the Beautiful Game’

Both nationally and in the county.

Journalists such as Edgar Kail once of Dulwich Hamlet FC,

(The last amateur footballer to play for England,

Memorialised with a blue plaque)

Thought so much of Titus that it was imagined that

Titus’ skill and speed could open doors

Into almost any European football team,

But barefoot in 1949 was different

To heavy boots in 1953 …

But how did Titus end up at Swindon Town?

Here the legacy of the GWR comes into play …

How right and proper and fitting it feels,

That Titus, a clerk on the Nigerian Railways,

And captain of the railway football team,

Should meet a coach who hailed from Swindon

(Who in a case of seemingly improbable

Nominative determinism,

Bore the so-apt name of Leo Robins) …

The coach sent a letter to Louis Page,

Swindon Town’s manager,

When time and circumstance permitted

(Leo was on railway work in Nigeria as well),

Discussions followed at board room level,

A letter followed from the manager …

And Titus left the sunshine of Nigeria

For the frost and rime of winter

And a keen Wiltshire wind blowing from the east.

The journalist, Dennis Hart, was keen, too,

To cover the tale of Titus’ odyssey,

How ‘I certainly miss the’ sun of Nigeria,

‘But I’ve already made lots of friends here.

The players and the staff … have done everything

to make me feel at home, and so too, my landlady, Mrs Wakeley.’

Alas, it didn’t work out the way we hoped it would,

As we gaze back through the looking glass,

But there’s more to life than football,

And Titus returned to railway work again,

A loyal servant at Parcel Force,

Until retirement in the autumn of his days.

And this year, in the summer of 2023,

Titus left this life but left us memories,

And Swindon Town remembered Titus too,

As Francis Okere (Titus’ grand-daughter) said from Kent,

After the service at the Bluebell Hill crematorium:

‘It was a lovely service.

Swindon Town paid tribute to him and sent him a tie.’

This is the textual tribute from STFC:

‘Although he only made a few first-team appearances for Swindon Town, he was held in the highest regard by supporters and colleagues of the club alike. He had come to the club’s attention when he toured England with the Nigerian international team. An outside left, he was nicknamed “the golden boy” – – because of his ability to create chances out of nothing. The credit for signing him for Swindon must go to Mr Louis Page, the manager. He was obviously keen to sign him as in January, two Board Meetings received reports on whether or not he would arrive by January 20th before he managed to get to this country and sign on in February …’

But a heavy pitch, cumbersome boots,

Loneliness – the directors would not think

Of paying for Mrs Okere to come over

Until Titus became a first team regular –

All conspired against Titus at Swindon;

But surely the time has come for Swindon Town

To acknowledge further the importance of Titus:

Their first Black professional player:

Perhaps with a plaque at the STFC Museum?

Post-Script

‘’I recall a game against Walsall that we lost 5-0, and so it went on. Boys, like everyone else, like to be associated with winners and I was drawn into a crowd that cycled up to Blunsdon each week for the new thrills and wins at Speedway.

Football wasn’t entirely forgotten for there was ‘The Adver’ and ‘Pink’ to keep us informed so we were aware that ‘Town’ had signed the Nigerian Titus Okere. I didn’t see him play for I was into Speedway at that time – did he ever get a first team outing?

We were all aware of his nickname, ‘Nutty Slack’, given to him by the crowd which included a great many railwaymen. In those days, war-time rationing was still in place and if you worked ‘Inside’, one of the perks was coal. Coal of very poor quality made up of small nuggets of dust and bits of slate amongst it, the infamous Nutty Slack. Of course, railwaymen’s humour picked up on this and Titus became “Nutty Slack”. There was no malice in it, that’s just how it was in those days.’

‘Golden Boy’ …

‘Sunny disposition’ …

‘Nutty Slack’ …

‘That’s just how it was in those days’ …

 

 

Heritage and the GWR

What is ‘Heritage’?

We all sort of know what heritage means,

Don’t we, in a way …

Something handed down from the past,

A tradition, an inheritance,

Be it cultural, tangible,

Physical, natural,

intangible, oral, folkloric

And so on … and so on …

You know, that sort of thing;

Or as Michael Heseltine put it

When English Heritage was formed,

English Heritage will tell ‘the story of England’.

And therein lies the rub, of course:

Who tells the story?

Who makes up the story?

How reliable is the narrator?

How omniscient is the listener?

Let’s think about Isambard Kingdom Brunel:

A case study in Swindon and heritage

If ever there was one:

The half-mythologised story

Of Brunel choosing Swindon as the site

For his locomotive works,

With the tossing of a ham sandwich,

And where it fell, Swindon grew …

The subsequent lionisation

And heroization of Brunel,

The statue, the shopping centre,

A man for all seasons it would seem.

He was also a man of Bristol, of course,

Bristol: the source of so much of the capital

That financed the Great Western Railway;

He was also a man of London,

Almost losing his life in the construction

Of the Thames Tunnel when it flooded,

So, Brunel is almost a personification

Of the eventual GWR coat of arms,

With the crests of London and Bristol.

But what of its heraldic motto,

‘Domine Dirige Nos: Virtute et Industria’?

‘Lord Guide Us’: ‘Virtue and Industry’ …

The Enslaved and the Great Western Railway

Friends, railwaymen and women,

I come not to bury the Great Western Railway

But to tell you of its provenance;

To tell you how the compensation

Given to owners of the enslaved,

Led to their railway investments

From that twenty-million pounds

So generously given in 1834,

Nearly half the national budget for that year,

Billions and billions in today’s values.

The GWR:

God’s Wonderful Railway:

I do not come to bury you,

But to tell the following tale of everyday Bristol folk:

Thomas Daniel whose £70,000 + compensation

For the very partial freedom gained

By over 2,500 enslaved on his estates,

(That’s £86 million in today’s values)

Came in right handy,

For a line from London to Bristol;

Richard Bright – only £14 million

In today’s values, I know,

For his 640 enslaved,

But every little helps you become

The deputy chairman of the GWR;

George Gibbs, only £1million in today’s values

(47 enslaved),

But a future director of the Great Western Railway;

Then there’s Henry Bush (114 enslaved),

Whose £3 million in the hand,

Helped finance the Bristol to Gloucester line;

And, penultimately, let’s remember John Cave,

Another railway Master of the Society of Merchant Venturers,

But, also, Sheriff and Mayor –

But I choose to conclude with Christopher Claxton,

Zealous defender of the West Indian plantocracy,

Vigorous defender of enslavement and its triangles,

Keen to fight a duel with an opponent of enslavement,

A surname that lives on in St Kitts and Nevis,

Close confiding colleague of Isambard Kingdom Brunel,

Out there, regarding the Clifton Suspension Bridge

And Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s giant steamships,

For he became the managing director

Of the Great Western Steamship Company …

‘Friends, Swindonians, countrymen, lend me your ears:

‘Domine Dirige Nos: Virtute et Industria’

‘Lord Guide Us’: ‘Virtue and Industry’ …

Written after reading From Wulfstan to Colston –

Severing the sinews of slavery in Bristol

Mark Steeds and Roger Ball Bristol Radical History Group

This piece indicates how local history and global history are so often intertwined. The term that has been coined for this fusion of approach is ‘Glocal History’. The link below takes you to my previous research on those who gained from compensation in 1834 in Bristol, Gloucestershire and Bath. Further research would be needed from the UCL slavery database to update the list, and research how many others invested in railways in general and the GWR in particular.

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/slave-owners-in-gloucestershire-and/

Reimagining how the Railway Lies

I live in Stroud,

Home of the arch commemorating the abolition of slavery,

An arch from 1834,

Standing near a comprehensive school,

By a busy main road to Gloucester;

We are rightly and justly proud of this in Stroud –

But, of course, quite a few owners of enslaved peoples

Lived around this town,

Not to mention Gloucester, Cheltenham,

Bath, Bristol and the rural south-west.

Slave owners received the equivalent in today’s values,

Of £17 billion;

Fully forty per cent of GDP in 1834;

A great deal of this ‘compensation’

Went into railway investment and development

In the 1830s and 1840s:

The Gladstone family in the north, for example …

And, nearer to home,

Bristol merchants in the GWR,

Samuel Baker at Lypiatt, near Stroud,

I could go on and on and on …

But what is chastening to reflect upon, I think,

Is the Keynesian multiplier effect …

The consequential impact in a series of links and chains,

Tendrils and tentacles,

And Victorian Venn diagrams

Upon our ancestors …

How many of our family forebears

(Six generations of mine)

Ended up working on the revered railways

Or ran the homes and kitchen

Because of that initial injection of capital?

It’s a sobering thought,

As we reflect upon those tentacles

And tendrils of racial capitalism.

Before I move on:

Out of the £695,000 raised by subscription for the construction of the railway from Swindon through Stroud to Cheltenham, £212,000 came from the spa town of Cheltenham, home to so many beneficiaries from the abolition of enslavement.

Reimagining how the Railway Lies

The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:

Lines of steel stretch to vanishing point,

Where pale-skinned navvies with pick and shovel,

Work their way through the nineteenth century.

But wait until the steam clouds dissipate,

See how that express train changes shape –

A slave ship on the Middle Passage,

Sharks following in its crimson wake.

The station now a sugar plantation,

Manacles and shackles in the waiting room,

Signal gantries now high gallows –

For the bounty paid to enslavers,

When slavery was abolished in 1834,

Helped fuel the Railway Mania;

Like Samuel Baker up at Lypiatt,

Investing in railways in the Forest of Dean,

Or the Gladstone dynasty up in Liverpool,

Or the gentry of Bath and Bristol in the west;

Or, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire.

The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:

Lines of steal stretch to revelation point:

A colonial landscape all along the line,

That is how the railway lies.

So, what of Swindon and the surrounding villages and enslavement?
I carried out a quick and perfunctory search
Of the UCL (oh, alma mater!) enslavement data base,
To see what would turn up,
And here we are:

George Kibblewhite
Lydiard Millicent

William Kibblewhite
Lucy Sadler (nee Kibblewhite)
BENEFICIARY
Jamaica St Mary 94 (Weyhill)
£1949 7s 0d [114 enslaved]

Edmund Kibblewhite
High Street Wootton Bassett
AWARDEE [TRUSTEE]
Jamaica St Mary 94 (Weyhill)
£1949 7s 0d [114 enslaved]

Joseph Christopher Ewart
Broasleas Devizes
Antigua 86 [Long Lane Delap’s]
£2790 8s 8d [213 enslaved]

Charlotte Peach (nee Philpot)v Sarum Devizes
UNSUCCESSFUL CLAIMANT [LEGATEE]
Antigua 324 [Vernon’s]
£4906 5s 5d [329 enslaved]

Joshua Smith
Erlestoke Devizes

Anna Susanna Watson Taylor
OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica Hanover 21 [Haughton Grove]
£2512 0s 3d [138 enslaved]
OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica Hanover 577 [Haughton Court Estate]
£5343 19s 1d [273 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 247 [Llanrumney Estate]
£5649 0s 7d [331 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 26 [Montrose and Flint River Pens]
£5343 5s 6d [296 enslaved]

George Watson Taylor (nee Watson)
BENEFICIARY
Jamaica Hanover 577 [Haughton Court Estate]
£5343 19s 1d [273 enslaved]
OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 247 [Llanrumney Estate]
£5649 0s 7d [331 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 26 [Montrose and Flint River Pens]
£5343 5s 6d [296 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 247 [Llanrumney Estate]
£5649 0s 7d [331 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Thomas-in-the-East, Surry 457 [Burrowfield Pen]
£1711 10s 6d [99 enslaved]

Further research: if you were to type in this link for the search page on the UCL database

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/  and then type in Wiltshire into the county box, you would see the records of some nearly 100 individuals. Future and further research would allow us to see if any of these people invested in railways in general and the GWR in particular.

 

Football Specials and Swindon

Football Specials

 

There was, of course, a close association

Between late Victorian railways

And the formation of football clubs:

Manchester United FC grew from

Newton Heath LYR FC

(The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway):

The founders and players were all railway workers –

But we’re not bothered about that story,

Our tale is of the Robins from Wiltshire,

‘The Railwaymen’ at Swindon Town …

Salubritas et Industria …

So, this is, perhaps, a signal moment

To compile a history of ‘Football Specials’ …

 

The first football specials were run by

The Great Western Railway Company,

In 1927, from Cardiff to Paddington

(Cardiff City beat Arsenal 1-0

At Wembley in the FA Cup Final:

‘The Cup’ left England for the only time);

Over fifty trains powered through Swindon –

What a day out for the miners of South Wales

So soon after their lock-out and the General Strike,

As Welsh coal took them up to Wembley and back

On locomotives built in Swindon!

 

Even though JB Priestley waxed lyrical

About travel by coach in the 1930s,

It was still commonplace to see players,

And supporters in scarves and rosettes

Share the same trains right through to the 1950s,

But the history of football specials

Has become half-mythologised since

The days of sepia and black and white,

As memories become tarnished with time,

And supporters aren’t quite sure whether

That particular excursion was by coach or train …

Madeleine moments and Arkell’s 3 Bs …

 

But let’s kick off with a coach journey in the Cup,

To Southampton in 1948,

Courtesy of my brother-in-law:

‘My Uncle Ivor who did a bit of coach driving for Wellington Garage arranged a party of his GWR workmates to go to the match and took me along perched on a beer crate behind his driving seat. We’d only got as far as Ogbourne St. Andrew when the coach radiator leaked water and overheated. Ivor got out to get a bucket of water at a cottage which was poured in and off we went. At Southampton, he stopped to ask the way to the Dell then moved on leaving the copper in a cloud of steam. Sadly, we lost that game and also lost wing half Kaye in a tackle with Alf Ramsey. I remember the programmes were printed on one side only on a sheet of paper handed out free – must have been free for I had no money and ended up with a sheaf of them. The trip home was a boozy one with several crates of beer onboard and many stops en-route for ‘Hedge Tickets’ …

 

I now jump on nearly twenty years

To the age of mods, skinheads and diesels:

I was there as a little mod travelling

To the Swindon away games in the Cup,

Chastised by my History teacher:

‘You shouldn’t be attending this wretched gladiatorial combat.

Attend to your studies instead, boy!’

One Speech Day, we were isolated

In the gym, with close circuit TV,

As we were leaving early for the train

To take us to an FA Cup replay;

We were told in no uncertain terms,

That we were letting ourselves and the school down –

How we silently cheered when the guest speaker

Said how pleased he was to see so many of us

Would be leaving early to support ‘the Town’ …

 

 

We lost 3-0 as it happens …

Floreat Semper Schola …

 

O tempora! O mores!

 

The Football Special era occurred when it did,

As all the right ingredients were in place:

British Railways with surplus rolling stock;

Teenagers with surplus disposable income;

The impact of England winning the World Cup in 1966 …

But who could have foreseen what would happen,

When bescarved young men congregated in carriages?

(Who could have foreseen the semiotics

Involved in the tying of football scarves

Around The wrists rather than the neck?)

Why the smashing of windows?

Why the institutionalised hurling

Of toilet rolls out of the windows?

Then there was the incidental, sometimes

Organised, and pre-arranged, violence

Attendant and consequent to arrival

At the railway station, and the walk to the ground,

Often with an attendant phalanx of police,

Both in the days before, and after, the miners’ strike;

Police horses, too, standing sentinel:

It wasn’t a walk in the park back in those days.

 

And here are some recollections from some fans

Of ‘The Railwaymen’ of Swindon Town:

But firstly, a voice that will speak for many:

‘Not being a local and being a little younger than the football special … I’d love to see whatever is discussed …never even been on a supporters’ coach.’

 

‘Pockets full of coppers …Can’t remember a special that ever had any toilet rolls after the first couple of miles … light bulbs too! Seemed like all part of the day out in them days.’

 

‘Carlisle was mental. Burnley was mental. Witnessed some daft things on the trains – the stuff getting chucked out of windows as the train went through small stations could have seriously injured or killed someone. Always had the welcoming committee waiting at the station, never realised the volume of the away fans breaking through the police escort out of the station.’ ‘Have a soft spot for northern outposts. Much prefer them to the southern games.’

 

‘A mate of mine is a retired police officer and was on the Burnley special (Cup game) under cover and doing surveillance.’

 

‘Late 70s/early 80s went to Aldershot, Exeter, Blackpool, Liverpool, Wimbledon, Torquay, Slave Traders … Virtually everyone on the specials were young lads, pissed or glued up. Stewards taking booze off everyone and then drinking it with their mates. Lots of money won or lost in card games … The rolling stock was the absolute dregs because it had a good chance of being trashed.

Liverpool was fun. The walk to and from Lime Street. A little reception committee waiting for us after the game … I missed the Wrexham one, that was supposed to have been the one to be on.’

 

‘I missed the Liverpool cup trip when the scousers raided the train during the game and stole possessions from supporters’ luggage.’

 

‘One that sticks in the memory was the special train to Millwall (Old Den) for the night game on Saturday April 7 1970 … the scruffy old train went all the way to New Cross or New Cross Gate (forget which). There was a short walk to the ground. A very scary place in the pre-crowd-segregation days … At 2-0 down in the second half, Don Rogers scored and the Town fans were spotted by the home fans who you could see moving from the home end, heading for where we were. I went and stood somewhere else before they arrived. I headed back to the station before the end of the game and as I was walking down the road, a Millwall fan started talking to me about how good the Lions had been when there was a roar from the ground. Millwall had scored a late 3rd goal … I tried hard not to give away that I wasn’t a home fan. A memorable trip for a callow youth.’

 

‘Even now, it is great when you get a critical mass of fans on the train. Coming back from Hartlepool after the 3-0 win in the Garner season was brilliant.’

 

‘Getting to the ground and missing most of the first half wasn’t much fun. Losing to top it off absolutely took the biscuit.’ ‘Which game was that?’ ‘Wrexham away the mid-70s.’ ‘Jesus. Wrexham away. Now that was a day out.’

 

‘Off the top of my head, I remember going on these specials: Liverpool and Wrexham in 1976/77, Arsenal 1979, Spurs 1980, Reading 1982, Burnley 1983, Carlisle 1984, Bristol City and Bristol Rovers at least three times in the 80s and early 90s. Newport three times in the late 70s early 80s. Crystal Palace in 1989 for the play off.

I am sure there are a couple I have forgotten in there too, but they were great days out. The Burnley special when the window was broken in the front carriage when a passing train’s door was left open was an experience.’

 

‘As a teenager in the seventies I visited Ashton Gate regularly via the train to Temple Meads and then the delightful 2.5 mile walk to the ground. I can recall hundreds of us marching along singing … One year we arrived and found the perimeter fencing etc adorned with STFC graffiti … Attempts to pay a visit to the East End was always short lived although we did manage to actually get on the terraces one year. As for the football, the first game I saw we drew 3-3. I recall the ref gave a penalty against Rod Thomas for handball when the ball hit the bar not his hand! That’s the only time I have seen us get a point at Ashton Gate. The rivalry was far more intense with Bristol City than it ever was with Oxford in my “naughty” days as a Town fan. Still have an intense dislike for them even now.’

 

 

‘If anyone fancies passing on their Wrexham memories then all will be treated with confidentiality’ …

 

‘Hopefully a few … will talk about the football special to Wrexham in the mid 70s.

I’ve heard a few stories about it but it’s best coming from anyone who was on it.’

 

It would appear that silence is golden with regards to Wrexham …

But as regards Wimbledon:

 

‘Football in the late 70s and early 80s was still a predominantly working-class pastime and,

as such, fans were not seen as customers, but yobbos to be kept at arm’s length. It was this line of thinking which British Rail used to compose their trains to transport supporters around the country in their ‘Football Specials’. A wheezing, old, diesel locomotive was the unit normally used to pull the train. The coaches were a mishmash of old rolling stock, some of which I’m sure were in the livery of the old GWR. Heating in the coaches seemed like an optional extra and with dodgy windows, which failed to shut properly ensured that, if you chose unwisely your coach for the journey, you would be completely refrigerated by the time you got to your destination. ‘

 

 

Now as LP Hartley said:

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’

And as William Faulkner put it:

‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’

(Still off to Paddington to see Swindon

Beat Arsenal 3-1 at Wembley, 1969),

And I think what we see here,

Is a generation of men looking wistfully back,

In almost startled amazement at what they did,

And the things that went on towards the end

Of the 20th century

(Sliding Doors or The Road Not Taken),

There is no glorification of it at all,

More a football fan’s detached observation

Of football scarf rather than madeleine moments,

Marcel Proust on a red and white football special,

A la recherche du temps perdu …

Toilet rolls … light bulbs … the aggro …

 

But now, to some recollections from a friend,

A fellow walking footballer,

A Liverpudlian who taught himself

To read and write with percipience

From Liverpool football programmes:

‘Between 1971 and 1976, we used to organise travel for the Liverpool supporters based in London. We used to be able to just phone up Euston and say, “I’d like to book three carriages on the 7.20 a.m. to Liverpool, travelling back at 8p.m.” We set up an account and would collect 120/150 tickets from the office and hand out tickets to the members on the concourse. I never saw one incident but had so many great journeys … The concessions we used to get were amazing. A £5 ticket would be sold to us for about £3. Great days.’

 

Now, those days are past and won’t return,

But here’s a proposal for the future

And a new type of ‘football special’,

And a new relationship between railway companies,

And football clubs and supporters:

A season-ticket supporter’s rail card;

Perhaps a family season-ticket supporter’s rail card.

Read on … here’s the outline below:

 

Season-ticket holders at football clubs

Take their I-D to a railway ticket office

Or pursue the transaction online,

And for a fee of ???? pounds

Obtain their football special railcard,

(Bearing the Give Racism the Red Card legend),

Thereby obtaining the usual concessions

For railway travel throughout the country.

 

This, of course, boosts the coffers of all:

Railway companies, football clubs and supporters,

And, it gets people off the roads and motorways,

Using public transport and boosting fitness,

With walks to and from station and football ground,

With consequent public health benefits,

And climatic ones too …

It can also help change the old gendered link

We used to associate with railways,

Football supporters and travelling:

Families, women, men, boys, girls,

And any choice of personal pronoun,

All aboard!

It’s a win-win-win-win-win-win situation,

With the ‘Football Special Railcard’:

Just look at the Swindon Town FC badge …

Remember the heraldic motto

‘Salubritas et Industria’.

 

 

 

Post-script

I think what we see here,

Is a generation of men looking wistfully back,

In almost startled amazement at what they did,

And the things that went on towards the end

Of the 20th century

(Sliding Doors or The Road Not Taken),

There is no glorification of it at all,

More a football fan’s detached observation

Of football scarf rather than madeleine moments,

Marcel Proust on a red and white football special,

A la recherche du temps perdu …

Toilet rolls … light bulbs … the aggro …

So why did it happen?

And before we condemn …

Jude the Obscure Supporter

Now I’m not sure if there’s a debate here about determinism and free will,
Or whether there’s just some sort of reflection on 60 years spent going to the match,
That LS Lowry feeling of being lost in a crowd,
That loss of sense of self that meant that strangers were friends
And friends were never strangers,
For all was empathy and understanding,
And the boot was never on  the other foot.
And you can talk as much Sociology, Psychology or Philosophy as you like,
But the reason you trudged fortnightly to the game
Was because you enjoyed it and because, really,
How could you do anything different?
Who would do anything different?
You went because you loved the game,
And because you had loyalty to your mates,
And because you had a loyalty to your home town,
And because you had loyalty to your team,
And because the team was your town and your town was your team,
And because really your team was you and you were your team
And so you were your town and your town was you
In a syllogistic spiral that counted for nothing when you put your scarf on. –
For the minute wage differences that existed in a one industry town,
And the fact that footballers didn’t earn much more than anyone else,
Meant that a happy commonality and solidarity suffused the town of Swindon!
And so you never imagined that your carefully choreographed movement
To and from the ground through the red-brick terrace streets of England
Was like some sort of scene from The Wasteland,
Nor did you see it as some sort of extension
Of typical male industrial working class historic traditions,
So that even when you were wearing the height of mod fashion,
You were in fact an anachronism,
For who would think like that?
Nor did you think, when you carefully read your programmes at half time,
Or when you re-read them at home,
Or swopped them, or used them,
So as to build up a store house of memory and fact and knowledge
About every facet and aspect of the game of Football
That you were, in fact, following in the footsteps of working class autodidacts,
The people who caught a glance at the classics within the rhythm of the pistons,
Or studied art or poetry or philosophy behind the foreman’s back
Or beneath the chief clerk’s nose or by the ganger’s shovel,
Or by the candle in the attic;
And now just think, how many brilliant minds there were,
In that faceless crowd of so-called untutored intellect,
Living lives that The News Of The World never ever dreamed of.
Where are they now?

 

Radical Road Trip

Radical Antiquarians on Tour
The Antiquarians’ Road Trip
Plus ca change

Look! There’s Mr Jingle and Mr Pickwick in Stamford,
A town astride the Great North Road,
All tortuous turnpikes and honey stone,
Coaching inns and listed buildings:
‘GOOD STABLING AND LOOSE BOXES’;

And beyond Stamford, heading east?
There’s John Clare revenants walking the roadside,
And channels and rivulets and watercourses,
With high embankments above the roads,
And a cloud filled sky that meets the fields
In a cumulonimbus towering clasp
Across a dark shadowed numinous dreamscape;

But there, leaping out of the flat lands’ fastness,
The vaporous tower of Ely cathedral,
And all around, the oozing of the fens:
Tick Fen; Langwood Fen, Great Fen, ChatterisFen,
Ouse Fen, Mildenhall Fen, Burnt Fen …
And all around, the waters of rivers and dykes,

And a boatyard down below the cathedral,
Constant trains rattling across the freight line rails,
As twilight softness gathers around the streets,
And swifts soar high above the Maltings,
And high above the roof of Oliver Cromwell’s house,
Just as their seventeenth century ancestors did,
When Cromwell strode forth with his righteous bible,
Imagining a New Model Army
That would vanquish Charles Stuart’s Royalists,
While swifts screeched and eavesdropped high above,
And a parliament of rooks observed and noted.

Radical Antiquarians on Tour
The Antiquarians’ Road Trip
Plus ca change

Look! There’s Mr Jingle and Mr Pickwick in Stamford,
A town astride the Great North Road,
All tortuous turnpikes and honey stone,
Coaching inns and listed buildings:
‘GOOD STABLING AND LOOSE BOXES’;

And beyond Stamford, heading east?
There’s John Clare revenants walking the roadside,
And channels and rivulets and watercourses,
With high embankments above the roads,
And a cloud filled sky that meets the fields
In a cumulonimbus towering clasp
Across a dark shadowed numinous dreamscape;

But there, leaping out of the flat lands’ fastness,
The vaporous tower of Ely cathedral,
And all around, the oozing of the fens:
Tick Fen; Langwood Fen, Great Fen, ChatterisFen,
Ouse Fen, Mildenhall Fen, Burnt Fen …
And all around, the waters of rivers and dykes,

And a boatyard down below the cathedral,
Constant trains rattling across the freight line rails,
As twilight softness gathers around the streets,
And swifts soar high above the Maltings,
And high above the roof of Oliver Cromwell’s house,
Just as their seventeenth century ancestors did,
When Cromwell strode forth with his righteous bible,
Imagining a New Model Army
That would vanquish Charles Stuart’s Royalists,
While swifts screeched and eavesdropped high above,
And a parliament of rooks observed and noted.

And so, we strode through Ely’s eely dreamscape,
Shapeshifting in the gathering dusk,
To claim food and drink at the Prince Albert;

Then dreaming of the cathedral,
‘The ship of the Fens’, moored with an anchor
Whose foundations rest on clay and sand,
And a water table higher
than that that of the nearby river,
Until the morning’s ganglion of railway lines
And succession of level crossings:
‘That’ll be the Ely north avoider loop at Queen Adelaide. Enables trains to run direct from Norwich to Peterborough, and vice-versa, and for Kings Lynn freight traffic to head to/from the yards at March. Really tight curves. Ely is a junction for five directions.’ (Jon Seagrave)

We drove on past giant fields of barley and wheat,
Right next to equally giant fields of flowering potatoes
(‘Its only bondage was the circling sky’),
Past where the agricultural rioters of 1816
Would have congregated, voicing demands
For a moral economy with fair prices and wages,
Before marching on to Ely and Littleport:
The response was transportation and execution;

And all the while, embankments and water,
And Will Kemp’s actor-ghost Morris-dancing his way,
In a forlorn attempt to prove that he
Was more popular than William Shakespeare,
Until we reach the flint city of Norwich,
To witness the cathedral’s taking of the Eucharist,

And, outside, Robert Kett’s Rebellion of 1549,
Hand to hand combat along cobbled Elm Street,
Betwixt two flint churches at either end,
The Earl of Warwick’s army guarding the Bishop’s Gate,
Right there where the Red Lion now stands,
And there, by the thick girth black poplar,
Just where we stand and gaze and imagine,
The rebels swimming the shallow waters by Cow Tower
(Built to hold hand held cannon and bombards),
To try and outflank the massed armed ranks on the bridge;

We wandered past the proud Kett memorial plaques,
Past the pub called Lollards Pit
(Mutter that you can find God in your own conscience.
You don’t need an archbishop’s hierarchy),
(Lollards: the link between the Peasants’ Revolt,
Kett and co and then the Diggers and Levellers.
Lollards Pit: the place of execution:
The faggots piled high for the burning
Of these religious radicals.),

Then up Kett’s Hill, past Kett’s Bakery,
To Mousehold Heath where at least 10,000 rebels
Camped high above the city, and its authorities,
Both ecclesiastical and secular,
And where their memory lives on, not just
With plaques and ruins and information panels,
But also, with an assertion of commonality
And historic rights of estover,
For here signs tell us to help ourselves to wood,
And timber and fuel from the felled trees:
Robert Kett’s moral economy
And opposition to enclosure lives on
In its quiet, understated manner
Up here, still, on Mousehold Heath.

I picked up a stone as a keepsake
As we descended back towards the city:
‘Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.’
I’ve now placed it in the backroom fireplace,
Awaiting my whistle on some dark winter night.

The next day saw us in the Norfolk Broads,
Driving past Three Hammer Common,
And the parish of Barton Turf, with a verger,
Who looked as though he were from a Pre-Raphaelite painting;
Discovering fern and nettled footpaths
Behind massive churches distant from any village,
To reach lonely staithes down on the river bank,
And wander close to a causeway on a pilgrimage
To an isolated red brick windmill,
Built upon the site of St Benet’s monastery,
Where a spectral monk sometimes surveys
His haunting ruins and landscape:

A seeming labyrinth of watercourses:
Sails gliding by just above one’s head,
Yachts and wherries making their way
Parallel with our pilgrimage,
Lanyards clangourous in the breeze,
Skylarks ascending, ducks keening,
Osiers and sedges and willow and aspen
All rustling in the gathering wind,
Sunlight glistening on the rippling waters,
An elemental harmony of air, earth and water,
And fire, too.

For where we were standing and musing,
Just in front of the abbey gateway,
Was where abbey documents detailing
Bonded work, were burned by villeins
In the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt.
Right where we stood.
What happened to them, I wonder,
Out here in this watery world.
Did the words of King Richard the Second
Condemn them to a worse servitude?
Or death?
‘You wretches detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were, and rustics you are still; you will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we livewe will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful and loyal. Choose now which course to follow.’

By strange and unhappy happenstance, by the way,
Six hundred and forty years ago on this day,
John Ball was hanged, drawn and quartered:
‘When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?’

The next day saw us homeward-bound –
But antiquarian detours were necessary:
Wymondham, first, and this proud plaque:
‘Seeking a fairer society in Norfolk,
Robert Kett, supported by his brother William,
led a rebellion of more than 15,00 people in 1549.
The rising was crushed and over 3,000 died.
On 7th December 1549 Robert was hanged for treason
at Norwich Castle and William from Wymondham Abbey’s
west tower. This plaque was erected in 1999 to remember
the man and his struggle for a more just society in Norfolk.’

Chastened by the image of William,
Dangling, broken-necked, from a rope
Attached to the Abbey’s soaring high west tower,
We made our final East Anglian call at Bury St Edmunds.
Yet another abbey. Yet another memorial.
This time about Magna Carta; placed there in 1847.
‘THE 25 BARONS APPOINTED
TO ENFORCE THE OBSERVANCE OF MAGNA CHARTA
AT BURY St EDMUNDS NOV 20th A.D. 1214’
A detailed list follows;
And, on an adjacent wall, another memorial
To signify Victorian admiration
For this precursor to Runnymede in 1215;
In Gothic rhyming couplets too …
‘WHERE THE RUDE BUTTRESS TOTTERS TO ITS FALL,
AND IVY MANTLES O’ER THE CRUMBLING WALL …’

Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 And All That
Came along some eighty years later;
Here are a few salient points
from their subversive 1930 classic:
‘1. That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason – (except the Common People)
2. That everyone should be free – (except the Common People)
3. That everything should be of the same weight and measure
throughout the Realm – (except the Common People)
4. That the Barons should not be tried except by a special group of other Barons who would understand …
Magna Charter was therefore the chief cause of Democracy in England, and thus a Good Thing for everyone –
(except the Common People).’

Well, we had to get home and live like common people,
And so, we called in, as everyone,
apart from barons, do,
At a motor way service station;
This one was on the M6, newly opened near Rugby,
And there I read in the Morning Star
(Bought in the Co-op in Wymondham)
Of a strike at the Weetabix factory in Kettering,
Over pay for working unsocial hours …

Plus ca change …
We still seek that elusive moral economy …
The barons are doing okay though.

Plus ca change.

Radical antiquarians on tour.
(Stuart Butler)

AA [Antiquarians Association]

RAC [Radical Antiquarians Collective]

East India Company Walk

The information boards at Chalford intrigue,
Because of the lack of information:
At Chalford Vale and along the canal,
We are told about the local links
With the East India Company,
But we are not told about the practice
Of the East India Company;
The information boards are products of their time …
Times change and context is needed.

We start this contextualisation
Revealing a hidden colonial history
Within this leafy Cotswold landscape,
With a heat-wave peripatetic.

We start at Seville’s Mill in Chalford,
‘Today I would like to acknowledge
The Tory new mantra for History:
‘Retain and explain’,
Coupled with their ‘Culture Wars’ assertions:
‘You can’t change and airbrush history’,
And ‘The British Empire was a Good Thing’,
By letting the ‘Past Speak for Itself’,
From the pages of Jack P. Greene’s erudite tome,
Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism
in Eighteenth-Century Britain’:

The information boards at Chalford intrigue,
Because of the lack of information:
At Chalford Vale and along the canal,
We are told about the local links
With the East India Company,
But we are not told about the practice
Of the East India Company;
The information boards are products of their time …
Times change and context is needed.

We start this contextualisation
Revealing a hidden colonial history
Within this leafy Cotswold landscape,
With a heat-wave peripatetic.

We start at Seville’s Mill in Chalford,
‘Today I would like to acknowledge
The Tory new mantra for History:
‘Retain and explain’,
Coupled with their ‘Culture Wars’ assertions:
‘You can’t change and airbrush history’,
And ‘The British Empire was a Good Thing’,
By letting the ‘Past Speak for Itself’,
From the pages of Jack P. Greene’s erudite tome,
Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism
in Eighteenth-Century Britain’:

The East India Company?
‘those shameful triumphs over unwarlike and defenceless nations, which have poured into the laps of individuals the wealth of India … and driven us to plunder and destroy harmless natives fixed so deep a stain on the English name, as perhaps cannot be expiated.’

‘changed, contrary to the intentions of its institution, from a commercial, into a military corporation’, so that India – a ‘country, late so famous for its commerce, whose rich manufacturers brought to it immense wealth from every corner of the tributary world, and whose fertile plains supplied millions of its neighbours with grain’ is ‘unable now to yield itself the bare necessities of life. The loom is unemployed, neglected lies the plough; trade is at a stand, for there are no manufacturers to carry it on’; multitudes are ‘perishing for want of food.’

‘a revenue of two millions in India, acquired God knows how, by unjust wars … their servants came home with immense fortune obtained by rapine and oppression.’

‘and indeed it is clearly proved, that the East India Company is rotten to the very core. All is equally unsound; and you cannot lay your finger on a single healthy spot whereon to begin the application of a remedy. In the east, the laws of society, the laws of nature, have been enormously violated. Oppression in every shape has ground the faces of the poor defenceless natives; and tyranny has stalked abroad. The laws of England have lain mute and neglected and nothing was seen but the arbitrary face of despotism. Every sanction of civil justice, every maxim of political wisdom, all laws human and divine, have been trampled underfoot, and set at nought.’

‘Pride and emulation stimulated avarice, and the sole contest was, who should return to that home … with the greatest heap of crimes and of plunder.’

‘Asiatic plunderers’, ‘they had for many years been disgracing us as a nation and making us appear in the eyes of the world, no longer the once-famed generous Britons, but a set of banditti, bent solely on rapine and plunder.’

‘executions, oppressions, blood-shed, massacres, extirpation, pestilence and famine.’

‘Instead of our fleets crowding our ports freighted with the precious commodities of the East … we have … the importation of the fortunes of splendid delinquents, amassed by peculation and rapine.’

Parallels with the Roman Empire?
‘the dominions in Asia, like the distant Roman provinces during the decline of the empire, have been abandoned, as lawful prey, to every species of peculators; in so much that many of the servants of the Company, after exhibiting such scenes of barbarity as can be scarcely paralleled in the history of any country, have returned to England loaded with wealth.’

Clive of India?
‘utterly deaf to every sentiment of justice and humanity … this insatiable harpy, whose ambition is unparalleled, and whose avarice knows no bounds.’

America and India Conjoined?
‘We have abused and adulterated government ourselves, stretching our depredations and massacres not only to the Eastern, but Western world … the guilt of murder and robbery … now crying aloud for vengeance on the head of Great Britain.’

‘How melancholy is the consideration to the friends to this country that in the East and in the West, in Asia and America, the name of an Englishman is become a reproach’, and in ‘Europe we are not loved enough to have a single friend … from such a situation there is but a small step to hatred or contempt.’

We make our way up and through Chalford Bottom,
Remembering the great radical John Thelwall,
Who stayed here in the summer of 1797:
‘Therefore I love, Chalford, and ye vales
Of Stroud, irriguous:[i] but still more I love
For hospitable pleasures here enjoy’d,
And cordial intercourse. Yet must I leave
Your social haunts …’

And so, we made our way to Hyde and Minchinhampton,
Collectively reading from this link:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/stroud-and-a-hidden-colonial-landscape-number/

We then processed by lane and footpath to Box,
And then descended to Longford’s Mill,
Where we had a reading from Amplify Stroud:
https://amplifystroud.com/2021/02/18/clothing-colonialism-stroud-and-the-east-india-company/
Then it was past Iron Mills and the Weighbridge Inn,
With an unhappy glance back at the Great War:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/archibald-knee-and-dorothy-beard/
And so, along the lanes and through the woods
To reach Nailsworth and another reminder
Of the local landscape and a colonial history
(See towards the end of this link):
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/stroud-and-a-hidden-colonial-landscape-number/

We started the day with the bus to Chalford
And we end this peripatetic with a bus back to Stroud.

Stuart Butler 22nd July 2021