Author: Stuart Butler

The Life of Allen Davenport

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,

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

Vernal Equinox Arlingham Walk. 20 March 2019

Radical Stroud
Vernal Equinox Walk
20th March 2019
Around the Arlingham Peninsula
On a map, the Arlingham peninsula is irresistible. Created by a large meander in the Severn estuary, it appears to jut at a rather jaunty (or even phallic) angle toward Newnham and the Forest of Dean. Well endowed with footpaths and history and subject to the tidal forces of the estuary, it seemed the ideal place for an equinox expedition.

It was an early spring day full of skylark song, Lady’s Smock, Celandines, Violets and lambs. We began at Arlingham, pausing at the church of St Mary the Virgin to admire the single hand of its clock, pointing out the hour only. Even today, do we really need another hand to show us the precise minute?

We progressed to the banks of the Severn: to wide estuarine skies and marching pylons. Crumbling WW2 defensive pill boxes sinking into Severn mud marked our route. At the site of the “old passage” we looked for traces of the old way to ford the river to Newnham and discussed the many lives lost to the waters.

Radical Stroud
Vernal Equinox Walk
20th March 2019
Around the Arlingham Peninsula

On a map, the Arlingham peninsula is irresistible. Created by a large meander in the Severn estuary, it appears to jut at a rather jaunty (or even phallic) angle toward Newnham and the Forest of Dean. Well endowed with footpaths and history and subject to the tidal forces of the estuary, it seemed the ideal place for an equinox expedition.

It was an early spring day full of skylark song, Lady’s Smock, Celandines, Violets and lambs. We began at Arlingham, pausing at the church of St Mary the Virgin to admire the single hand of its clock, pointing out the hour only. Even today, do we really need another hand to show us the precise minute?

We progressed to the banks of the Severn: to wide estuarine skies and marching pylons. Crumbling WW2 defensive pill boxes sinking into Severn mud marked our route. At the site of the “old passage” we looked for traces of the old way to ford the river to Newnham and discussed the many lives lost to the waters.

Sabrina washes our bones
by Robin Treefellow

How your waters flow,
the ebb, surge and ripple.

The drowning.

We may keep nothing in the end.

Not our faces, names or talents,
all is given up to Sabrina’s moon burnished tide.

In death we are sloughed naked.

She pours through every corner of your soul,
washes out of ancient necessity
the places you named secret and out of reach,
forbidden to most.

How Sabrina completes us,
with this cold, slimy sluicing out.

She works through all
we carried in life,
puts her many witch willow fingers,
through the life baggage she tidally
spins and sorts.

She smoothes our bones into jewellery,
how Sabrina brings out the glow in our bones
as we all go adrift,

Every shard into the estuarine flow
slipping off like glass eyed eels,
into the silver no-faced moon,
to sleep on her breath reborn
a scuttler,
in Sabrina’s silky mud.

The last part of me I hoped I could keep,
Sabrina sucked in with her serpent kiss.

Shivering in reeds
I hear the sedge warblers chafing
scratch call

I stood there
precariously resting on her sifting shores,
waiting to become immured once more,
to sink into absence unmade.

Dissolve and dispersed
nothing can stay,
Sabrina offers only temporary footing
before the tide goes out,
and we are swept away
through to the last bit.

We cannot stay or keep,
the river flows away.

We’re left with only bones.

Our circumnavigation continued past fields of ancient ridge and furrow, blackthorn hedges and lambs. The Severn constantly to our left looking deceptively fordable. Surely we could just wade from sandbank to mudflat, all the way to the other side?

Wisely, we turned inland to traverse the neck of the peninsula, through a Ladybird book landscape of lambs playing in ancient orchards and Bluebell woods. On reaching the Severn again, we returned footsore to Arlingham via riverbank and mud heavy footpaths to complete our circumnavigation of this singular geographical feature and ancient place.

Worker’s Memorial Day Walk Remembering Allen Davenport

Remembering Allen Davenport

‘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 …’

‘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.’

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.’

Thanks to Deborah Roberts for the above photograph.

Remembering Allen Davenport

‘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 …’

‘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.’

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.’

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.”

 

A Prehistory Trip to Stroud Museum

‘Museums make you more aware:
Give You
Sense
Sensibility
Knowledge
A foothold in time
Make you feel a part of it all’

It’s a right regular education
When you visit Stroud Museum,
To process through the rooms,
On a trek to a prehistoric age:

For here’s a cabinet of curiosities:
Twenty-four exhibits, including
The tooth from an ancient Minchinhampton crocodile,
A coral from Newmarket, Nailsworth,
A Nautilus from Rodborough …
The Paris Situationists’ slogan
‘Underneath the pavements, the beach!’
Is displaced by this vista of the vastness of Time:
‘Over our heads as we walk the Stroudwater valleys,
The limitless ancient ocean!’

Stroud Museum and Prehistoric Stroud

‘Museums make you more aware:
Give You
Sense
Sensibility
Knowledge
A foothold in time
Make you feel a part of it all’

It’s a right regular education
When you visit Stroud Museum,
To process through the rooms,
On a trek to a prehistoric age:

For here’s a cabinet of curiosities:
Twenty-four exhibits, including
The tooth from an ancient Minchinhampton crocodile,
A coral from Newmarket, Nailsworth,
A Nautilus from Rodborough …
The Paris Situationists’ slogan
‘Underneath the pavements, the beach!’
Is displaced by this vista of the vastness of Time:
‘Over our heads as we walk the Stroudwater valleys,
The limitless ancient ocean!’

.
And here is another cabinet of curiosities:
A cabinet of ammonites and molluscs
A mixture of the extinct and the extant:
Long gone species such as the ichthyosaur,
But ‘Incredibly, the Lingula bracheopods have existed for some 500 million years’:
It’s enough to blow your mind as you muse on the ineffable nature of Time,
Here by the cabinets in Stroud Museum.
And there within a cabinet,
Carefully labelled and dated
By some fossicking antiquarian,
Lie the exhibits with their discovery date:
May 1939,
That last innocent spring
Spent in ruminative discovery,
Before the Age of Blitzkrieg and Holocaust.

Visitors wander along chatting about the exhibits,
Two plan excursions to fossil sites,
A young mum educates her child,
Friendly staff chat to me about what I am doing,
Another two people pass me,
Talking about Cotswold long barrows,
And here, a board with artists’ impressions
Of a Mesolithic landscape at Stroud,
The Neolithic long barrow at Nympsfield,
And the Iron Age fort at Uley
And here, a photo of Uley Bury in the here and now,
Together with a reconstruction of way back then,
Together with text about Crickley Hill,
And Neolithic arrowheads found there,
And slingstones and arrowheads found at Uley Bury
(built c.300 B.C.)
Then a large cabinet full of old bones,
Including – possibly – the bones
Of a Neolithic hunting dog
Found at the ‘so-called “Soldier’s Grave”,
a Neolithic round barrow at Frocester’,
And here, copper and bronze axes from the Bronze Age,
And Neolithic flint flakes
And Iron Age slingstones
In another cabinet of curiosities,
When along came Ian, a Museum volunteer,
Who told me how he often stands by the Romano-British altars,
And the funerary exhibits,
Reflecting on life, death and the genius loci
OF time and space locked behind the glass doors of the cabinets,
It all felt a bit M.R. James ghost story-like:
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ …
I wouldn’t dare whistle here if I were you …

For here is a cabinet with a boy’s skull and a beaker,
A Bronze Age cinerary urn
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ …
There, a Neolithic trephined skull from Bisley,
This is a copy. The original is in the British Museum.
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ …

Well, tempus fugit and all that,
It was time for me to go;
Sense, sensibility and knowledge all augmented,
Horizons broadened,
Educated, informed and entertained
In the true traditions of public service.
I bought some polished ammonites before I left the museum,
A present for my wife on her birthday,
To help her reflect on the nature of time and mortality,
And walked out into a windswept mad March day,
Feeling slightly wired by what I had seen and read,
Slightly ever so pantheistic,
Aware and part of it all:
The robin singing in the blossom blackthorn,
The rising, rushing Painswick stream by Tescos,
No bow and arrow or slingshot,
But the corvids still cried in alarm.
Clacking and fluttering in the trees on Rodborough Hill
As I ascended the hill to home,
Just as they did five thousand years ago.

‘Museums make you more aware:
Give You
Sense
Sensibility
Knowledge
A foothold in time
Make you feel a part of it all’

Uley Walk: the Uley Skimmington April 26th

Friday 26 April 2019, meet at Uley Church Hall bus stop 9:30

(Bus 65 towards Dursley, leaves Merrywalks at 09:00, alight at Uley Church Hall 9:20)

It’s the First of June 1792, and there are fifty weavers gathered outside John Teakle’s cottage in Uley. He’s been working for cheap rates in the workshops of Nathaniel Lloyd at ‘The Courts’. The weavers insist that Teakle removes his work from the loom, threatening him that his house will be pulled down, and he will be ducked in the pond.

Friday 26 April 2019, meet at Uley Church Hall bus stop 9:30

(Bus 65 towards Dursley, leaves Merrywalks at 09:00, alight at Uley Church Hall 9:20)

It’s the First of June 1792, and there are fifty weavers gathered outside John Teakle’s cottage in Uley. He’s been working for cheap rates in the workshops of Nathaniel Lloyd at ‘The Courts’. The weavers insist that Teakle removes his work from the loom, threatening him that his house will be pulled down, and he will be ducked in the pond.

To make an example of him, Teakle formed the centre of attention in a Skimmington procession from Uley to Horsley and Nailsworth. In addition to his ducking he was fixed to a pole and carried round the villages. On the return of the procession to Uley, Theakle escaped and barricaded himself in his cottage. The stand-off lasted three hours, and windows and the roof were damaged.

All welcome to join our Uley Skimmington recreation, to Horsley and back. There will some Rough Music along the route, so bring your own pans. Eight miles round trip, allow five hours.

Andrew Budd at sootallures@yahoo.co.uk for more information.

Radical Stroud Revolutionary Walks Programme

1. TBC: May 26th In May 1839, revolution was in the air around Stroud and 5,000 people met on Selsley Common to air support for the Chartist demands for democracy. Radical Stroud will lead a performative walk to remember those times with a walk up to Selsley Hill. Meet at the Kitsch café opposite Ebley Mill on the canal on Sunday May 26th. A stiff walk follows up to the common. Allow yourselves three hours maximum for up and talk and discuss and back down again. Free but numbers limited to 30. Book via Stuart Butler at stfc12@hotmail.comThis event dovetails with the premiere of Day of Hope by John Bassett and the Spaniel in the Works Theatre Company.

2. TBC: May 1st: train to Kemble (9.08); walk to Ewen; talk about the Chartist, Spencean, feminist etc. Allen Davenport in Ewen; then walk back to the source of the Thames and thence to Stroud. Allow six hours for the walk. The Thames rises near Ewen, about fifteen miles from Stroud. And it was Ewen which saw the birth of Allen Davenport in 1775. Allen was the son of a handloom weaver. He taught himself to read and write. He became a Spencean; a biographer of Thomas Spence; an Owenite; a feminist, and a Chartist writer and poet, who is memorialised on the Reformers’ Memorial in Kensal Green. This was thrilling stuff for me to find out about whilst walking along the banks of the infant river … We have a commemorative walk planned from Stroud along the Thames and Seven Canal and the river to Ewen on May 1st: Allen Davenport’s birthdate, btw. We shall bring this radical back to life in his home village, down in this sequestered Tory shire. Free but numbers limited to 30. Book via Stuart Butler at stfc12@hotmail.com

1. TBC: May 26th In May 1839, revolution was in the air around Stroud and 5,000 people met on Selsley Common to air support for the Chartist demands for democracy. Radical Stroud will lead a performative walk to remember those times with a walk up to Selsley Hill. Meet at the Kitsch café opposite Ebley Mill on the canal on Sunday May 26th. A stiff walk follows up to the common. Allow yourselves three hours maximum for up and talk and discuss and back down again. Free but numbers limited to 30. Book via Stuart Butler at stfc12@hotmail.comThis event dovetails with the premiere of Day of Hope by John Bassett and the Spaniel in the Works Theatre Company.

2. TBC: May 1st: train to Kemble (9.08); walk to Ewen; talk about the Chartist, Spencean, feminist etc. Allen Davenport in Ewen; then walk back to the source of the Thames and thence to Stroud. Allow six hours for the walk. The Thames rises near Ewen, about fifteen miles from Stroud. And it was Ewen which saw the birth of Allen Davenport in 1775. Allen was the son of a handloom weaver. He taught himself to read and write. He became a Spencean; a biographer of Thomas Spence; an Owenite; a feminist, and a Chartist writer and poet, who is memorialised on the Reformers’ Memorial in Kensal Green. This was thrilling stuff for me to find out about whilst walking along the banks of the infant river … We have a commemorative walk planned from Stroud along the Thames and Seven Canal and the river to Ewen on May 1st: Allen Davenport’s birthdate, btw. We shall bring this radical back to life in his home village, down in this sequestered Tory shire. Free but numbers limited to 30. Book via Stuart Butler at stfc12@hotmail.com

3. TBC: June 21st: Thomas Spence’s birthday. Early train to London and then a walk to commemorate Thomas’ birthday around Clerkenwell, High Holborn, Fleet Street. 9.08 to London; come back after 7. Free but numbers limited to 30. Book via Stuart Butler at stfc12@hotmail.com

4. TBC: August 16th: Peterloo Remembered

On the 16th of August 2019,
The bi-centenary of Peterloo,
A Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt performative walk:
Meet at the church in Enford at 10.45:
The walk will end at Upavon after about three hours,
A bit up and down and one bit by the main road;
Park at Enford and get the bus back from Upavon,
Or get the bus from Swindon to Enford and back from Upavon
(Train to Swindon)

How Henry Hunt is not memorialized in Wiltshire
And how Captain Swing almost is
Henry Hunt’s onetime associate,
Rural Rides’ William Cobbett,

Came down this way in late August 1826:

‘The shepherd showed me the way … and a most beautiful sight it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers, steeples, meadows, orchards, and very fine timber trees, scattered all over the valley … downs, very lofty and steep in some places, and sloping miles back in others … From the edge of the downs begin capital arable fields generally of very great dimensions … After the corn-fields come meadows on each side, down to the brook or river … I sat upon my horse and looked over Milton and Easton and Pewsey for half an hour, though I had not breakfasted…’

We travelled by the cherry red
Swindon-Salisbury double-decker,
To alight at Enford to view the church

At 10.45 at the end of February 2019:
‘Above the arch is the COAT OF ARMS of King William 1V dating from 1831. Royal coats of arms were much in vogue in this period to display the parish’s loyalty and to add colour to the church …’
But obvs no mention of Captain Swing
Or the threat of revolution at this time …
But we went left to the crossroads.
For the lane towards Littlecot
And East Chisenbury and the Red Lion,
Thatched cottages and inns,
Flint and red brick and whitewash,
Just as in Cobbett’s and the Orator’s day;
A left hand turn on a footpath followed,
And so to the crossing of the main (turnpike) road,
Where we turned left along the verge to a stile on the right,
Where a footpath sign on a gate showed us our way up the hill;
We walked where Hunt no doubt took his horse,
A parliament of rooks democratically nesting
Below us on our left hand side,
Lichen splashing the track-way hawthorn,
The big sky landscape bare branched etched,
A solitary signpost standing to show our path
Across the lonely windswept downs,
Now resounding with ordnance,
Beyond the red flags down to Salisbury Plain:
An echo of the musket fire from the days of Swing,
Skylarks ascending to sing the spring,
While finches arced their way across the ploughed fields,
Barns with the ghosts of their threshing machines,
Boot-prints once down there in the oozing mud,
Cries of ‘Bread or Blood’ still there in the air,
The ashes of burnt hayricks and letters,
Once scattered across the nearby valley farms and fields,
The sun now gleaming on the puddled track-ways,
And on the white horse hillside to the south;
While, beyond, lay Hampshire and misty Dorset,
Where Captain Swing once rode on his white horse.
We wandered on to skirt a high Iron Age enclosure,
And so descend along a curving lane,
Past the birthplace of Henry Hunt on our right,
Widdington Farm:

‘I was born on the 6th November 1773, in Wiltshire, at Widdington Farm, not within a mile of any other habitation, near Upavon. Widdington Farm lies about a mile from the turnpike road … a lone farm, in a valley upon the downs.’
But no mention of the Orator today,
Instead:

‘WIDDINGTON SHOOT
WILTSHIRE
CLAY SHOOTING GROUND
OUR NEXT COMPETTION IS …’;
And this is how Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
And Wiltshire’s radical history is memorialized,
Mute and invisible in the Vale of the Avon,
Unless you use your imagination –
But, wait, in St Timothy’s Church in Upavon,
There is a brief but welcome reference to Captain Swing
On the information board:

‘In the beginning of the nineteenth century agricultural workers in general, and those of Wiltshire in particular, had been reduced to abject misery, and The Vale was a focal point of the agricultural unrest known as the Swing Riots of 1830.’

‘Abject misery’ is daring and arresting …
But the next sentence and paragraph
Guides the reader’s understanding thus:

‘By far the most important development was the Vale’s emergence as a transportation corridor … the Kennet & Avon Canal …’
‘By far the most important development …’
The subliminal suggestion …
Old fashioned Swing …
The modernity/progress transportation trope …
The modernity of ‘corridor’ …
The world of ‘abject misery’ has been left behind …
Mute and invisible,
Like Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt.
We hope to address this mute invisibility
On the 16th of August 2019,
The bi-centenary of Peterloo,
With a Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt performative walk:
Meet at the church in Enford at 10.45:
The walk will end at Upavon after about three hours,
A bit up and down and one bit by the main road;
Park at Enford and get the bus back from Upavon,
Or get the bus from Swindon to Enford and back from Upavon.
TBC

5. Sunday November 23rd TBC: Slad/Stroud walk interweaving the Cider With Rosie tale of the deserter with the centenary of riots and mutinies in the British Army and the government’s fear of revolution in 1919. Meet at the war memorial in Slad and then a walk to the Museum in the Park for the puppet show. Three hours – slow walking, discussion, performance and presentation.

Spring Equinox Walk

On Wednesday 20th March 2019, to mark the Spring Equinox, Radical Stroud will carry out a Walk to Circumnavigate the Arlingham Peninsula.
There is much to note, remark on and celebrate on the way –
Estuarine myths and legends; Ivor Gurney [who sailed these waters]; the site of the Old Passage ford [impassable since 1802]; the Bristol Channel floods of 1607 [was it a tsunami?] as well as wide skies and broad vistas.
Meet at 10.00 outside the Red Lion in Arlingham.
Alas, public transport not available
Allow 6 hours for the full circumnavigation. It is possible to shorten the walk in several places. No steep climbs. A few stiles and short stretches on country lanes. Almost certain to be very muddy in p!aces.

On Wednesday 20th March 2019, to mark the Spring Equinox, Radical Stroud will carry out a Walk to Circumnavigate the Arlingham Peninsula.
There is much to note, remark on and celebrate on the way –
Estuarine myths and legends; Ivor Gurney [who sailed these waters]; the site of the Old Passage ford [impassable since 1802]; the Bristol Channel floods of 1607 [was it a tsunami?] as well as wide skies and broad vistas.
Meet at 10.00 outside the Red Lion in Arlingham.
Alas, public transport not available
Allow 6 hours for the full circumnavigation. It is possible to shorten the walk in several places. No steep climbs. A few stiles and short stretches on country lanes. Almost certain to be very muddy in p!aces.

Thomas Helliker: the Trowbridge Martyr

Prologue

I have previously only known the name Semington from information boards on the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal: a junction with the Kennet and Avon Canal. This is how ‘Heritage’ works: it fixes your view on space and time; it gives the past meaning. But ‘Counter-Heritage’ remembers those who are ignored, forgotten or misrepresented. It gives a different and radical meaning to the past.

Act the First

‘The orthography is irrelevant, madam.
Helliker, Hilliker, Hiliker, Elliker,
The spelling matters not a jot, madam,
Illiteracy does not mask identity,
We know who the shearman’s apprentice was
At Mr Nash’s Littleton Mill,
Semington, 22nd July 1802;
He was there in the riot, tumult and arson;
Mr. Heath says he saw Helliker brandish a pistol
And intimidate the loyal night watchman;
Mr. Heath had previous heard Helliker
Offer thanks and gratitude for the wrecking
Of honest men’s machinery and livelihoods;
And did not Mr. Heath identify Helliker
After the miscreant’s arrest in Trowbridge,
Last August the third?’

The Tale of Thomas Helliker – A Tale of Woe and Tragedy – The Trowbridge Martyr

Prologue

I have previously only known the name Semington from information boards on the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal: a junction with the Kennet and Avon Canal. This is how ‘Heritage’ works: it fixes your view on space and time; it gives the past meaning. But ‘Counter-Heritage’ remembers those who are ignored, forgotten or misrepresented. It gives a different and radical meaning to the past.

Act the First

‘The orthography is irrelevant, madam.
Helliker, Hilliker, Hiliker, Elliker,
The spelling matters not a jot, madam,
Illiteracy does not mask identity,
We know who the shearman’s apprentice was
At Mr Nash’s Littleton Mill,
Semington, 22nd July 1802;
He was there in the riot, tumult and arson;
Mr. Heath says he saw Helliker brandish a pistol
And intimidate the loyal night watchman;
Mr. Heath had previous heard Helliker
Offer thanks and gratitude for the wrecking
Of honest men’s machinery and livelihoods;
And did not Mr. Heath identify Helliker
After the miscreant’s arrest in Trowbridge,
Last August the third?’

Act the Second

‘What say you, madam?
Helliker was the only mill hand there,
Standing in the line for Heath’s inspection,
And so, his identification was
Designed, fore-planned and inevitable?
Shut your calumnious mouth, madam.
You have been reading that wretch William Godwin’s
Scurrilous Caleb Williams, no doubt.’

Act the Third

‘Predictably, the rogue denied the offence,
I correctly and consequently informed him:
“You have been recognised and it will go bad for you.”
I told him to desist pitiful falsehood:
How convenient that he and Joseph Warren
Should inebriately lock themselves in a kitchen
And so not be present on the night of the attack!
What a tale of drunken coincidence!
More far fetched than the travels of Gulliver!’

Act the Fourth

‘Sir, even if you believe the reasons
Why Thomas could not have been present
At the Semington conflagration
To be hyperbolic invention,
He is not the felon with the pistol.
He knows full well who that person was, sir,
But his sense of honour doth mean silence;
Mr. Heath, however, values a reward
Far above any love of honour or truth;
He is the calumniator, sir,
Not Thomas Helliker.’

Act the Fifth

‘He shall be tried in Salisbury City
According to the due process of the law,
And, no doubt, be found accordingly guilty,
And sentenced to death by hanging,
Rather than transportation to Botany Bay,
Or Van Diemen’s Land, though I have no doubt
That many who share his name will make that voyage.’
Signed: Mr. Jones

Act the Sixth

‘The jury deliberated about ten minutes, during which time Helliker was in great agitation. When at length they pronounced him guilty, he appeared as if relieved from a torturing suspense, and to assume a degree of fortitude to encounter his fate and which he retained when the sentence of death was pronounced. He is a good-looking youth, only nineteen years old. He is left for execution.’

Act the Seventh

‘Sir, he was not quite nineteen at his trial.
They hanged him on the day of his nineteenth birthday.,
The 22nd March 1803.
We went to Fisherton Gaol in Salisbury,
To bring his body home to Trowbridge,
To St James’s Churchyard;
All the way over Salisbury Plain we carried him,
That cart was never accompanied
By such solemnity and ceremony, sir,
As on that long, arduous and melancholy journey.
May God have mercy on Thomas’ soul.
And God will.
He is a martyr.
The Trowbridge Martyr.
But Mr. Jones, Mr. Heath, and the judge at Salisbury Assizes,
And the gentlemen of the jury, and the executioner
May not find God so merciful.
God may not bestow his mercy upon their beleaguered souls.
Did you not all think that this good-looking youth
Ill-fitted the description issued by
R. Bowsher, Solicitor of Bath,
August 10th 1802?

Viz: “middle-sized, black eyes, thin face, teeth large in front and wide apart, sharp nose, black hair tied behind and dressed in a blue jacket.”

A description whose provenance lay
In fleeting glimpses of figures rushing
In disguise, through smoke and flame-filled flashes
Of blinding, disconcerting light.
Or a description whose provenance lay
In the realms of an imagination
Curdled by the lure of sovereign reward.’

Act the Eighth

‘Dear Father and Mother and Brothers and Sister and all my Relations, this is my Last Night. In the middle of the Last night I write this letter. Give all my love to my Uncle George – and all the Best of his family and dear Father. I think some have been the Ruin of my Body, but I hope the Lord will save my soul and that they will put up a tomb stone at my grave – to be a warning to All young men. To be a warning against bad Advice, which has been my fate. And for my Brothers to be good to you both, for it is a Bad thing to forget you. When you read this I hope my soul will be At Rest for ever and ever. Remembered me to Mrs. Baily and Mr. Townsend and W Flicker. Dear Father and mother, this give my Brothers Joseph and think of me when he swears and I hope in God it may Do good to him to leave of fear – well for ever and ever yours, Thomas Hiliker
March-21-1803, My Dear Brothers I hope this will Be A warning to you _ consider my untimely Fate Being cut off in the prime of which I hope will be A Warning to All young men like me and for the Love of God Almighty let my fate Be Always in your memory. To think that before I knew what life was, [I] was out of to Everlasting, I hope, happiness. I thank God I find myself very easy in mind and I hope the Lord God will Receive my Soul. So more Remember my Last Fate Thomas Hiliker, March 21st 1803’

Act the Ninth

‘Sacred to the memory of THOMAS HELLIKER. The thread of whose life was cut off in the bloom of youth. He exchanged mortality for immortality March 22 1803 in the 19th year of his life.
The fatal catastrophe which led to this unfortunate event is too awful to describe suffice it to say that he met death with the greatest fortitude and resignation on mind; considering his youth he may be said to have but few equals. He died a true penitent. Being very anxious in his last moments that others might take a timely warning and avoid evil company.
This tomb was erected at his earnest request by the cloth making factories of the counties of York, Wilts, and Somerset as a token of their love to him and veneration for his memory.’

Act the Tenth

‘This tomb was formerly placed over the remains of
Thomas Helliker
At a time of great disturbance throughout the manufacturing towns of this county. He was
condemned for an offence against the law of which he was afterwards believed to be innocent
and determined to die rather than give testimony which would have saved his own life, but
forfeited the lives of others.
Some of the cloth-workers of this town being so desirous to perpetuate the remembrance of such
an heroic act of self sacrifice have restored this memorial in the year of our Lord 1876.’

Act the Eleventh

Thomas’ final letter can be viewed at Trowbridge Museum. It was one of one hundred objects chosen in the BBC-British Museum A History of the World project.

Epilogue

I have previously only known the name Semington from information boards on the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal: a junction with the Kennet and Avon Canal. This is how ‘Heritage’ works: it fixes your view on space and time; it gives the past meaning. But ‘Counter-Heritage’ remembers those who are ignored, forgotten or misrepresented. It gives a different and radical meaning to the past.

Broadstairs and Charles Dickens: Heritage and Counter-Heritage

‘Charles Dickens never lived here’
Is a standout plaque on a cottage wall,
Down towards the harbour in Broadstairs –
Must take some courage to ironise
The Broadstairs branding of itself …

He first came here in 1837,
The year of Victoria’s accession,
And a year of gathering Chartist momentum,
To lodge in the High Street at number twelve,
To complete the last few monthly numbers
Of Pickwick Papers, and make so much money
That he bought the imposing cliff top house,
Fort House, built some thirty odd years before,
Where he penned his pages of labyrinthine plots,
And Pickwickian old time wistful nostalgia,
And critical observations of modern times:
Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist,
Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop,
Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit,
Dombey and Son, David Copperfield;

‘Charles Dickens never lived here’
Is a standout plaque on a cottage wall,
Down towards the harbour in Broadstairs –
Must take some courage to ironise
The Broadstairs branding of itself …

He first came here in 1837,
The year of Victoria’s accession,
And a year of gathering Chartist momentum,
To lodge in the High Street at number twelve,
To complete the last few monthly numbers
Of Pickwick Papers, and make so much money
That he bought the imposing cliff top house,
Fort House, built some thirty odd years before,
Where he penned his pages of labyrinthine plots,
And Pickwickian old time wistful nostalgia,
And critical observations of modern times:
Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist,
Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop,
Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit,
Dombey and Son, David Copperfield;

Fort House is now named Bleak House:
‘Experience beyond expectations the grandeur and delights
Of Charles Dickens’ former home Bleak House …
Little Dorrit’s Bedroom with king-sized bed,
Charles Dickens suite with private bathroom.
The decadent Copperfield Suite with its luxury bathroom
complete with double bath.
The Nicholas Nickleby three bedroom apartment …’
But despite this kitsch and faux marketing,
It is impossible not to feel a thrill,
Standing beneath windows that jut out to sea,
The ebb and flow of the tide echoing
The scratch of a quill across some parchment,
As Dickens gazed out on a moonlit sea,
Or paused, pen in hand, as a new dawn
Ushered in a new chapter and character,
And some relief, respite and rejuvenation
From all that fervent lucubration:
‘The radiant sails … gliding past the shore,
shining on the far horizon …
the sea is sparkling, heavy, swelling up
with life and beauty, this bright morning’ …

Meanwhile, mythology pervades the town:
‘Happy Birthday Mr. Dickens!
A birthday celebration with a Cream Tea,
Grand Raffle and a performance
by the Dickens Declaimers …’
And then, as it were, Fake Mews (!):
Bill Sykes Cottage, Bumble’s Antiques,
The Old Curiosity Shop cafe,
Dickens Cottage, Barnaby’s Lodge …
But down by the front stands a museum,
Dickens House,
The inspiration for Aunt Betsy Trotwood –
Chasing donkeys – and refuge for Mr. Dick
(On the road to Dover, in the novel),
And the bourne of David Copperfield:
‘” If you please, aunt. I am your nephew.”
“Oh Lord!” said my aunt.
And sat flat down on the garden path.’

Well, what a Dickens of a place Broadstairs is!
And how many places do this sort of thing,
To get the tourists in to spend their money …

Is it any different from our practice
At Radical Stroud, with our stress upon
The recreation of anonymous voices:
Those subject, to the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’?
As we go beyond the empirical,
Beyond the documented,
With our ‘Guerrilla Memorialisation’.

In short,
Is there such a chasm of difference
Between ‘Heritage’ and ‘Counter-Heritage’?

A Wiltshire Town and Peterloo

I travelled on the GWR,
Built not long after the Orator’s death,
Passing through a mill-scape valley
Known well by quondam colleague, William Cobbett,
On past antique ridge and furrow fields,
To Swindon, a town that I am sure
Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt would have admired,
A new industrial work-town,
Full of mechanics and artisans and questioning,
Thence by the 49 bus across the windswept Downs,
Through a leafless Captain Swing landscape
On a Captain Swing late November rain-swept day,
To take my leisure at the Bear in the town square,
Where – against every grain – Henry Hunt took his wife:
‘How this betrothing came about I must now inform my readers, I had often
heard my father speak in very high terms of Miss Halcomb, the daughter of his
old acquaintance, Mr. Wm. Halcomb, who kept the Bear Inn at Devizes, well
known to be one of the very best inns between London and Bath.’

I travelled on the GWR,
Built not long after the Orator’s death,
Passing through a mill-scape valley
Known well by quondam colleague, William Cobbett,
On past antique ridge and furrow fields,
To Swindon, a town that I am sure
Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt would have admired,
A new industrial work-town,
Full of mechanics and artisans and questioning,
Thence by the 49 bus across the windswept Downs,
Through a leafless Captain Swing landscape
On a Captain Swing late November rain-swept day,
To take my leisure at the Bear in the town square,
Where – against every grain – Henry Hunt took his wife:
‘How this betrothing came about I must now inform my readers, I had often
heard my father speak in very high terms of Miss Halcomb, the daughter of his
old acquaintance, Mr. Wm. Halcomb, who kept the Bear Inn at Devizes, well
known to be one of the very best inns between London and Bath.’

I travelled on the GWR,
Built not long after the Orator’s death,
Passing through a mill-scape valley
Known well by quondam colleague, William Cobbett,
On past antique ridge and furrow fields,
To Swindon, a town that I am sure
Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt would have admired,
A new industrial work-town,
Full of mechanics and artisans and questioning,
Thence by the 49 bus across the windswept Downs,
Through a leafless Captain Swing landscape
On a Captain Swing late November rain-swept day,
To take my leisure at the Bear in the town square,
Where – against every grain – Henry Hunt took his wife:
‘How this betrothing came about I must now inform my readers, I had often
heard my father speak in very high terms of Miss Halcomb, the daughter of his
old acquaintance, Mr. Wm. Halcomb, who kept the Bear Inn at Devizes, well
known to be one of the very best inns between London and Bath.’
Middle England was at its elevenses
In the hotel when I arrived,
But there were drinkers in the bar,
Faux Pickwickian coaching scenes everywhere,
No mention of the Orator, of course,
And no mention of him in the square,
Despite the mother and father of all coincidence,
And irony, paradox, juxtaposition and antithesis –
For right opposite the Bear stands a memorial,
A memorial to Lord Sidmouth
Member of Parliament for Devizes,
The hated rather than revered Lord Sidmouth,
He of Peterloo and reactionary infamy,
The repressive Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth,
Operator of spies, informers and agents-provocateurs,
Reviled by Shelley in The Masque of Anarchy*,
The arch-reactionary who congratulated the magistrates
And the yeomanry after the Peterloo massacre,
And who was, in more than just a sense,
Responsible for Hunt’s imprisonment
And consequent solitary confinement:
*’Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by …
Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.’