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Blatchford, The Clarion and Merrie England 73 comments Born in 1851, Robert Peel Blatchford, named after the Conservative Prime Minister, was one of the most influential socialist writers in British history. Blatchford, just two years old when his father died, was raised by his working mother, an actress, who apprenticed her sons to tradesmen. Aged 14, Robert was indentured for seven years to a brush-maker in Halifax. After six years he ran away and joined the army. Blatchford left the army in 1878, took a job as a timekeeper and married Sarah Crossley, whom he had met 13 years before at the Halifax brush shop. Looking to augment his meagre income he began to write for several provincial newspapers before becoming a full-time journalist with the Sunday Chronicle in 1887. Among his early stories were reports of the terrible conditions in the Manchester slums, an experience that was crucial to the development of Blatchford’s socialism. Ethical Socialism Blatchford is representative of the ethical socialism associated with figures like William Morris, John Ruskin and Robert Owen. Blatchford’s socialism was both modern, in that is promised a scientific system of national organisation, and traditional, harking back to a mythical golden age when society was characterised by harmony and equality. Similarly, his socialism was tied up with notions of Englishness and a concept of England as a green and pleasant land under threat from capitalist industrialisation. He helped found the Manchester Fabian Society in 1890 and was connected to the local Social Democratic Federation. Together with his friend Alexander Thompson, his brother Montague Blatchford and Edward Francis, a fellow journalist, with £400 in capital between them, Blatchford started The Clarion as a socialist weekly in 1891. The Clarion In his first leading article for The Clarion, Blatchford wrote: The Clarion is a paper meant by its owners and writers to tell the truth as they see it, frankly and without fear. The Clarion may not always be right, but it will always be sincere. Its staff do not claim to be witty or wise, but they do claim to be honest. They write not for factions; but for the people. … Wheresoever wrong exists they will try to expose it. Towards baseness, cowardice, self-seeking or roguery, no matter where or in what class it may appear, they will show no mercy. … The policy of The Clarion is a policy of humanity, a policy not of party, sect or creed; but of justice, reason and mercy. In addition to seeking to “make Socialists” by explaining the principles of socialism in simple, plain language, the paper also contained features on books, music and sports; humorous anecdotes, cartoons and moral tales; and a regular ‘Children’s Corner’ and ‘Woman’s Letter’. Blatchford was initially supportive of women’s rights, writing that “Women must have equal rights, political, industrial, social and civic, with men. They must cease to be chattels or vassals, or servants, or inferiors.” However, he came to oppose both the activities of the peaceful suffragists and militant suffragettes. The paper’s circulation remained in the low 30,000s for some years until Blatchford published a series of its articles as a book, Merrie England, in 1893, which sold 700,000 copies in its first year and some two million copies worldwide. This not only helped make Socialism well known in England for the first time but saw The Clarion’s circulation jump to 60,000. View transcript More than just a newspaper, The Clarion inspired a popular movement that encompassed innovative political campaigning and social activity. It inspired Clarion Cycling Clubs and a ‘cycling corps of Clarion Scouts’, which, with riders carrying copies of paper and leaflets in their saddle bags, helped the paper reach new heights of circulation. The Scouts were further instructed to help with house to house and workplace distribution of leaflets and penny editions of Merrie England, to help establish branches of the ILP or SDF where they didn’t currently exist and to write letters to the press, raise questions at political meetings and support Socialist candidates in elections. The paper also inspired the formation of Clarion Choirs, with Blatchford’s brother, Montague, becoming the leader of the Clarion Vocal Union, which had over 1,200 members by 1896. In 1899 the CVU organised its first united concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, with 450 singers competing in 14 choirs, establishing an annual tradition that would last over three decades. In addition to choirs and cycling clubs the Clarion movement included dramatic societies, craft groups and a wide range of art, photography, rambling and sports clubs. Drift to the Right Blatchford’s support for the Boer War, warnings of the dangers posed by Imperial Germany, campaign against orthodox religion and backing of Britain’s entry into the First World War eventually alienated most other English Socialists. These positions most likely also contributed to the decline of The Clarion after the First World War, ceasing publication in 1934, although the cycling clubs continued to be popular well into the 1930s. Meanwhile Blatchford himself swung to the right. In 1915 he formed the National Democratic and Labour Party as a right-wing split off from the Socialist Party. It won over 150,000 votes in 1918 general election and 9 seats in Parliament. Explaining the shift in his thinking, Blatchford wrote: “I have never been converted from Socialism. But careful observation of the facts for the last twelve years or so has convinced me that Socialism will not work, and a study of Mr. [Henry] Ford’s methods has provided what seems to me as good a substitute as we may hope in this imperfect world.” In 1924 he supported the Conservative party, becoming a vocal champion of Stanley Baldwin. By 1931 he was describing himself as a Tory Democrat and expressed his distrust of the Labour leadership, their internationalism and the threat he believed they posed to the Empire. Despite this rift, Labour’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, wrote of Blatchford in his autobiography published in 1934: “no man did more than he to make socialism understood by the ordinary man. He based his appeal on the principles of human justice. … His arguments and illustrations were drawn from facts and experiences within the knowledge of the common people.”