Charles Bradlaugh

[Magnifico points out that Charles Bradlaugh was not a socialist.

Bradlaugh's biographer David Tribe writes: ‘He opposed [socialism] as vague in details but likely to lead to violent revolution, tyranny, censorship, lack of enterprise and economic stagnation (criticisms later vindicated by experience in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union). Instead he extolled - perhaps too optimistically - education, reform and co-operative retail, building and insurance societies.’

His attitude to the then emerging socialist movement was influenced by the tragedy of the Paris Commune. As a supporter of French Republicanism he was invited to help negotiate for peace between the Communards and the Versailles Government, but was concerned at the stubbornness of both sides and predicted a blood bath.

For a brief introduction/biography of Bradlaugh see: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRbradlaugh.htm
Some of his writings on Secularism: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_bradlaugh/

Bradlaugh helped found the National Secular Society and was it's first chairman. The NSS website used to mention this at the head of its homepage, sadly it doesn’t now, and there were until recently various articles about him there that have now gone. However the site is well worth a visit:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/

George Bernard Shaw was a friend and supporter of Bradlaugh. His Speech ‘Charles Bradlaugh – Anti-Fundamentalist’ was delivered on the centenary of Bradlaugh’s birth in 1933 - very relevant today!

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bradgbs.htm

The Charles Bradlaugh Society was set up locally in response to the national ‘display of love and devotion’ shown to Elizabeth Windsor on her ‘Golden Jubilee’ in 2002. As an alternative to the naff festival/celebration organised by civic worthies in Beckett’s Park on bank holiday 3rd June we held a Republican Picnic - more in the spirit of Northampton’s long radical and republican heritage. We decorated the Abington Park bandstand in Bradlaugh’s colours - mauve, white and green ribbons and balloons, and played cricket, volley ball and soccer, and had a jolly time. Since then we have organised exhibitions and held annual commemorations by the Bradlaugh statue on the nearest Sunday to his birthday (26th Sept.1833). Last year the theme for the commemoration was Bradlaugh’s and Northampton’s links with India - I will attach separately a section from David Tribe’s biography looking at ‘Bradlaugh – The Member for India’, and his account of an incident when he was a soldier in Ireland. I am particularly interested in his campaigns for land reform and intend to post more on this.

The Land, the People, and the coming Struggle.
Charles Bradlaugh 1877.
'The enormous estates of the few landed proprietors must not only be prevented from growing larger, they must be broken up. If they claim that in this we are unfair, our answer is ready. You have monopolised the land, and while you have got each year a wider and firmer grip , you have cast its burdens on others; you have made labour pay the taxes which land could more easily have borne. You have been intolerant in your power, driving your tenants to the poll like cattle, keeping your labourers ignorant and demoralised.’

CHARLES BRADLAUGH - THE MEMBER FOR INDIA

From ‘President Charles Bradlaugh’ by David Tribe. 1972

On 21 August 1888 another great meeting was held at Northampton Guildhall. In the chair was Covington, the new mayor. Two eminent Indians, Dababhai Naraoroji and W.C. Bonnerjee, addressed the people in the heart of England’s ‘tight little isle.’ They told them of the plight of distant millions whom they would never see, exploited and disenfranchised, undernourished and often starving. Charles Bradlaugh knew of their plight. He had studied it for years. He was anxious to be their voice in the mother of parliaments. But, they admitted, it was complex and difficult work. It would take up much of his time and reduce what was available for his Northampton constituents. In one of those rare acts of political generosity, the people said they would gladly make the sacrifice and Bradlaugh was ‘nobly consecrated…’Member for India.’
Next session the new member was responsible for ‘saving lakhs* of human lives’* when he raised the question of famine in Ganjam. Both the British Government and the Madras Presidency, on the basis of their briefing, denied its existence, but Gorst*, ‘knowing Mr.Bradlaugh would not persevere unless he had good information, wired to the Governor of Madras to make special and immediate enquiries.’* The governor found that Bradlaugh was correct and took immediate relief measures. Then the British watchdog asked how such things could go unnoticed, and what about the Famine Insurance Fund.
At first it was denied that such a fund existed, but Bradlaugh had no difficulty in showing that since 1878 a special annual tax of £1,500,000 had been levied ‘for the purpose of providing…an insurance against famine, and for no other purpose whatever.’* Instead the money had, over the years, been spent on ‘war and annexation and the erection of costly buildings at Simla, and for similar purposes, while the people of India have been starving.’* He passed on to denounce the whole British attitude to India. It was the end of August, with the House in committee and most of its members off for the recess, the only occasion, year by year when time could be found to discuss the destinies of between 200 and 300 million people. He gestured scathingly round the chamber. Only the Under-Secretary for India to represent the government, none of the leaders of his own party present. If more suitable opportunities were not provided he would raise Indian questions by an amendment to the Address. He had other complaints. Salt duty had been raised 25%; mining concessions were granted in secrecy; the provincial councils of India had too few native representatives and powers, there should be a Committee of the House or a Joint Standing Committee of both Houses to study Indian questions…

In London, the great event of the late summer of 1889 was the dock strike organized by Burns, Mann, and especially Ben Tillet, a young Congregationalist who was secretary of the small Tea Operatives and General Workers Union. The non-unionist who got all the credit for assistance-and he did work hard in the negotiations of a settlement - was Manning; but Tillet later acknowledged it was Mrs Besant and ‘the great Charles Bradlaugh’ who ‘helped me in drawing up the rules of the Dockers’ Union’ which was then formed. To finance all this voluntary work, and his constituency duties, Bradlaugh also had to cope with ceaseless editing, lecturing and review journalism. Bradlaugh would not relax, or concentrate on remunerative activities, or move to more congenial quarters. The inevitable happened. He fell seriously ill…. Nursed by his devoted daughter Hypathia he at last pulled through, but Foote* was ‘shocked by his appearance, he looked twenty years older, grey and infirm.’ His doctors insisted he go away and he was too weak to resist. They suggested a long sea voyage to India. Indeed, he had always wanted to visit his ‘constituency’ and address Congress, but there was the expense. A parliamentary colleague, William McEwan, delicately sent a cheque of £200 and Bradlaugh set sail. In his absence Annie edited the Reformer. On 23rd December 1889 he reached Bombay. As soon as he was installed like a visiting potentate, a river of distinguished individuals and deputations from all the provinces began to flow past him, depositing their addresses and scrolls, caskets of silver, sandalwood and ivory…. Captious minority voices were later to question ‘whether Mr Bradlaugh really did anything for India which deserved the extravagant praise which was allotted to him both on his demise and during the later years of his life’* but most observers agreed that, within the traditions of Indian hyperbole, the appreciations were richly deserved.
Five days after his arrival in Bombay the election meeting of the fifth Congress took place under the presidency of the retired Indian Civil Servant, Sir William Webberburn, an Englishman who had travelled out with Bradlaugh. Four thousand delegates were present from every part and most of the races and religions of India….The following day, far from well and almost suffocated by goodwill, Bradlaugh, the first MP to visit Congress, gave its closing cheer-drenched speech. Though some delegates thought his Indian Bill did not go far enough and Sir Madava Row believed his proposed House Committee on Indian affairs would lack both knowledge and authority, his policies had been overwhelmingly endorsed. Calling for unity across the subcontinent and across the sea to Britain, he expressed delight that in ‘its infancy so many had joined’ Congress and pledged himself to ‘speak that which seems to me to be right and true.’ Too weak to travel round India, as he would have liked, he returned home in early January.
*Lakh –100,000
· Gorst –
· George William Foote, founder and editor of ‘The Freethinker’

‘His [Bradlaughs] services to India in the latest years of his life were no suddenly accepted tasks. He had spoken for her; pleaded for her many a long year, through press and on platform and his spurs as Member for India were won long before he became Member of Parliament.’ Annie Besant, pioneering socialist, partner of Bradlaugh and later President of the Indian Congress.

Amongst the Indian contingent at Bradlaugh’s funeral in 1891 was the young law student Mahatma Gandhi.

I WAS THERE - Bradlaugh in Ireland“
I was there on a November day. I was one of a troop to protect the law officers, who had come from the agent in Dublin to make an eviction a few miles from Inniscarra, where the river Bride joins the Lee. It was a miserable day – rain freezing into sleet as it fell – and the men beat down wretched dwelling after wretched dwelling, some thirty or forty perhaps. They did not take much beating down; there was no flooring to take up; the walls were more mud than aught else; and there was but little trouble in the levelling of them to the ground.

We had got our work about three parts done, when out of one of them a women ran, and flung herself on the ground, wet as it was, before the Captain of the troop, and she asked that her house might be spared – not for long, but for a little while. She said her husband had been born in it; he was ill of the fever, but could not live long, and she asked that he might be permitted to die in it in peace. Our Captain had no power; the law agent from Dublin wanted to get back to Dublin, his time was of importance and he would not wait; and that man was carried out while we were there – in front of us, while the sleet was coming down – carried out on a wretched thing (you could not call it a bed), and he died there while we were there; and three nights afterwards, while I was sentry on the front gate at Ballincollig Barracks, we heard a cry, and when the guard was turned out, we found this poor women there a raving maniac, with one dead babe in one arm, and another in the other clinging to the cold nipple of her lifeless breast. If you had been brothers to such a woman, sons of such a woman, fathers of such a woman, would not rebellion have seemed the holiest gospel you could hear preached?”

Charles Bradlaugh, then aged 17 served with the 7th Dragoon Guards in Ireland. He was later to become the bane of the British establishment. A republican and freethinker he was MP for Northampton 1880-1891.
Sláinte

...and I said let grief
be a falling leaf
at the downing of the day.