Rose Street Club
Rose Street Club | |
---|---|
Radicalism Anarchism | |
Political position | Far-left |
Regional affiliation | London |
The Rose Street Club (sometimes the International Rose Street Club
Background
The late-19th century saw the growth of several political organisations in London, many of which formed themselves into clubs. For a while, the literary critic Robert Sampson said, the city was the epicentre of European radicalism during the last decades of the period.[3] At the same time, radicals were being expelled from European cites, particularly Germany, in what the modern historian Faith Hillis has termed "a tsunami of illiberalism".[4][5] London, partly due to Britain one of the few countries to still maintain the semblance of a free press, became an attractive place of exile for many of them.[6] Thus clubs such as Rose Street were often majoritively composed of refugees, yet they also attracted English adherents.[7]
Rose Street itself was a poor area of London in the mid-19th century and was occupied by brothels and frequently infected by
The origins of the Rose Street Club lay in the late-19th century European reaction to radical ideas. Particularly formative were the German
The Rose Street Club succeeded from the 1840s German
Some 20–30 little societies which, under various names (always the same people), [who] have been persistently trying to look important for the past twenty years at least and always with the same lack of success ... One’s best course is to do justice to the aspirations without identifying oneself with the persons.[28]
Although Engels called them "very motley" societies,[29] in keeping with the tendency of the time to propagandize the existence of political organisations by bestowing them with "high-sounding titles which the old guard employed in the hope of attracting public interest",[24] in the words of E. P. Thompson, the Club was occasionally known as the "Local Rights Association for Rental and Sanitary Reform".[24]
Name
Originally based in Great Windmill Street, and called The Great Windmill Street Club as a result,[26] the club took its eventual name in July 1878 when it moved to number six Rose Street, in Soho, which was just off the Charing Cross Road[30] in Soho Square West.[31] This had previously been occupied by the St James and Soho Working Men's Club, although the building by now was almost derelict.[32] They were much larger premises, however, and membership increased proportionately,[30] while at the same time the umbrella organisation were diminishing in popularity. Therefore, working-class leftists formed or joined local clubs.[19]
Origins, organisation and activities
Thousands were expatriates, hundreds of families broken up, hundreds imprisoned; [...] a great number sought refuge in London and our club in Rose Street presented at times the appearance of an arrival or departure platform at a station with luggage and cases of prohibited literature and bewildered emigrants going to and fro.
—Frank Kitz,[33] Freiheit, 1897
The Rose Street Club was an umbrella term for a number of individual societies.
Much of the membership of Britain's early Marxist organizations came from the popular radicals of the London clubs and the British associates of the European exiles ... But at least in the early 1880s, their politics were either republican or vaguely anarchist forms of radicalism.[38]
The Rose Street Club was not only a political organisation for gatherings of like-minded people, but a social one which provided succour for newly arrived refugees.
The Rose Street Club published John Sketchley's pamphlet Principles of Social Democracy in 1879.[55]
Notable members
Little is known as to the precise composition of the Rose Street Club, and no membership lists are known to survive.
Johann Most was one of the radicals who fled Bismark's legislative program in the late 1870s. Soon after joining Rose Street, he began publishing the radical newspaper
Along with Kitz,
Legacy
Although its membership was dominated by refugees,
Notes
- Dickens' fictional character, Dr Manette, who had a surgery in Soho in A Tale of Two Cities. Rose Street itself may originally have named after a tavern.[2]
- High Anglican nuns on Rose Street at the same time.[13]
- ^ Some groups used the Rose Street Club as a method of avoiding self-destruction. In the late 1870s a club based in Rupert Street, who followed the political line of Ferdinand Lassalle, had been engaged in years of internecine political warfare with the Internationalists—followers of Marx and Engels—eventually resolved their differences by merging together into the General Communist Workers' Union and basing themselves at Rose Street.[14]
- ^ It has been suggested that English public opinion—or at least the police—was firmly of the view that these émigré clubs were "hotbeds of international anarchist conspiracies", and according to di Paoli, at least one senior police officer considered London's political clubs to be the source of much of Europe's radical publications.[18]
- ^ One of Hyndman's lectures, on 30 October 1881, was entitled "The Tyranny of Capital in America and England".[44] He was described by Engels as an "ambitious party leader ... issuing orders into the void".[29]
- ^ Not, at least, with the Rose Street Club. Although the meeting of 2 March was the "first step"[46] towards the formation of a broad umbrella Social Democratic Party, it was not until 1884 that the Social Democratic Federation came into existence on the outskirts of the Liberal Party.[48]
- striking matchwomen of 1888.[54]
- ^ Apart from the Rose Street Club (which he calls the "German Club") the other signatories were, according to Harry Lee, the International Club in Poland Street, Stephen Mews in Rathbone Place, another German Club in Featherstone Street (off the City Road), some French Communards, the LEL and MSL, the Chelsea Labour Association, the Homerton Socialist Club, and the Stratford and Patriotic Radical Clubs.[56]
- ^ It was rumoured in London that Bismark had personally requested that Britain take action against Most. Although Home Secretary William Harcourt, denied the accusation in the House of Commons, the Rose Street Club offered a £300 reward for the letter Bismark was supposed to have written to the British government.[68]
- Irish Land League at the same time as the Rose Street Club, and political historian Florence Boos has described how although he was "raised in a succession of workhouses ... for almost 30 years was a constant organiser of meetings of the unemployed".[73] During a clash between police and socialist protesters, who had marched to Highgate Cemetery to celebrate Marx's birthday, William Morris recounted how "a rather feeble attempt by the hobblehoys to interrupt which our people checked with the loss of one hat" belonging to Williams.[74]
- ^ Lane was later responsible for forming the Homerton Club in Hackney and organising the Mile End Waste meetings.[78]
- ^ Bevir argues, for example, that "whilst some club members already held radical views others learnt their radicalism from the O'Brienites before going on to join the Marxist groups of the 1880s".[40]
References
- ^ Bantman 2013, p. 31.
- ^ Sheppard 1966, pp. 190–192.
- ^ a b Hampson 2011, p. 91.
- ^ Hillis 2021, pp. 10, 123–124.
- ^ Cusack 2008, p. 175.
- ^ Bantman 2019, p. 3.
- ^ a b c Cole 1941, p. 83.
- ^ Sheppard 1970, pp. 182–184.
- ^ BHO 2023.
- ^ Walkowitz 2012, p. 22.
- ^ a b Turcato 2012, p. 133.
- ^ Wise 2017, p. 291.
- ^ White 2007, p. 425.
- ^ Thompson 2011, p. 278.
- ^ a b c Wise 2017, p. 289.
- ^ a b c Moses 2016.
- ^ di Paola 2013, p. 161.
- ^ di Paola 2013, p. 162.
- ^ a b c d e f g Bevir 2011, p. 113.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Laqua 2018.
- ^ Thompson 2011, pp. 281–282.
- ^ Marshall 2009, p. 489.
- ^ Cole 1941, p. 84.
- ^ a b c d Thompson 2011, p. 282.
- ^ Samuels 1971, p. 25.
- ^ a b Lattek 2006, pp. 243–244 n. 12.
- ^ McLellan 2006, p. 541.
- ^ Flaherty 2020, p. 56.
- ^ a b Flaherty 2020, p. 57.
- ^ a b c Lattek 2006, p. 227.
- ^ a b Carlson 1972, p. 182.
- ^ Solly 2011, p. 236.
- ^ a b c d e di Paola 2013, p. 160.
- ^ a b Goyens 2017, p. 35.
- ^ Bevir 2011, p. 47.
- ^ Lincoln 1977, p. 80.
- ^ Cole 1941, pp. 83–84.
- ^ a b c Bevir 2011, p. 48.
- ^ Smith 1909, p. 404.
- ^ a b Bevir 1992, p. 213.
- ^ Panayi 1995, p. 196.
- ^ di Paola 2013, p. 56.
- ^ Lincoln 1977, p. 184.
- ^ a b Bevir 2011, p. 114.
- ^ a b Tsuzuki 1961, pp. 37–38.
- ^ a b Crick 1994, p. 13.
- ^ a b Lincoln 1977, p. 171.
- ^ Laybourn 1997, p. 3.
- ^ Bevir 1992, pp. 213–214.
- ^ Bantman 2013, p. 35.
- ^ Thompson 2011, p. 286.
- ^ Port Cities 2004.
- ^ German & Rees 2012, p. 135.
- ^ Raw 2011, p. 187.
- ^ a b Wrigley 2009, p. 80.
- ^ Wrigley 2009, pp. 80–81.
- ^ a b c d Thomas 2005, p. 5.
- ^ Thomas 2005, p. 35.
- ^ Lincoln 1977, p. 185.
- ^ a b Foreign correspondent 1881, p. 1.
- ^ Shipley 1971, p. 73.
- ^ Shipley 1971, p. 62.
- ^ Bevir 2011, pp. 47–48.
- ^ Walter 1979, p. 211.
- ^ Bantman 2013, p. 28.
- ^ a b Thompson 2011, pp. 376–377.
- ^ & Porter 1980, pp. 833–856.
- ^ a b Bantman 2013, p. 135.
- ^ Porter 1980, p. 834.
- ^ Morris 1982, p. 70.
- ^ McKercher 1987, p. 166.
- ^ Gibbard 2004.
- ^ Morris 1982, p. 75.
- ^ Morris 1987, p. 270.
- ^ Aldred 1940, p. 64.
- ^ a b Lincoln 1977, p. 166.
- ^ Lincoln 1977, p. 215.
- ^ a b Morris 1982, p. 66.
- ^ Beach 2005, p. 170.
- ^ a b Bantman 2013, p. 27.
- ^ Bantman 2013, pp. 27–28.
- ^ Heath 2008.
- ^ The University Libertarian 1955, p. 11.
- ^ Stoehr 1970, p. 96.
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