FINAL WORD

Remembering The Life Of Robert Blatchford From Horsham

Remembrance Sunday is an important day in the local calendar, and that was true even on 8 November 2020, when the public was asked to ‘Remember at Home’.

At other times of the year, we are helped to remember our debt to those who fell during the World Wars by the monuments in our towns and villages. If not consciously in our minds, they may still be in our sightlines on a daily basis. But some individuals are not so present to our minds, particularly if they have no kin tending their grave. One example is the great journalist and campaigner, Robert Blatchford, whose name had to be uncovered from encroaching wild flowers before the photo here could be taken, during a welcome break from lockdown.

Not that Robert Blatchford, who died in Horsham in 1943 and is buried at Hills Cemetery, would have objected at all. In fact, he would have approved of Remembrance, because the Army formed him. Bored with his long apprenticeship to a Halifax brush maker, Blatchford ran away in 1871, tramping down to London where, after starving for some weeks, he enlisted in the 103rd Regiment which had recently returned from India. Promoted to sergeant after 18 months, he became a marksman, only leaving the service seven years later in 1878, aged 27. His military experience gave him an independence of outlook and resilience which was to serve him well.

After marrying his childhood sweetheart, Blatchford turned to journalism to support his family. He had stumbled on his forte, because he was soon in demand, firstly in London and then Manchester, where he wrote about the slums in a spirit of indignation that such things could be. Some thought it cost him his job on The Sunday Chronicle He became a socialist, founding the Manchester Fabian Society in 1890. With two friends and his brother Montagu, he started The Clarion, a socialist weekly in 1891, raising the capital between them. Blatchford had by this time adopted the pen-name ‘Nunquam Dormio’ (‘I never sleep’) which was probably not far from the truth.

The Clarion prospered, achieving a healthy circulation. But it was only after articles from the weekly had been republished in book form under the title ‘Merrie England’ that Blatchford’s name was made. Selling two million copies, ‘Merrie England’ was a sensation. Annie Kenney, the millworker and suffragette who became part of the Pankhurst family’s inner circle, credited Blatchford with being the literary father and mother to thousands of men and women in the Lancashire factories, effectively providing them with an informal education.

Yet The Clarion was no solemn tract. Having a grounding in sports journalism, Blatchford ensured that his weekly paper remained populist in tone. Tapping into the cultural desire for light-hearted amusement at a time when aspirational office workers had money and time at weekends to spare for leisure activities, The Clarion had more in common with Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat’ than Karl Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’.

Blatchford ensured that political radicalism was kept palatable, the medicine of socialism being sweetened by the jam of fellowship and fun. Indeed, it may be that the various Clarion Clubs for scouting, biking, hiking and community singing had even more impact than the newspaper in spreading the word. No stranger to controversy, Blatchford became an early advocate for atheism. But even on this subject, he retained his geniality, opening The Clarion’s pages to eminent religious apologists. Nor was he afraid to alienate pacifists on the Left, arguing in favour of Britain’s entry into the First World War and mocking conscientious objectors.

Losing readers from this crusading, his star waned in the 1920s, by which time he had settled at The Firs, King’s Road, Horsham. His wife pre-deceased him. Perhaps feeling some guilt that political campaigning had taken him away from home too much, Blatchford turned to spiritualism. Yet this change of heart reveals another aspect of the man: a restlessness which led him to modify earlier views. He continued to write, publishing a memoir, ‘My Eighty Years’ in 1931, before dying of influenza in his adopted town 12 years later.

Like the men on the Broadbridge Heath war memorial, this tireless campaigner for social justice has a street named after him: Blatchford Road. He would, no doubt, be pleased to note that his villa is used to offer supported housing. Some of his books are on display at Horsham Museum too. But for all that, his grave in Hills Cemetery seems a little neglected.

But would Robert Blatchford have minded?

A soldier to his core, he would probably have regarded the fate of the fallen in the First World War as far worse than his own, since he lived into his nineties. And gifted with an ironic sense of humour, he might also conclude that his most enduring memorial is the social starting point we assume in thinking about minimum living standards in modern Britain. But doesn’t Blatchford deserve something more from Horsham: a school named after him perhaps, or a room in a municipal building, or even simply his becoming the subject of an exhibition?

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