Was Clarion socialism really 'more social and cultural than political?'

I used to copy him by taking my students on trips in my early teaching career, we joked, rather sadly though, that the current regulations no longer allow this this type of activity. The cost of a weekend cycling and staying at a Youth Hostel in my school days was the equivalent of about 20p, if you were to do it now, with all the legal requirements, including insurance and indemnity it will be about £200.

Time at this event goes very quickly, I did not get time to speak to all those I wanted to, I was interviewed by Mid Pennine Arts about socialism and the Clarion. The Clarion ILP House continues the tradition. Socialism, in my book is not about left-wing politics, it is about engaging with fellow man – a term

EDITOR’S NOTE

Andrew’s two books Shot at Twice in One Day and Bicycle Engineering and Technology are available from Amazon in both printed and electronic formats.

which I still use to cover ALL PEOPLE, so please don’t say it’s not PC. There was a group from my local club – London Clarion CC, they provided the commemorative ribbons. All the local clubs and some others from far away were present. Special mention to Blackpool Clarion for a big turn out on this 100 mile club run.

Long may Clarion Sunday continue, along with the special social values it shows to the world of cycling, rambling and choir singing.

– Andrew Livesey

What follows is a sort of offshoot of the exploration I am engaged on currently about the Clarion during the First World War. This has been made a great deal easier since the whole of the paper has at last been made available online by British Newspaper Archive.

The 2021 annual conference adopted a statement about the origins of our Club which acknowledged the original commitment to socialism but declared that ‘Clarion socialism was more social and cultural than political’ What might this mean? Can the statement be justified? I believe it can and will cite in support a number of statements made in the paper in June and July 1916 and in January 1917. There will of course be many who disagree with all the views expressed and positions taken –including the one the paper took on the war itself. But I’m confident that the quotations from the paper do illustrate the ‘social and cultural’ nature of the Clarion’s version of socialism.

At this time Robert Blatchford and Alexander M. Thompson were joint editors – described as such on the paper’s masthead. Usually, Blatchford wrote a front-page piece and Thompson indicated the Clarion’s position on current issues on an inside page under the title ‘Our Point of View.’ The paper had warned about the ‘German Menace’ in the years before 1914 and once war broke out it believed that Britain and its Allies should be supported against a ‘Prussian militarism’ that had invaded Belgium and France. This put the paper and its adherents at severe odds with much of the socialist movement, notably the Independent Labour Party (ILP), whose foundation in 1893 had owed something to the Clarion and the now dominant element of the British Socialist Party (BSP). For the Clarion they were both irredeemably ‘pacifist and pro-German.’ In 1915 Thompson chaired of the Socialist National Defence Committee. The following year this became the British Workers’ National League and for some time the paper included its reports and a form to fill in if you wished to join.

The sequence of events, comments and letters this article is concerned with began in an apparently inconsequential way not untypical of the Clarion. Fred Hagger for the past year had been running the paper’s ‘Maintenance’ campaign which sought contributions from readers to help keep the paper going. It had tried, and just failed, to raise £1000 in 1915 – a lot of money in those days. But on 9 June 1916 Thompson was able to acclaim what he called ‘A Journalistic Marvel’ and announced that >>