English Radicalism Research Articles

Varieties of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in context. Edited by Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan. Pp xiv, 271. Farnham: Ashgate. 2011. £65.

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Chartism, Bronterre O'Brien and the ‘Luminous Political Example of America’

AbstractThis article explores the connections between Chartism, the most important popular reform mobilization in nineteenth‐century Britain, and the United States of America, a source of hope and inspiration for many British radicals of the period, by focusing on the ideas and publications of James Bronterre O'Brien. The article explains why Chartists admired America's political system and social condition, why Britain seemed to them to be so flawed and corrupt in comparison, and how O'Brien – Chartism's ‘schoolmaster’– used America in his political activities. Despite his key role in Chartism, especially in its early stages, O'Brien's reputation suffered thereafter, and among historians he has attracted only limited interest. His career merits another look. This article highlights in particular the ways in which he endorsed and increased the relevance of America to British radicals.

Mazzini's Transnational Legacy amongst British Co-operators ( c .1885-1949)

This article argues that Mazzini's long influence on twentieth-century British co-operators has until now escaped systematic scrutiny. While the support of British radicals for the Italian Risorgimento revolutionary is well known, labour historians have reserved scant attention to the long legacy of Mazzini's doctrine amongst British co-operators, who, even after the Second World War, still quoted the Italian exile's ideas on association as the basis for the harmonious working of society. Identifying ‘second generation’ British Mazzinians amongst co-operators, this article also argues that their allegiance to the Italian exile's doctrine crossed class divisions. Finally, it contends that by taking a transnational approach it is possible to trace an enduring liberal trait within working-class co-operators, suggesting that the ideology of twentieth-century, ‘class-conscious’ British workers may have been more textured than it has been hitherto affirmed.

‘out of their owne mouths’? Conversion Narratives and English Radical Religious Practice in the Seventeenth Century

This article focuses on a form of writing, the conversion narrative, which was familiar to mid-seventeenth-century godly readers. The purpose of the narrative, which was a prerequisite for admission to the Church of Visible Saints, was to give the congregation a spoken account of the experience of conversion and of the workings of Grace in the life of the regenerate individual. Some of these reports were transcribed, revised, and published by the ministers of the churches. By focusing on the complex relationships between the ‘original’ experience, its expression, and subsequent written transmission, the tension between individuality and conformity, and the various forms of editorial intervention adopted by the ministers, this study attempts to highlight the collaborative nature of the textual construction of the conversion narrative and to address some crucial issues concerning both the authenticity of the memory recorded and its ‘true’ author.

Diversifying Schools and Leveraging School Improvement: a Comparative Analysis of The English Radical, and Singapore Conservative, Specialist Schools' Policies

ABSTRACT Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative.

UK radical prostatectomy outcomes and surgeon case volume: based on an analysis of the British Association of Urological Surgeons Complex Operations Database

To undertake a detailed analysis of the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) Section of Oncology Complex Operations Database to report UK outcomes of radical prostatectomy (RP) with particular reference to the case volume of the operating surgeon. All RP entries on the BAUS complex operations database were extracted from its commencement in January 2004 to September 2009. Patient age, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels, clinical tumour stage and biopsy Gleason score were analyzed together with operative variables, including the surgical approach, lymphadenectomy status, blood loss, hospital length of stay and individual surgeon case volume. The postoperative variables assessed included surgical specimen Gleason score and pathological tumour stage, prostate weight and the presence of positive surgical margins (PSM), as well as evidence of biochemical recurrence. A total of 8032 RP cases were entered on the database and Follow-up data was available on 4206 cases. Mean patient age was 61.8 years and the mean presenting PSA was 8.3 ng/mL. Open RP procedures were performed on 5429 patients and laparoscopic RP on 2219. The positive surgical margin (PSM) rate for the entire series was 38%. Analysis of PSM by pathological stage revealed a pT2 PSM rate of 24%. Multivariate analysis of variables which might affect PSM revealed pre-operative clinical TNM stage, surgeon case volume, RP specimen Gleason score and pathological TNM stage were significant parameters (P < 0.01). When prostate weight and PSM status were analysed, these was a significant association between smaller prostate weight and PSM status. Interestingly, 45% of high grade Gleason 8-10 needle biopsy cancers were downgraded to Gleason scores 7 or less on RP analysis. Analysis of annual surgeon caseload revealed that 54% of surgeons performed an average of less than 10 procedures per annum and 6% of surgeons performed an average of 30 or more procedures per annum. When individual outcome variables where examined against surgeon case activity it was demonstrated that outcomes are clearly improved beyond 20 cases and there is a trend to continued improvement up to the series maximum of 40 cases per annum. High volume surgeons have less peri-operative and postoperative complications and better surgical and disease-free outcomes than low volume surgeons. In the UK, raising the current minimum Improving Outcomes Guidance threshold from five RP cases per surgeon per annum to no less than 20 (and ideally to 35 or more cases per annum) could potentially improve overall outcomes.

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: ‘I mak Bould to Wrigt’: First-person Narratives in the History of Poverty in England, c. 1750-1900

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: ‘I mak Bould to Wrigt’: First-person Narratives in the History of Poverty in England, c. 1750-1900

Political Economy in Late Eighteenth-Century British Radicalism A Re-Examination of the Analytical Categories

Political Economy in Late Eighteenth-Century British Radicalism A Re-Examination of the Analytical Categories

A Cinema of Social Conscience: An Interview with Ken Loach

This interview with Ken Loach took place in July 2009 at his home in Bath, England. Unquestionably one of Britain's most important filmmakers, Loach is best known for his gritty and compassionate portrayals of working-class life. Early in his career, a series of socially conscious films established the fact that Loach was both a skillful artist and a crusading social critic. Cathy Come Home (1966) was one of his most successful early efforts. Loach's films can be divided into two broad categories—intimate family dramas that illuminate the politics of everyday life and more militant films determined to skewer both the forces of political reactionism and the reformist wing of the labor movement. The first category is best personified by the now classic Kes (1969), while The Big Flame (1969) typifies the more didactic strand in Loach's work. Ironically enough, the Thatcher-Major era, usually considered the most dismal epoch of the twentieth century by British radicals, engendered Loach's most productive and artistically satisfying period, during which he produced a series of award-winning feature films: Riff-Raff (1990), Raining Stones (1993), and Ladybird, Ladybird (1994). With his no-frills visual style and lean, sequential narratives, Loach is not out to impress anyone with technique. Another defining trait in Loach's oeuvre is that he often casts unknowns and nonprofessionals for leading roles. In his conversation with Bert Cardullo, the director discusses this aspect of his work as well as many others, including artistic influences, politics, cinematography, script-writing, and artistic collaboration.

British Radical Screens Symposium, Bush House, Bristol, 3 September 2010

On 3 September 2010 the first ‘Radical British Screens’ symposium was held at Bush House in Bristol. The event was organised by Dr Estella Tincknell, Reader in Media and Cultural Studies, and Dr Charlotte Crofts, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Video Production, both of the Film Studies Research Group at the University of the West of England, in collaboration with the Screen Studies South West network. The day focused on the diverse ways in which the term ‘radical’ has been deployed in film-making and television, how ‘radical’ has been interpreted within various media traditions, and how it has been adapted to the changing contexts of production and exhibition. Eleven papers were delivered by a mixture of film-makers, experienced academics and PhD researchers from the UK and overseas, reflecting a renewed interest in this area extending beyond the UK’s shores. A central theme focused on how the actual term ‘radical’ resonates in a variety of contexts, from contents and aesthetics to intentions and interventions. This diversity was reflected in the range of papers on offer. Some speakers asked what it means to be ‘radical’ and if this term can be used in considering mainstream products. Others considered whether feminist theory is inherently radical and how aesthetic experimentation can relate to politics. The symposium also considered the relationship between British audio-visual culture and the ‘radical’. Can a ‘radical tradition’ be said even to exist when ‘tradition’ implies continuity and ‘radical’ suggests rupture? How has this ‘radical tradition’, however problematic, impacted upon British film-making practices? And in what ways have institutions such as Channel 4 and the BBC had a role in developing this tradition, influencing subject matter and regulating what can be shown?

Violence and the Radical Imagination

This paper examines the dual discourses of Henry Hetherington's Poor Man's Guardian , arguing that the reason the PMG oscillates between anti-violent and violent rhetoric has to do with its rapid response journalism. A voice of retribution prescribing violence surfaces precisely when radicals were confronted by authorities. Otherwise the language of moral suasion dominates. Demonstrating that the studied and controlled language of the essay, with its focus on "property" and systemic injustice, runs opposite to the language of immediacy, this paper argues that the instinct of the PMG , and English radicalism more generally, was toward class solidarity and not an eighteenth-century style of political reform.

Bentham and the Development of the British Critique of Colonialism

This article examines Bentham's contribution to anti-colonial thought in the context of the development of the British radical movement that attacked colonialism on the grounds that it advantaged what Bentham called the ‘Few’ at the expense of the ‘Many’. It shows that Bentham was influenced as much by Josiah Tucker and James Anderson as by Adam Smith. Bentham's early economic critique is examined, and the sharp changes in his arguments after 1800 assessed, in the context of the American and French Revolutions and the effects of British industrialization. The article also highlights the importance of Bentham's writings inspired by the Spanish colonial crisis of the early 1820s. They show developments in his economic analysis and include some very acute discussions of the psychological satisfactions that elites could gain from colonialism. The article ends with a brief comparison between Bentham and later radical thinkers to put his ideas in context.

Things as They Are: William Godwin on Sympathy and Punishment

William Godwin’s political philosophy positioned him as a key British radical during the French Revolution. And although his popularity was short-lived, his first novel, Things as They Are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams, was tremendously successful and influential in the 1790s. The novel illustrates how the humanities can contribute to our understanding of justice, advocating the Romantic virtue of “sympathy” to transform retributive justice to a more restorative and sustainable model, as many current sociologists promote. This article explores the intersection of three facets of the humanities and punishment: A direct engagement with Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams, its relevance to current punishment theory in America, and my own experience with sympathy and punishment in the prison system.

“Not Just an American Problem”: Malcolm X in Britain

Malcolm X was received as a merchant of racial hatred by a British mainstream press already anxious in its framing of post-war British identity since the arrival of the troopship SS Empire Windrush initiated a wave of black immigration to Britain in 1948. Nevertheless, Malcolm X, inspired during his 1964 trips to Africa and the Middle East by anti-imperialist movements such as the Organization of African Unity, arrived in Britain eager to explore and publicize the social and political barriers faced by black people living in Britain and to foster transatlantic political relationships under the banner of his Organization of Afro-American Unity. The historical spectre of empire would prove crucial to his characterization of Britain. It is only appropriate that Malcolm X chose Oxford (in December 1964) and London (in February 1965), those traditional intellectual and commercial centres of empire, to underline his evolving diasporic politics with the practical politics of African decolonization. His theoretical grasp of what he termed in a late speech “the science of imagery” enabled him both to analyze the role of representation in ideological (and, indeed, psychological) control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. What became evident too late was that Malcolm X offered his own life in overturning the orthodoxy of such stereotyping. In the historical confluence of American and British radicalism, Malcolm X's visits (and their ongoing resonance) are among the most significant. In addition to detailing Malcolm X's attitudes towards and experiences in Britain, this essay is concerned with the circulation in Britain of the iconography of Malcolm X. Indeed, as much as racial analysis, Malcolm X's genius was for the contrivance of images of himself. Malcolm X's legendary transformations, marked also by renaming, were abundantly illustrated.

John Thelwall in Saint Domingue: Race, Slavery, and Revolution in The Daughter of Adoption: A Tale of Modern Times (1801)

I John Thelwall was a clear opponent of the slave trade and slavery as an institution. Although his political writings have received much scrutiny in recent years, his writings about slavery have received rather scant attention. The most serious current criticism of them is by Marcus Wood who finds that ‘Thelwall was most unusual among radicals in his uncompromising vision of poor white and poor black labour as equally exploited by the nascent forms of capitalism’. Challengingly, Wood argues that British radical hostility to the Evangelical Abolitionist political agenda and its own concern with the domestic poor led to its distancing the movement from abolitionism. Wood claims that, against this trend, Thelwall produces ‘one of the most trenchant pleas for the ideological unification of abolition and reform theory’ and is ‘one who stood out against the Negrophobe orthodoxies of English Radicalism.’ There is some truth in this assertion, although this seriously overestimates Thelwall’s isolation as a reformer from other radical abolitionists, such as William Roscoe, James Currie, and Edward Rushton, a group of Liverpool abolitionists with whom Thelwall was clearly engaged in serious and sustained discussion and committed radical abolitionists, such as Benjamin Flower. Oddly, however, Thelwall’s most powerful engagement with Caribbean slavery and one of his major works is seldom discussed or even noticed. This is the powerful and detailed fictional representation and critique of the Haitian slave revolution (in what was then French Saint Domingue) in his pseudonymously published novel, The Daughter of Adoption: A Tale of Modern Times of 1801. This essay will discuss Thelwall’s engagement with anti-slavery and seek to re-establish the importance, as well as the limitations of this critique by surveying the scope and substance of Thelwall’s only novel.

Ordinary Virtues: Foundations of Self-Rule in England and America, 1647-1776

Can ordinary people rule themselves? The question of self-rule is often considered only as an aspect of a particular model of rule, such as republicanism, democracy or constitutionalism. Yet, a theory of self-rule per se would be a useful contribution to political thought. Notwithstanding the deference given to the principle of popular rule, it remains an unresolved question whether people are actually capable of ruling themselves. Even in the United States today, self-rule remains a contested idea. This essay is an attempt to understand what self-rule is and how the idea developed in the period between the first English Revolution and the American Revolution. I begin by offering a theory of self-rule that focuses on the distinction between the rule of one’s own self, personal self-rule, and the rule of our combined selves, collective self-rule. Contradictions and conflicts inevitably arise between the two. These are only overcome, I claim, when people come to share an image of the common good, an idea regarding the proper pursuit of shared interest that becomes synonymous with public virtue. In the second part of the essay, I rely on this theory to examine how revolutionary era Americans came to believe in the community of virtue. Such assurance is indeed remarkable, especially in light of the failure of English radicalism in the seventeenth century, a disillusioning experience that only compounded the doubts and objections expressed by philosophers, religious leaders, and rulers alike. How did this conviction, so contrary to traditional notions of deference and obedience, come about? It came, I argue, with the transformation of the concept of virtue into an instrument of political action. American revolutionaries claimed the right of independence only after concluding that they already possessed all the virtues required for self-rule. This provided the moral justification for rebellion and the legal foundation for their new governments. Such a claim is always revolutionary and always problematic. In truth, we do not yet know if self-rule is plausible, nor are we in agreement about whether it is desirable.

"Spiritual Enfranchisement": Sartor Resartus and the Politics of Bildung

"Spiritual Enfranchisement"Sartor Resartus and the Politics of Bildung John B. Lamb "I am for a radical inward Reform" (Thomas Carlyle to John Carlyle, Dec. 19, 1830)1 By March 22, 1831, when a second reading of the Reform Bill was carried in the House of Commons, Thomas Carlyle was already well underway with the writing of Sartor Resartus. By October 8, when the Bill was rejected by the House of Lords, he had been in London nearly two months looking for a publisher. While Carlyle believed that the book trade in general and Sartor in particular suffered because of "Reform-Bill agitations," he nonetheless felt that Sartor was a "'word spo[ken] in season,'" confirming thereby both its political and prophetic character: "My persuasion that Teufk is in his place and time grows stronger the more I see of London and its philosophy: Doctrine of the Phoenix, of Nat. Supernaturalism and the whole Clothes Philosophy … is exactly what intelligent men are wanting" (CL, 5:410, 327, 354). In contrasting Sartor with the "character of the Times," Carlyle told the publisher John Murray in September of 1831 "that now … were the best season for emitting it" (CL, 5:404). Indeed, Carlyle had suggested in July of 1831 that he viewed the question of reform "thro Teufel" (CL, 5:297), testifying to the relationship between Sartor Resartus and contemporary politics noted by James Anthony Froude: "'Sartor' was indeed a free-flowing torrent, the outbursting [End Page 259] of emotions which as yet had found no escape. The discontent which in a lower shape was rushing into French Revolutions, Reform Bills, Emancipation Acts, Socialism and Bristol Riots and rick burning, had driven Carlyle into far deeper inquiries—inquiries into the how and why of these convulsions on the surface."2 Froude's intuition that personal emotions and an interest in the origins of contemporary social and political unrest were brought together in Sartor is of more than biographical import. For the intersection of the personal and political that Froude claims marks Carlyle's text is an important aspect of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century concept of Bildung, a concept that would play an important role in Carlyle's response to reform and radical politics in the 1830s. To see English politics in the age of reform "thro Teufel" was to view it through the lens of an ideal of self-formation that had important ideological ramifications. The question that Carlyle put to himself in November of 1831—"Will any Parliamentary Reform ever reform me!"3—suggests the extent to which Carlyle saw the question of reform as having to do more with the improvement of the individual than with the progress of Victorian party politics. The Rebellious Needleman In his seminal edition of Sartor Resartus, G. F. Harrold speculates that Carlyle got the title for his first major work from a well-known Scottish song,4 but I believe that it is not too fanciful to suggest that it also points elsewhere, that the title Sartor Resartus refers, if only obliquely, to the man Carlyle dubbed "the rebellious Needleman," Thomas Paine, whose works remained a mainstay of British popular radicalism from the time of the French Revolution throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly during those periods of radical political mobilization, like the one preceding the passage of the first Reform Bill.5 Widely circulated, [End Page 260] the Rights of Man and the Age of Reason were the most celebrated texts of English republicanism, and in the early nineteenth century, they "underpinned the hopes of ultra-radicals for reorienting popular radicalism, for shifting its center of gravity toward an outright commitment to revolutionary republicanism."6 Regardless of one's political persuasion, from the Peterloo Massacre in 1812 to the first stirrings of Chartism in 1838, Paine, "the rebellious Needleman," was synonymous with the ideology and iconography of English radicalism. In claiming this relationship between the figure of Paine and the title of Sartor Resartus, I am making two assumptions that it will be the purpose of this essay to explore: that Sartor Resartus is, in part, a particular response to English radicalism and to renewed interest...

A Hungarian Revolution in Restoration England: Henry Stubbe, Radical Islam, and the Rye House Plot

This essay argues that the rise of Islamic-Ottoman power in Hungary took center stage in English national debates about monarchical succession and religious authority, mostly as a reaction to two analogous events that took place in the summer of 1683: the discovery of the Rye House plot to assassinate King Charles II and the Duke of York during the aftermath of the Exclusion Crisis, and the Austrian-Polish defeat of the Ottoman Turks and their Hungarian allies during the siege of Vienna. After Charles II dissolved parliament, opposition leaders grew desperate to pass the Exclusion Bill preventing a Catholic succession; meanwhile, Catholic Austria defeated Imre Thököly, the rebellious Hungarian leader who sought to protect his country's Protestant constitution by forming an alliance with the Ottoman Porte. As a strategy for containing the threat of revolution in the wake of the Rye House Plot, Tory burlesques cast Whig Exclusionists as Hungarian rebels, regicidal Muslims in disguise. This form of polemical satire was a coded response to a vibrant strain of English radical Protestantism as emblematized in Henry Stubbe's pro-Islamic manuscript: The Rise and Progress of Mahometanism (circa 1671), which circulated privately among radical freethinking circles. Building on the work of Nabil Matar and Matthew Birchwood, this essay treats Tory satires as a crucial site for investigating how radical Islam lent ideological coherence to a series of national crises that culminated in the redefinition of British constitutional liberty in 1688-91.

"He Calls His Dada Still": Nineteenth Century English Radicalism and the Drama of Padraic Pearse

This essay explores the extent to which some of the political upheavals of twentieth-century Ireland, and their related theatrical manifestations, might reveal a series of affinities with the organised political radicalism of nineteenth- century England. Specifically, the playhouse dramas written by the executed leader of the Easter Rising of 1916, Padraic Pearse (also known as Padraig or Patrick) point back to the earlier Liberal reform meetings that took place in the English midlands. The key connecting figure is the revolutionary leader’s father, James Pearse, who spent his life between Birmingham and Dublin, but who has tended to be overlooked by historians in the years since 1916. This paper will explore the way that throughout the twentieth-century a focus on Padraic Pearse’s mother has tended to obscure the influence of James Pearse. Yet I suggest that James—influenced by Liberal thinkers such as the MP John Bright—helped to link one kind of waning English radicalism with the developing nationalism of twentieth-century Ireland. It is in this context that my paper explores the political implications of Patrick Pearse’s theatrical writings, The King, The Master and The Singer, tracing connections between these plays and the Birmingham radicalism of James Pearse, with a particular focus on James’s nonconformist reformism and day-to-day involvement with the Catholic pomp of the Hardman church-furnishing company.

The Social Sources of Late Eighteenth-Century English Radicalism: Bristol in the 1770s and 1780s

The case that religion alone can account for radicalism in the later eighteenth century has been persuasively argued and has received some empirical support. We test it using data from Bristol during the American crisis. Literature from the 1774 election shows that contemporaries assumed commonality of interest of poor voters with other poor voters and with the anti-establishment/radical candidates, and commonality of interest of richer voters with other rich voters and with the establishment candidates. To a lesser extent voters were encouraged to vote as loyal Anglicans or religious Dissenters. To see how this rhetoric translated into action, a poll book (1774), a city directory (1775), and rate and tax returns (1773–7) were combined by nominal record linkage. Using the linked data we found that poorer Bristolians voted preferentially for anti-ministerial candidates and particularly for the radical candidate, while richer Bristolians tended to support the ministerial candidates. The divisions were clear when voting was compared with wealth (using fiscal data), and when compared with occupation provided an appropriate classification was used. To see if radical action was sustained in Bristol, loyal addresses and petitions for conciliation of the Americans were examined. The rhetoric surrounding petitioning/addressing again assumed commonality of interest based on socio-economic circumstance. This carried over into action: petitioners for conciliation tended to be poorer people, whilst addressers, who favoured coercion, tended to be richer. The study refutes the thesis that religion alone accounts for radical behaviour, and suggests the need to examine the totality of people's experience before their political behaviour can be fully understood.