ANDREW WHITEHEAD

Tom Wooler, Tariq Ali and the 'Black Dwarf'

2/6/2023

This is the black dwarf - who gave his name to not one but two of the finest radical papers we've ever seen.

In the first incarnation, the Black Dwarf was the name of Thomas Wooler's satirical and political weekly which started publication in January 1817. I have recently chanced across - what a piece of good fortune! - a bound volume of the first year's issues.

Here's the frontispiece of that volume - complete with satyr, judge's wigs. scrolls which appear to be Acts of Parliament ... and a Phrygian cap, so closely associated with the French Revolution, apparently placed on top of a crown. We get the message!

The black dwarf was knocking around as a name at the time Wooler started his weekly. The serialisation of Walter Scott's novel The Black Dwarf began towards the close of 1816.

'Satire's my weapon', ran the epigram which headed each issue, a quote from the poet and essayist Alexander Pope.

Wooler's Black Dwarf mixed satire, rough humour and arguments for Reform - and it made quite an impact. Within months, Wooler was on trial for seditious libel. He was cleared after persuading the jury that while he had published the articles complained of he hadn't written them.

The Black Dwarf's circulation is said to have peaked at 12,000 - an astonishing number, which suggests a much larger readership. And the figure of the black dwarf became a well-known radical motif of the Regency period.

The main target of this mischievous print is the Prince Regent, shown as all head and trousers, with - of course - a glass in his hand. And there in the bottom right-hand corner is -

One of the regular features of the weekly was a scurrilous letter, an impish account of goings-on in court and politics addressed to the 'Yellow Bonze in Japan' - bonze meaning a Buddhist religious figure. This is a subversion of that old standard of papers and perioidicals, the letter from abroad.

The first of these letters appeared in an early issue of the weekly -

This cartoon by George Cruikshank in July 1819 features both the black dwarf and, on the wall, the yellow bonze - both the paper and the make-believe recipient of Wooler's scorching satire had clearly made their mark

Wooler closed the Black Dwarf in 1824 on a despondent note: 'In ceasing his political labours, the Black Dwarf has to regret one mistake, and that a serious one. He commenced writing under the idea that there was a PUBLIC in Britain, and that public devotedly attached to the cause of parliamentary reform. This, it is but candid to admit, was an error.'

Wooler was wrong. Within a decade the Great Reform Act was passed, ushering in a century of step-by-step political reform and widening of the franchise. And by the end of the 1830s, Chartism was in full flow, by far the most ambitious and well-supported movement for radical political and social change of the century.

In the spring of that tumultuous year 1968, the Black Dwarf sprang back into life. The literary agent Clive Goodwin was the main motive force in the creation of the paper - and Tariq Ali is the activist most closely associated with it.

In his memoir Street Fighting Years, Ali recounted how one of the founding group. the poet Christopher Logue, 'volunteered to go to the British Museum and search relentlessly until he had found a long-forgotten radical paper of the previous century whose name we could recover'.

Logue was perhaps guided by the admiring references to Wooler and the Black Dwarf in the work of another key New Left thinker and activist, E.P. Thompson, whose enormously influential The Making of the English Working Class was published in 1963.

Wooler's uncompromising style of political argument suited the new project. And rather wonderfully, the new Black Dwarf carried on from where the old one left off. The issue above - the most renowned of the front covers of the reborn Black Dwarf - declared: 'Est 1817. Vol 13 Number 1'. A nice touch!

All copies of the new Black Dwarf are available online here.

The prospectus of the new paper acknowledged very openly its debt to Tom Wooler's Black Dwarf, making a virtue of its radical antecedents

A number of New Left titles looked to old radical papers for their names - not surprising given the preponderance of historians in the British New Left.

John Saville borrowed from G.J. Holyoake's The Reasoner for the title of his CP dissident newsletter (a collaboration with E.P. Thompson) which sparked off the New Left. Raph Samuel and colleagues riffed on the very successful CP-linked Left Review of the 1930s when they established Universities and Left Review, itself a precursor of New Left Review.

Looking back to look forward!

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Dimbola: Cameron, cameras and Ceylon

1/6/2023

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Julia Margaret Cameron was a child of Empire - and indeed Empire, and Britain's possessions in South Asia, ran all the way through her life.

She was born in Calcutta in 1815, married there in 1838, and died in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1879. Her home in the Isle of Wight was named after her husband's coffee and tea plantations in the highlands of central Ceylon.

Cameron lived here at Freshwater Bay for just fifteen years - from 1860 to 1875 - but this is where she developed her skill as a photographer, and as quite the most exceptional portrait photographer of this very early stage in the development of the medium.

Her old home here, Dimbola, is now largely given over to displays of her photographs and details of her life (and there's an excellent tea room too).

Tennyson too lived at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight. Cameron came to visit him here, liked the place and bought two cottages close by, which she later connected by the addition of an eye-catching tower.

The view out is over Tennyson Down to the sea.

When Julia Margaret Cameron and her husband moved to Ceylon, she continued to photograph, though on a smaller scale - but her subjects were unnamed, and were types more than individuals. A reflection of the time, perhaps, but a pity.

Dimbola has another aspect - it's close to the site of the early Isle of Wight festivals and has an exhibition, largely photographs, about the festivals and those that have played there.

In 1969, Dylan topped the bill - having failed to play at Woodstock just daays earlier even though he lived there.

The following year's festival was the biggie - attended by half-a-million and headlined by Jimi Hendrix who died just a couple of weeks later. Dimbola has a statue of Hendrix - a nice touch!

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Chastity and the Isle of Wight

30/5/2023

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What a surprise! A beautiful thatched church at the western end of the Isle of Wight.

This is St Agnes at Freshwater Bay - the only thatched church on the island.

It looks ancient and venerated. In fact the church was built as recently as 1908, though some of the bricks are said to be from older buildings.

The land was donated by the Tennyson family - Tennyson Down and the monument to Arthur Lord Tennyson are nearby. Very good of them, but the church is on a tiny plot, with no burial ground nor indeed any room to walk round the outside of this enchanting arts and crafts style edifice.

There are a few dozen thatched churches across the country - most in East Anglia. I'm not sure if this is the most modern, but there can't be many twentieth century thatched places of worship.

The arts and crafts aspect of the design is most evident in the interior - with an outstanding wooden roof and some fine carving

As for St Agnes, she's a fourth century Roman martyr who died aged twelve or thirteen. She's the patron saint of those seeking chastity. And of gardeners.

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However you pronounce it, it's not Slaithwaite

20/5/2023

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Slaithwaite - a former textile village in West Yorkshire - has much more going for it than most mill villages. It's got a few grand industrial buildings and part of Spa Mills, which you can see here beside the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, is still used by fine yarn manufacturers.

Spa Mills was built in the 1860s as a large worsted (that is high quality woollen) mill - look at the size of the place!

It's in a lot better nick than some of the village's other mills

Slaithwaite, with a population of 7,000, was named by The Times last year as the best place to live in the north and north-east of England, You can see why.

As well as the canal, it's got a river - the Colne - a railway station and imposing rail viaduct, quite a few pubs and lots of places to eat. And it's kept quite a bit of its Victorian architecture.

The only big issue is what to call the place. The name is of Norse origin. But however you pronounce it, don't go for the most obvious. Slay-thwaite is definitely wrong.

Not that the locals can quite agree what's right. Some opt for Slath-waite, where the first syllable rhymes with path. Others insist on Slawit. And on the train, I'm sure I heard Slath-it.

I'd never before come across a pub called the Silent Woman. But there are a handful around the country.

The name is suspected to come from a story of a woman beheaded for her faith - or of a woman whose tongue was cut out to stop her unintentionally informing on smugglers or other ne'er-do-wells. But whatever the derivation, it's certainly a talking point (geddit!)

It's a village which is fun to walk around - and one which looks to the fuiture while valuing its past

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Bobbies, Peelers and London pubs

16/5/2023

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I don't think Sir Robert Peel was the sort of guy who popped into his local for a swift half after a taxing (all too literally!) day in the office. He's not the obvious choice to bestow his name to a pub.

But here he is on Bishopsgate just opposite Liverpool Street Station. The tiled frontage sees to date from the 1930s. It has survived the demise of the pub it advertised. That local historian par excellence, the Gentle Author, says in his 'dead pub crawl' that this boozer flourished from 1871 to 1957.

For political historians, Peel was the brave Conservative prime minister who repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. In so doing, he split his party - and it remained out of power for a generation.

For Londoners, Peel was the reforming home secretary who established the Metropolitan Police back in 1829. His name provided not one but two nicknames for the fledgling police force - the distinctly archaic Peelers, and the still current Bobbies. How many politicians can match that!

It can't be a coincidence that this former pub in Bishopsgate is just two doors down from what was, and remains, Bishopsgate nick (though just to add a layer of confusion, Bishopsgate police station is run by the City of London force not the Met).

The likeness on the pub tiles is clearly based on John Linnell's portait of Peel from 1838,

The Bishopsgate pub is a drinking den no longer, but there are other boozers which bear Peel's name -

This distinctly traditional street-corner local is at the junction of Queen's Crescent and Malden Road in NW5 (that's Kentish Town). It's just a pity the signboard doesn't show a portrait of the Peeler-in-chief.

North London is a great place for pubs named after Victorian politicians. I have often popped in to the Palmerston - there's also the Lord John Russell - and the Salisbury - and the Beaconsfield (the title Disraeli took when kicked upstairs into the Lords).

The one glaring absence - I can't think of a local Gladstone. He was, perhaps, too dour a figure to inspire brewers to name a pub after him, famously commenting of the Conservatives' election victory in 1874: "We have been borne down in a torrent of gin and beer!" He believed the Tories had capitalised on dissatsifaction over the 1872 Licensing Act - which restricted pub opening hours among other things - to win over voters.

But he was the People's William. And I notice that there are a couple of Gladstone Arms in South London. It sure makes a nice change from all the Queen Vics and King Charles's.

Finding pubs named after radical politicos is not easy - the only one that comes to mind is the Bradlaugh in Northampton. Any other offers, anyone?

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Alice Neel - hot off the Barbican griddle

11/5/2023

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What an artist! Alice Neel was born when the last century was only four weeks old and was still painting in her eighties. She was a figurative artist - a portraitist, though that label doesn't really do her justice - working mainly in New York. She was also intensely, abidingly political.

I've just seen 'Hot Off the Griddle' at the Barbican - the largest exhibition of Neel's work ever held in the UK - and I was well impressed.

Alice Neel's 1970 portrait of Andy Warhol is what prompted me to visit the exhibition. This was painted two years after Warhol had survived an assassination attempt by Valerie Solanas, the author of the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto - my History Workshop colleague Marybeth Hamilton has written revealingly about this portrait and its context.

Many of her portraits are nudes or of sitters partly clothed. The most striking among them is Neel's self-portrait -

The range of her palette changed markedly through her life. For many years, she lived in Harlem, and her portraits from that time have a real charge and energy - and the choice of her subjects was shaped both by her neighbourhood and her political outlook.

In the mid-1930s, she joined the Communist Party and that was a long-lasting political commitment - though she once described herself as 'an anarchic humanist'.

In the Thirties, her politics is very evident in her art - you can see it in her painting below of Longshoremen and her 1936 canvas 'Nazis Murder Jews', a representation of a torchlit protest against fascism.

And what about this for range towards the end of her life - the dour and humourless head of the CPUSA and the much more alive sex activist ... from Gus Hall to Annie Sprinkle!

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Dorf, the 'Hindu bard', back in Aberystwyth at last

16/4/2023

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Dorothy (Dorf) Bonarjee returned to Aberystwyth in the past week, 110 years after she was a student there. In spirit, at least.

Her triumph in the college Eisteddfod in 1914 prompted a burst of poetic creativity which has now been celebrated in the first ever collati0n of her verse. And the Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / National Library of Wales hosted a really well attended event to mark the publication.

The Hindu Bard: the poetry of Dorothy Bonarjee has been published by Honno, the Welsh women's press - and they have done a great job. It's well designed, with a great cover and good quality illustrations - and the poems themselves are a stimulating and arresting read.

Professor Elin Jones, Director of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, chaired the panel discussion, which involved me and my co-editor. Mohini Gupta . We were joined on the panel by the historian Faaeza Jasdanwalla-Williams. Jane Aaron, editor of Honno's Welsh Women's Classics Series, made introductory remarks. Dominique Baron-Bonarjee, Dorf's great niece, addressed the gathering on behalf of the Bonarjee family and read one of Dorothy's poems - and Mohini too recited a selection of Bonarjee's verse.

At the close of the event, Dorothy Bonarjee's papers were formally handed over to the National Library on behalf of her niece, Sheela Bonarjee, and they will be catalogued and made available to researchers and anyone else who wants to see them.

This slide show of the launch feature's Kevin's excellent photos and many thanks to him for permission to post them here.

And a big thank you to the National Library of Wales for hosting the event in this solidly impressive building looking down on the town of Aberystwyth.

ON PILGRIMAGE IN ABERYSTWYTH

We took the opportunity of a visit to Aberystwyth to follow in Dorf's footsteps. Her years at Aberystwyth were her most productive as a writer of verse - and although she faced the anguish of being ditched by her Welsh fiance because his parents disapproved of a romance with an Indian woman, she made firm friends here and achieved success and a measure of contentment.

Here's a view of Aberystwyth from the top of Consti Hill (no, we didn't hike up there - there's a funicular tram) - one of her poems reflects on climbing up here ...

... and seeing Clarach Bay on the other side..

At the foot of Consti Hill is the rather forbidding looking Alexandra Hall where Bonarjee lived for some of her student years - the first purpose-built hall of residence for women students in the UK.

The spectacular grade 1-listed Old College is currently undergoing renovation - what a remarkable medley of architectural styles.

Nearby is the building which housed the National Library at the time Dorf was a student here.

And rather wonderfully the Coliseum Theatre, where the annual congregation was held at which Dorothy Bonarjee received her degree, is now part of Ceredigion Museum.

It's been so exciting to help get Dorothy Bonarjee's poetry published in book form and such a pleasure to visit the Welsh town which was the springboard of her creativity.

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The incredible story of a Spy for Peace

12/4/2023

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Sixty years ago exactly, a small and necessarily secretive group of young British radicals made headlines around the world. Their anonymous self-published pamphlet Danger! Official Secret revealed the government's top secret plans for governing the country in the event of nuclear war. And they exposed the location of one of these civil defence underground bunkers, Regional Seat of Government-6 in the Berkshire village of Warren Row.

The activists took the name the Spies for Peace. They helped organise an informal diversion of the Easter Aldermaston peace march which led to hundreds of protesters surrounding the entrance to RSG-6. And although the authorities didn't realsie this at the time, the Spies for Peace had already managed to break in to the underground bunker - twice! - and copy documents and maps.

Nic Ralph was one of the Spies for Peace, and is the only surviving member of the small group that broke in to RSG-6. After sixty years, he has decided to break his silence and for the first time tell his story of one of the most dramatic, and courageous, episodes in the history of Britain's peace movement.

Nic spoke to me and my colleague Marybeth Hamilton for a History Workshop podcast - the oral historian Sam Carroll, who has conducted landmark research on the Spies for Peace, was also part of the conversation.

Here's the link to the podcast - do give it a listen!

https://soundcloud.com/historyworkshop/spies-for-peace

And the host page for the podcast is here.

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What a tomb for a poet! Khan-i-Khanan

10/4/2023

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This is one of Delhi's grandest Mughal mausoleums - and it used to be quite literally on my doorstep when I first lived in Delhi.

Khan-i-Khanan is the burial place of the Mughal-era poet and soldier who bore that title. He was otherwise known as Rahim, and was a pivotal figure in the court of the Emperor Akbar.

The tomb was built for Rahim's wife in 1598 - Rahim himself was interred here in 1627.

When I was Khan-i-Khanan's neighbour, the place was distinctly run down. It's now been fabulously restored as part of the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative with support from the Aga Khan Development Network.

Some of the marble on the dome has been replaced to give an idea of what the tomb must once have looked like.

Khan-i-Khanan and Humayun's Tomb nearby influenced the design of the Taj Mahal at Agra. But Khan-i-Khanan was later despoiled to provide building material for Safdarjung's Tomb in Delhi.

Just a couple of grouses: payment for admission is digital only and if you don't have 'Pay TM' that's a bit of a hassle.

And when I used to visit this spot thirty years or so ago, I loved to watch the hoopoes who nested here. It was a real joy. The cheel are still around, but this time ... no hoopoes! Boo-hoo!!

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Claude Martin's other legacy: La Martiniere Girls

6/4/2023

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What a beautiful setting for a school! This is La Martiniere Girls' College in Lucknow. It's not quite as old - and its buildings are not quite as grand - as the boys' school. But it is still fairly spectacular.

The school started in 1869, and moved to its present location at Khursheed Manzil two years later. This is a grand house in fortified style, including a substantial moat - a reminder of just how militarised this North Indian city once was.

Khursheed Manzil was built as the home of Khursheed Zadi, wife of the Nawab of Awadh, and was completed in 1818. It was for a while under the control of anti-British forces during the 1857 rebellion.

The small museum at the school explains the building's history

I had the privilege of looking round the school in the company of a former head girl (I'm not allowed to say when) ... and as such, she placed a wreath on the grave of Claude Martin at the boys' school on founder's day. She is also my wife.

We both really appreciated the opportunity to visit this great school.

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