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Title: The Humble Soapbox
Author: Albert Meltzer
Language: en
Topics: Guy Aldred, Britain, Scotland
Source: From http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/pnvz0f

Albert Meltzer

The Humble Soapbox

The Prime Minister was presented with a new soapbox to celebrate his

election victory. Sir David English, editor of the Daily Mail, said Mr

Major’s use of a soapbox was ‘brilliant’. (News item).

A week before the 1992 General Election, when the Conservative Party was

facing almost certain defeat, and the Labour Party was holding triumphal

meetings at mass rallies, John Major, in what was regarded as a last

desperate effort, took to the streets with a (specially made and

adapted) soapbox carried by an aide, and stumped the country, giving

prepared speeches at crowded street corners and market squares. The

Labour Party, knowing little of the history of the labour movement and

slightly ashamed of what it did know, said it had long since passed that

stage. What they did not point out, or maybe did not know, was they

“passed that stage” when they became respectable as by then it was

virtually illegal.

Many radicals abroad look to “Hyde Park Corner” (confusing it with

Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park) as a bastion of free speech. It is true a

few religious or comic turns are kept alive on improvised platforms at

Speakers’ Corner, and anyone can get up and speak. But genuine Speakers’

(affectionately called Spouters) Corners existed in every park and at

innumerable convenient street corners. Reforming parties and sects

marked out their special street corner pitch where they were regularly

known. They were a forum for political debate. Generations of workers

educated themselves in a political faith more thoroughly than the London

School of Economics has managed during its history.

Hyde Park was waning when the television age came along (and the growth

of cars made street corner meetings difficult and finally impossible).

But serious political discussion was everywhere (its last bastion was

Glasgow Green). It may be noted that in the days of mob violence against

speakers, usually by populist parties and often subsidised by free beer,

attacks were made on Anarchists, Socialists, Atheists, Suffragists — in

particular women of any persuasion. Even Protestant Truth speakers in

places like Liverpool were attacked, though here sometimes the police

intervened, classifying them with the Salvation Army, ever entitled to

flout the rules on marches, meetings, street music, obstruction,

trespass and even entry into public houses for literature selling.

Normally the police view was that attacks were orators’ hard luck and

served them right. However, from the moment Fascism appeared in the 20s

(see last issue), the police were concerned to defend them from attack

“in the name of free speech”.

As anti-Fascist violence escalated but anti-reform violence disappeared,

under the growth of socialist ideas, the police took a closer interest

in open air meetings and the defence of Fascist speakers. They are still

concerned to protect Fascist marches and restrict others. Improvised

speaking has vanished from the streets under police harassment — except

for the museum piece of Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park.

Until John Major “reclaimed the streets” — for himself alone — the

police had illegalised extempore speaking. It is dubious if getting on

an improvised platform (which usually happened to be a soapbox lying

around) and saying what you thought was ever actually made illegal.

Except for the Salvation Army, the police claimed it was “obstruction”.

Even at Hyde Park, selling literature outside the gates obstructed the

traffic and pedestrians, although selling the Sunday papers or Christian

literature did not. Selling inside the gates is illegal though not for

ice cream vendors. (Later a few sellers were allowed outside the

reconstructed lavatory entrances in the underpass).

Stump speaking built up the labour movement; its decline heralded its

end. The working class movement was built from it, what is now regarded

as the left comes from State-controlled University sources. The hopes of

the labour movement on education were unfulfilled: what in practice it

built up was the Labour Party and a working class divorced from it,

which now picks up notions from the tabloids.

Extempore speaking had its drawbacks. The regular speaker, feeling

himself or herself a leader or a misunderstood genius, could turn to

parliamentary ambitions (e.g. the old Clydeside socialists), aspire to

leadership by virtue of their oratory, or obtain an inflated ego that

made one think oneself was so much more important than the cause

represented. But for John Major to play at speaking from a soapbox,

surrounded by armed plain clothes guards, was an obscene travesty of the

reality.

The Manchester Anarchists

In the “Personal Recollections” of George Cores (pub. KSL) reference is

made to the Manchester Anarchists of 100 years ago and their struggle

for free speech. We have since publishing it received for our archives a

copy of the relevant chapter of “Twenty five Years of Detective Life” by

Jerome Caminada (Chief Detective Inspector of the Manchester Police, pub

John Heywood 1895). Writing of “Manchester Anarchists at Work” he deals

with the events of September 1893.

He says a number of “irresponsible young men” held meetings at Ardwick

Green. (The numbers of young working class men and women as given in the

proceedings and in Cores’s memoirs and the support they received

indicates that though this was not a “golden age of Anarchist activity”,

it was certainly a promising one — far from the depressing scene

Manchester and everywhere else presents today).

Det. Insp. Caminada naturally — and perfectly frankly — attacks the

views they were expressing (including “abusing Her Majesty and the Royal

Family and criticising the emoluments they received”, as well as

“preaching Anarchism”) and said there were “serious complaints” about

those views which led to charges. The Chief Constable was asked to put a

stop to “what had become a serious nuisance”. He “tried to reason” with

the obstructionists, pointing out that it was a very improper place to

hold their meetings and offering them the use of Stevenson Square,

“where they could air their grievances from morning till night without

being interfered with”.

The offer being refused of Stevenson Square which was deserted at all

times, the Chief Constable himself came to the next meeting in Ardwick

Green, stated it was an obstruction and could not go on. (The meeting

was certainly not as large as John Major’s, with worldwide publicity:

probably less than that of the TV and press photographers and

journalists following him).

In an attack on the meeting (by how many police Caminada does not say)

the detective inspector hit the speaker with his umbrella. Later, when

they were fined and ultimately imprisoned, he sued for the damage to his

umbrella hence the Anarchist song (which he tells us he resented) “The

scamp who broke his gamp at Ardwick Green” (tune Monte Carlo).

This legally upheld attitude — that the speaker standing on the soapbox

must be responsible, for damage done to the person who broke an umbrella

hitting him, did not apply merely to the police nor was this confined to

a hundred years ago. (Nor just to England: the Haymarket Trial in

Chicago was more serious that the speakers should be hanged for a bomb

exploding while they were on the rostrum). Matt Kavanaghan, an Anarchist

speaker in Liverpool, was as a young man around 1905, involved in a case

where people storming his platform had their clothes ripped,

accidentally or not. He being on the platform, could not have been

physically responsible and they were clearly the aggressors. But he was

held responsible for the damage to their clothing. The suffragists were

constantly told that if they suffered from eggs, mud or even bricks, it

was their own fault “for not behaving like ladies and staying at home”.

An amusing sideline is that during the Great War there was a mob attack

on a peace meeting at the Unitarian Church, Southgate Road, when

Bertrand Russell was in danger of being lynched. The respectable ladies

with him appealed to the police presence to save him. They remained

stolidly impassive as one after another implored them to save the life

of a man they described as the most distinguished philosopher in Europe

or the most celebrated mathematician in England. Only when one, more

worldly wise, protested that he was the son of an earl did the police

wade in as one, truncheons out to preserve the noble dissident.

During John Major’s pseudo-soapbox stump, a member of the public threw

eggs at him, and was fined for the assault and ordered to pay damages

for the suit. It would have been interesting to know if Neil Kinnock,

instead of holding a presidential-type campaign and scorning the humble

soapbox, had gone stump speaking and been hit by an egg, whether the

police would have decided he was enough of a socialist to deserve what

he got (as had virtually been decided by previous assaults on Ramsay

MacDonald, Aneurin Bevan and even Kinnock himself) or if the new

respectability led to his being treated equally with John Major. The

media would certainly have treated it differently.

Guy Aldred

We turn from the play acting of John Major as a stump soapbox speaker,

complete with speechwriters and a specially made box (reminiscent of the

organised “gypsy caravan tours” when the gypsies have been driven out)

to the real stump speakers of a bygone day. They had to know how to get

and handle a crowd by themselves. Some devoted their entire life to

“open air propaganda” (living upon collections) some did it for

entertainment (professionally), while a great many did it voluntarily,

obviously for a time.

Of those who could lecture copiously, without notes, fascinate a crowd,

spread the word, explain a chosen subject more clearly than any

University lecturer, one must select Guy Aldred as pre-eminent. This is

not to describe his life (which should be done — a biography of him is

unpublished, though he published many autobiographical writings) but

some incidents which describe the problems of the “soapbox” and how it

was steadily illegalised.

Aldred (born in London, and originally a boy preacher, but for most of

his life’s activity centred in Glasgow and a propagandist for anarchism

and socialism) maintained that literature selling, essential to

propaganda, was enshrined in the constitution. He pointed out that when

Scotland came into the Union, the Scots demanded that colportage (the

unauthorised selling of dissenting literature in public: “colportage” =

selling from a tray round one’s neck) What they were afraid of was that

religious dissenters be prevented from selling Bibles etc should the

English government become Catholic. Whatever the merits of that fear,

the law was enshrined.

A line of reformers ensured secularist then socialist literature was

respected. Aldred argued this many times in court successfully. He

pointed to the fact that if one applied to the police for a street

trader’s licence to sell papers, one was told there was no such licence

available because it was not necessary. Because of the colportage laws,

newspapers were sold in the streets (limitations came within the trade

itself), without police permission being necessary. (This is the origin

of the term the “gutter press”). When in the thirties the police decided

sales of socialist literature caused obstruction, they were altering the

laws on colportage. Aldred struggled to enable colportage within the

Royal Parks. This was not legally successful and he was fined many times

— but he was never defeated on the subject of colportage outside.

Permission to do this has disappeared and with it most of the demand to

do so. What now moulds public opinion is the “gutter press” which can be

sold without licence to do so being necessary (other than by the

suppliers). Since Aldred, nobody has challenged this police decision

that public availability of dissenting literature plus free speech

equals obstruction. We doubt that John Major’s precedent would be

accepted.

Conversely, Aldred went to prison for enabling the republican Mylius to

print his paper which laid bare certain scandals in the life of George

V. They did not in the least bear up to those currently peddled by all

the national press about the current Royals (though admittedly the

affair of Edward VIII was concealed until his abdication and the real

scandals are only beginning to be revealed now).