“Apart from my desire
to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is
hatred of modern civilisation.” (William Morris, from
“How I Became a Socialist”, 1894)
Much of
what I have learned about William Morris has come from E. P Thompson’s volume William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. The book was part of
an effort by the Communist Party Historians' Group to emphasise the domestic
roots of Marxism in Britain
at a time (1955) when the Communist Party was under attack for always following
the Moscow line. Morris has often
been portrayed as “The English Marx”.
E. P Thompson is also author of the classic The Making of the English
Working Class. Both are door stop tomes, but if you can get over that,
Thompson is a rewarding read which fills in a great many blanks about the early
labour movement, in which Morris was pivotal.
I was interested to see that the artist Jeremy Deller has recently opened an exhibition in the William Morris museum at Walthamstow. The mural of a giant Morris
striding the ocean like a moral Poseidon whilst throwing Roman Abramovich’s
yacht away in disgust particularly demanded attention.
It is refreshing
that William Morris is not just seen as a “textile maker” these days, but increasingly
as a “socialist”. For a while there I had thought there was a conspiracy of
silence in airbrushing out Morris’s keenly held beliefs. Although “socialist”
is a more willingly applied label, it is not very well known Morris was no glib
Blairite grand daddy, bestowing philanthropic benevolence on needy folk for
good causes (his co- workers were paid as artisans with good conditions and not
as ‘minimum wage lackeys’). Morris was a radical anarcho- communist who wanted to see the overthrow
of capitalism altogether. Many “democratic” socialists who claim him as theirs
should remember he was in favour of Irish home rule, and against the notion of
Parliamentary representational democracy, and sided with the anti-
Parliamentarians during the great split within the Socialist League.
William
Morris was a wealthy man, having inherited a fortune, and being a successful
interior designer for the homes of the effete middle classes. Could he be
trusted to lead up an anarcho- socialist revolutionary party? Morris faithfully
bankrolled the Socialist League and it’s publication, Commonweal, as well as maintaining a punishing marathon of
lectures, campaigns and protests all across Britain and Europe for nearly 10 years. He frequently
bailed out his fellow comrades from the inevitable legal scrapes, but kept his own
nose clean with the authorities. He was arrested on September 21, 1885, in a melée at the
Thames Police Court, but made no public comment on the incident. The arrest was
for disorderly conduct at the trial of Lewis Lyons, a tailor, and others who
had been charged with resisting arrest at a mass meeting of Socialists the
previous day. Lyons was sentenced
by the magistrate to two months hard labour. Among the crowd that protested the
harshness of his sentence were Eleanor Aveling, the daughter of Karl Marx, and
her husband, Edward. In the end, after identifying himself : "I am an
artist, and a literary man, pretty well known, I think, throughout Europe",
Morris was discharged without penalty.
So we see the "class pass" in operation. One rule for “them”, another for “us”. No Gandhian style solidarity protest in sympathy with the oppressed working classes there. Even as a renegade
“gentleman”, it’s galling to see how softly the establishment treats one of their
own. And Morris comes up smelling of embroidered roses, in a tapestry of self
importance. Still, notwithstanding this incident, the overall contribution of William Morris to the
development of libertarian socialism cannot be criticized. He was an endlessly
positive influence on the movement.
Morris was also
a rural preservationist (founding Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings), and saw the
decimation of folk arts and crafts as an insidious and withering artifact of
capitalism, which destroyed the spirit of human beings. What’s changed? Mass
production has only led to the amelioration of life quality for millions, a
fact that Morris foresaw with plaguing lucidity. He is without much doubt the
founder of contemporary green socialism as a political movement. In fact it was the eco- socialist writer Derek Wall who pointed me in the direction of Morris, in his book The Rise of the Green Left: Inside the Worldwide Ecosocialist Movement.
The conflicting ingredients of Morris's life makes
him a complex and juxtaposed man, a nature lover pitched as he was against the industrial
revolution, with the burgeoning needs of his art to express itself within commercial constraints, with the
shadows of history, his legacy and his status all about him, by nature an uneasy leader enmired in
petty squabbles and the slings and arrows of other people’s politicking. To overcome these he was, in short,
a visionary human being who extended himself beyond the envelope of what was expected or
required of him to make the world a better place. Ultimately the visionary fires which burned so brightly, would consume him.
Above: Kelmscott
Manor, home of The Kelmscott Press and the idyll where Morris wrote News
from Nowhere, probably the finest example of utopian socialism in literature,
which went on to inspire many other writers including Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and
James Joyce.
To me,
Morris can indeed be seen as the English Marx. Whereas Marx concerned himself
with burdensome economic proofs and overly intellectualised historical
“scientific” formulas, Morris appeals to the heart, the poet within, the wild
man of the woods, the urgency of fighting against all the alienation and narrow
dehumanising technological bankruptcy of capitalism which acts against the free
artistic spirit. Marx undoubtedly shaped the 20th century, but Morris may
yet speak to future generations.
“Thus, in this matter also does the
artificial famine of inequality, felt in so many other ways, impoverish us
despite of our riches; and we sit starving amidst our gold.”
(William Morris, from “The
Socialist Ideal: Art”, 1891)
by South Utsire
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