William Cobbett and the Invention of Popular Radical Journalism Michael Rustin
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soundings issue 1 Autumn 1995 William Cobbett and the invention of popular radical journalism Michael Rustin Soundings should have regard for the great models of popular journalism of the past, says Michael Rustin. We shows in his article how many of the techniques of popular polemical writing were invented two hundred years ago by the great advocate of the rural working class, William Cobbett. 139 Soundings Here are two characteristic passages from the writings of the radical journalist William Cobbett (1763-1835): To the labourers of England, on the projects for getting them out of their native country My Friends, The London newspapers tell us, that the newspapers in the country are full of 'forebodings as to the designs of the labourers!...' I, however, want no information on the subject, for I know your designs, and I highly approve of them; namely, first, to secure for yourselves, in return for your labour, a belly-full of meat and bread; and next, to obtain some good wholesome beer, to wash them down; and also to obtain good and decent clothes, and clean bedding, as your grandfathers had. These are your designs, and God send that they may be accomplished, instead of being a subject of 'ominous forebodings.' But now, upon these projects for getting you out of the country... (p2). I have frequently told you, that there is a man of the name of Malthus, who is a church parson, who was the great inventor of the doctrine, that it is your breeding so fast that is the cause of your misery. This man has long been a great favourite with the greater part of the law-makers and ministers, and it has recently come to light that he has been and is in the pay of the government, and that he has been receiving and is receiving a hundred pounds a year for his literary services. That which he has received would have wholly maintained nine or ten labourers' families. Such transactions as this form part of the cause of your misery; but though this is as clear as daylight to me, and to every man of sense in the kingdom, still the schemers are at work to get some of you away; to get some of you out of the country in which you were born... while they suffer swarms of Italians, Jews and Germans, hurdy gurdy grinders, broom-sellers and Scotch pedlars, to swarm over the land, like lice on the body of a diseased animal... (p3) But, you will say, what have we to do with this Right Honourable WILMOT HORTON? Why, you have a great deal to do with him: he is the head emigration schemer; and he has just now been made the governor of an island, a post which, they say, is worth eight thousand pounds a year; and 140 William Cobbett who is it that pays it, I need not tell you. However, he has schemed, it seems, pretty well for himself; but, my friends, look only at this thing! a board of commissioners, established by the King, to collect information for persons who may wish to get out of the country! a board of commissioners, with a Duke at the head of it, to show people how they may carry away out of England that which constitutes England's strength. A board of royal commissioners to get the king's subjects out of his kingdom... (pl4). Two-Penny Trash, July 1831 To the Yeoman Cavalry: On the Fires I cannot call you friends, and I will not call you gentlemen. This plague of the country is now raging with greater fury than ever, and I think it proper to address you on the subject. You are called yeoman cavalry; though perhaps more than half of you are loan-mongers, tax-gatherers, dead-weight people, stock-jobbers, shag-bag attorneys, bailiffs (mostly Scotch), toad-eating shopkeepers, who are ready to perform military duty towards the 'lower orders' in order at once to give evidence of your gentility, and to show your gratitude towards your rich customers for their paying your long bills without scruple. A very great part of you come in under one or the other part of this description; but to those of you who are farmers; that is to say who have land in your occupation; and who grow corn, and rear cattle, and who have bams, ricks and other things, liable to be set fire to; to you only do I address myself upon this occasion, being well aware that my arguments would produce no impression whatever upon your comrades above- mentioned. First of all, call the roll of your corps over, and see how many of them there are who are not interested in the taxes and the tithes, either immediately or through their relations, landlords or somebody else. When you have called the roll, and have separated yourself from the rest, get into a plain room, pull off your hairy caps, your parti-coloured jackets and your Wellington-boots; put on your own Christian-like clothes, your high shoes well-nailed; and then pick out someone with a good strong voice to read to you that which I am about to write. (pl45-146) Two-Penny Trash, January 1832 141 Soundings obbett was one of the inventors of popular radical journalism in Britain, and it is appropriate therefore to remind readers of our new radical Cjournal, Soundings, of the example of his work. In one way, reminders are scarcely needed. Several of the major socialist writers of this century have written about him - a full-length biography and various reprints of his work by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, virtually a chapter devoted to him in Edward Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, and more references to him in its index than to anyone else, a short book on him by Raymond Williams. (Ian Dyck adds Karl Marx, Matthew Arnold, G.K. Chesterton, Michael Foot, A.J.P. Taylor, Asa Briggs and Richard Ingrams to this list of admirers.) Yet of Cobbett's huge amount of writing, only Rural Rides has remained consistently in print, and this probably more for its topographical interest, and as a classic kind of 'travel writing', than for its politics. Or perhaps one should say that its ever-present politics has been tolerated for these other merits. It is extraordinary that there has never been an accessible paperback compendium of Cobbett's political writing, drawn from the Political Register, Peter Porcupine (his writings in America) and the Two-Penny Trash (priced to evade the stamp duty), even though good scholarly work on him continues to be published.1 These extracts show two aspects of Cobbett's identity as a popular journalist. On the one hand, he speaks to his readers; hails them, whether as friend or foe; shows in his writing that he knows them, is identified with them. On the other hand, Cobbett faces up to the powerful, observes and reports how they regard the people, and discloses their material interests in so doing. Cobbett creates a space for himself between the people, as he conceives them, and their political masters. He establishes himself as a representative voice, speaking to the powerful on behalf of the weak. Cobbett came from the rural and small-town world of southern England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Most of his Rural Rides are journeys across these southern counties, even though it was for the industrial constituency of Oldham that he was elected as a Member of Parliament after the Reform Bill in 1832. He writes with deep knowledge and affection of this countryside, his 1. Two good biographies are George Spater, William Cobbett: the Poor Man's Friend (2 Vols), Cambridge University Press, 1982; Ian Dyck, William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, Cambridge University Press, 1992. A collection of Cobbett's writings, Cobbett on Ireland, edited by Denis Knight, was published by Lawrence and Wishart in 1984- 142 William Cobbett chief pleasure being in its cultivation, and in the harmonious relationship, where he found it, between the land and its occupants. (This is a quite different view of nature from some of his Romantic contemporaries' pleasure in wild, mountainous places, devoid of human habitation, the location of the sublime.) I have now seen (for I have, years back, seen the Vales of Taunton, Glastonbury, Honiton, Dorchester and Sherburne) what are deemed the richest and most beautiful parts of England; and if called to name the spot which I deem the brightest and most beautiful, and of its extent, best of all, I should say the villages of North Bovant and Bishopstrow, between Heytesbury and Warminister in Wiltshire; for there is, as appertaining to rural objects, everything that I delight in. Smooth and verdant downs in hills and valleys of endless variety as to height and depth and shape, rich corn-land, unencumbered by fences; meadows in due proportion, and those watered at pleasure; and lastly the homestead and villages, sheltered in winter and shaded in summer by lofty and beautiful trees; to which may be added roads never dirty and a stream never dry. Rural Rides, Burghclere, Hampshire, 2 October 1826 Everyman edition, Vol. 2, pl35 This was a stratified and paternalistic society, in which most significant relationships were of a face-to-face kind.2 But it was a society in transition. The growth of London - the Wen, as Cobbett usually called it - was already having great effects on agriculture and trade, and Cobbett spent his political life campaigning against the abstract financial systems of public debt, borrowing, taxes, and the printing of paper money which were the inflationary means, as we would now say, of paying for the wars with France.