Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (9 page)

Alas, the governor was ailing when he arrived, but still not so sick that his wife would not let the Reverend see him. And yet, when Clarke excitedly opened his bag and laid the gold samples out before him, His Excellency pronounced himself something far less than impressed and a lot more than merely concerned. He quickly cut him short with a dismissive wave of the hand, saying, ‘Put it away, Mr Clarke, before we all have our throats cut.’

For Governor Gipps appreciated what the Reverend perhaps did not: the discovery of gold would change things. The whole continent was right at the point of transition from a penal colony to being something more, perhaps even a country in its own right. A country with its institutions, certainly, where a fair measure of its population was putting down roots, but those institutions are not so grand and those roots not so deep that a gold rush couldn’t turn everything upside down, and the mob might rule. And so for the moment, that was where it was left . . .

———

In other parts of the world, within less than a decade, the challenge by the broad mass of people to the rule of the elite was not so easily averted.

In late 1847, a 29-year-old German philosopher and law graduate by the name of Karl Marx – at the time living in Brussels because his homeland had denied him freedom of speech in the press due to his dangerously revolutionary ideas – was putting the finishing touches to a pamphlet he had worked up with his great friend Friedrich Engels. Engels was the 27-year-old bon vivant eldest son of a wealthy German cotton manufacturer, who had recognised, he felt, a genius in Marx that perhaps even Marx himself was not aware of.

It was a pamphlet they called the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, which became known in the English-speaking world as
The
Communist
Manifesto
.
Using analysis that was revolutionary in every sense of the word, their firm view was expressed in the manifesto’s opening line: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ Most pointedly, they asserted that the working class was being exploited by those who owned the means of production and that the capitalist system was inherently unfair. They proposed an entirely new economic structure for the world, presenting a vision whereby the workers would and should rise against their oppressors, seize the means of production, and the world’s wealth would thereafter be redistributed on a far more equal basis:
‘
Jeder nach seinen Fahigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedurfnissen’
– ‘From each according to their means, to each according to their needs.’

Workers of the world unite!

According to them, workers around the world were beginning to rise against their oppressors, and their chief hope was that their book would encourage others to do the same.

Within weeks – not because of Marx, but because of the forces he identified – that very thing began to happen across Europe, as a broad mass of the population in country after country rose up against the traditional establishment elites and challenged their iniquitous rule.

First, in February, the good citoyens of Paris, France, and most particularly the humble workers, flooded into the streets in revolt at the rule of ‘Le Bourgeois Monarch,’ King Louis-Philippe and his Prime Minister, Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot. ‘Down with Guizot!’ they shouted. ‘Down with the sold ones! Down with Louis-Philippe!
Vive la Reforme
!’

Erecting barricades, throwing pavement stones at the Parisian municipal guards – so fiery was their rage, so great their numbers, that Guizot resigned. Still, that did not quell the uprising and on the next day French soldiers fired directly into the milling crowd, killing 52 and wounding hundreds of others.

‘
Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons
!’

And so they did. In such numbers and with such fury – all of it concentrated on the royal palace – that within two days King Louis-Philippe put himself in a disguise and, travelling as ‘Mr Smith’, fled to England, a country that was itself in turmoil . . .

———

In England, a little over a decade earlier – in a curious coalition of six liberal parliamentarians combining forces with six forward-thinking working men – a committee had been formed as the foundation of a movement that then and there was engaged in a fierce struggle for the nation’s destiny. In 1838 they had published the People’s Charter, which had six basic planks in its platform, calling for enormous political change in Great Britain: the vote for every man of sound mind over 21 not in gaol; secret ballot elections; no property qualifications for members of parliament; parliamentary members to be paid, enabling poor people to stand, too; equal constituencies so everyone’s vote was worth the same amount; and annual parliaments, with all members elected for a year only.

In the first instance, when there was a violent outbreak by ‘Chartist’ rioters in the North of England in support of these claims, that outbreak was put down by troops under the command of Sir Charles Napier.

When Sir Charles arrived in Manchester on 6 May 1839, it was to find handbills being handed out to the working people that included the seditious lines:

Let England’s sons then prime her guns,

And save each good man’s daughter;

In tyrant’s blood baptise your sons,

And every villain slaughter.

By pike and sword your freedom strive to gain,

Or make one bloody Moscow of old England’s plain
.

Sir Charles – whose later recorded view was that, ‘The best way to quiet a country is a good thrashing, followed by great kindness afterwards. Even the wildest chaps are thus tamed’ – proved up to the task of quelling the revolt. Going to see the Chartist leaders, he was nothing if not frank:

‘I understand,’ he told them, ‘you are to have a great meeting on Kersal Moor, with a view to laying your grievances before Parliament. You are quite right to do so, and I will take care that neither soldier nor policeman shall be within sight to disturb you. But meet peaceably, for if there is the least disturbance I shall be amongst you and at the sacrifice of my life, if necessary, do my duty. Now go and do yours!’

The meeting subsequently took place in perfect peace.

This was consistent with the proclamation of one of their original leaders, the parliamentarian William Lovett, who had always insisted that Chartism should ‘inform the mind’ rather than ‘captivate the sense’ and so succeed ‘without commotion or violence’. At this time most Chartists still held that the way to achieve their ends was not by armed insurrection but ‘moral force’: by making their case in a united and coherent fashion, frequently from a podium in front of massive ‘monster meetings’ and by petition, collectively persuading those who opposed them and those wavering on the virtues of their case. Together, united and forward! Another key was land, trying to ensure that by collective action the workers could join the propertied classes. The Chartist Cooperative Land Company was formed, where workers combined their resources to buy estates that could then be subdivided into two-, three- and four-acre lots and handed over to the lucky workers who won what was effectively a lottery.

They continued to be fond of mass meetings, and on one occasion a decade later, 10 April 1848 – at a time when ‘physical force’ Chartists were holding greater sway – no fewer than 150,000 Chartists turned up at Kennington Common to hear the speakers and then form a procession to try to deliver a petition to Parliament. This petition threatened that, if ignored, it would see the people create a separate national assembly, even as they pressed the Queen to dissolve Parliament until such a time as their charter was made law. The march on Parliament began well, but then the Redcoats again turned up in their own great numbers and threatened to shoot those at the front of the procession if they dared to try to cross the Thames.

Would they? Should they?

. . .

. . .

No.

Whatever the virtues of ‘physical force’, it was quite another matter when your enemies had more than you did. Ultimately, the Chartists were unwilling to take on this armed force with an armed insurrection of their own, and the march splintered and petered out. Nevertheless, the panicked Parliament immediately pushed through new legislation on sedition –
encouraging one
’
s fellow subjects to rebel against their state
– and treason –
betraying one
’
s country by aiding and abetting another state
– so that such massed meetings as had been witnessed were effectively banned. For the
Treason Felony Act 1848
stated that any person levying war, ‘by Force or Constraint to compel Her or Them to change Her or Their measures or counsels, or in order to put any Force or Constraint upon or in order to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament, or to move or stir any Foreigner or Stranger with Force to invade the United Kingdom or any other of Her Majesty’s Dominions or Countries under the Obeisance of Her Majesty, Her Heirs or Successors, and such Compassings, Imaginations, Inventions, Devices, or Intentions, or any of them, shall express, utter, or declare, by publishing any Printing or Writing, or by open and advised Speaking, or by any overt Act or Deed, every Person so offending shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the Discretion of the Court, to be transported beyond the Seas for the Term of his or her natural Life.’ (By downgrading punishment from death to transportation to the colonies, it was hoped that juries would be more ready to convict.)

In this case, the heavy hand of the law did make the more outspoken elements of the Chartist movement back down as things began to calm.

Elsewhere the struggle went on, and nowhere was it fiercer than in Ireland, where for the previous two years the rains had barely stopped falling and potato blight had taken a terribly strong hold. All over the country, where green fields had once provided the vegetable in such quantity that the people could eat potato for breakfast, lunch and dinner – and did so – there was now a stinking black mess. Without potatoes the people began to starve and unrest took hold. Of course they could not blame the government for the rains or the blight, but there were other things for those suffering and starving to take aim at.

Right at the height of the starvation, when the exhausted priests were worked overtime providing last rites to the dying, Ireland was a net exporter of food. The grip of starvation was killing the people, but the political grip of Britain on the land was stronger. The need for commerce to continue, for the profits of the merchants buying and selling Irish produce, was more powerful than any other consideration – most particularly when the starving poor of Ireland had no money to buy the food anyway.

In the stately home of Tenakill, in the village of Raheen, Queen’s County, a 42-year-old man by the name of Fintan Lalor was in the thick of the struggle for the people’s rights from the beginning. Born of a family of wealthy tenant farmers, fiercely Catholic and nationalist to the core, Lalor was consumed with passion for nothing less than the Republican revolutionary cause: Ireland must throw off its wretched British shackles, return the country to its people and allow the land of the emerald green to be in charge of its own destiny. In this cause he was following in the footsteps of his father, Patrick, who twenty years earlier had not only actively advocated the repeal of the 1800 Act of Union that had created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but also led the charge against the iniquitous British practice of requiring Irish Catholics to pay a tithe – in part according to how much land you owned – to the newly installed Church of England for the upkeep of its clergy and maintenance of its assets.

The spirit of the anti-tithe movement was captured by a famous letter penned by the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Dr James Doyle: ‘There are many noble traits in the Irish character, mixed with failings which have always raised obstacles to their own well-being; but an innate love of justice, and an indomitable hatred of oppression, is like a gem upon the front of our nation, which no darkness can obscure. To this fine quality I trace their hatred of tithes. May it be as lasting as their love of justice!’

Exactly. Patt Lalor – so the story goes – while attending a meeting in Maryborough on 10 February 1831, openly declared that he would never again pay tithes. He was proud to say that though the Tithe Men could take his property and put it on the market if they liked, he felt sure his countrymen had such high respect for his cause that no-one would put their hand up to buy it.

When the local clergyman sent his bailiff to take away 25 of Lalor’s sheep, Lalor was able to get a brief enough legal intervention to have each animal branded with the word ‘TITHE’. They were taken back and put on sale before a large crowd at the Mountrath fair, and not
one
hand was raised to buy them at any price! When the clergyman’s agent, Mr Brough, suddenly bought them himself, the crowd surged forward, only to be stopped by Lalor. He was a man of peace, and there were other ways.

As no-one in the region would buy the sheep, Brough had them taken by a bailiff to Dublin, but that unfortunate bailiff found that all the way to that city, every time he stopped for food and shelter, doors were closed to him. He arrived at Dublin a shattered, exhausted man, only to find no-one would buy them there, either. The sheep were then shipped to Liverpool. ‘However a priest of Irish origin and faithful to the cause warned the salesmen in Liverpool what had happened with the sheep in Ireland. The sheep weren’t sold in Liverpool either and were then driven to Manchester where the story goes that they died on the road.’ The Church of England never received a penny from Lalor’s sheep, while, as the elected representative of the Queen’s County (1832-35), Lalor was able to continue to fight the good fight in no less than the British House of Commons.