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The Work of Joseph and Eleanor Edwards, Two Liverpool Enthusiasts*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
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In its educational work, the Liverpool Fabian Society constantly “situated” Liberalism; past reforms had done much, but contemporary Liberal aims were far too “wishy-washy” and diverse: “It is not benevolence, not charity, not a temporary dividing-up, that the world requires, but the transformation of industrial society from a system of profit into a system of co-operative production for use.” Liverpool Fabians thus saw that a focus on the entire existing system, an attack on both root and branch, was essential to the distinction between radicalism and Socialism. It is primarily in the context of education towards an understanding of this kind of distinction that this article will consider the work of two Liverpool Fabian Socialists, Joseph and Eleanor Edwards, during the Liverpool phase of their activities, from 1891 to 1901.
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- Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1979
References
1 Cf. Edwards, John, Liberalism and Socialism: A Reply to Recent Speeches (Liverpool, 1906), pp. 8Google Scholar; Harrison, R., review of Wolfe, W., From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines, 1881–1889 (New Haven, 1975)Google Scholar, in: English Historical Review, XCII (1977), p. 159.Google Scholar
2 Commonweal, 4 May 1889; cf. Report of the Third Annual Conference of the Socialist League, 1887, p. 6, where Morris maintained that “the fight for education must be made part of the great struggle for a revolutionary change in the social conditions of life and the abolition of class distinction.”
3 Report, ibid.; Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Har-mondsworth, 1968)Google Scholar, ch. 16; id., Morris, William: Romantic to Revolutionary, revised ed. (London, 1977)Google Scholar, Pt III, chs IV and VII; for the general educational implications of the rise of Socialism, see Simon, B., Education and the Labour Movement (London, 1965)Google Scholar, ch. I; and for links between earlier radicalism and later Socialism, Harrison, R., Before the Socialists. Studies in Labour and Politics (London, 1965)Google Scholar, ch. VI.
4 In Liverpool, this was especially true of Sam Reeves (1865–1930), a persistent school-board campaigner who believed that such candidates “must be both Trades Unionists and Socialists before they become a reliable factor in electioneering”. See Labour Chronicle (hereafter LC), December 1894; also the sketch of Reeves by Bean, R.in Dictionary of Labour Biography, ed. by Bellamy, J. and Saville, J., I (1972), pp. 282–84.Google Scholar
5 Labour Leader, 21 April 1894; Bean, R., “Aspects of ‘New’ Unionism in Liverpool 1889–1891”, in: Building the Union. Studies on the Growth of the Workers' Movement: Merseyside, 1756–1967, ed. by Hikins, H. R. (Liverpool, 1973), pp. 99–118Google Scholar; Maddock, S., “The Liverpool Trades Council and Politics, 1878–1918” (Liverpool University M.A. thesis, 1959)Google Scholar, ch. II.
6 Liverpool Review, 20 February 1892.
7 Hodgen, M., Workers' Education in England and the United States (London, 1925), pp. 262Google Scholar; cf. Silver, H., The Concept of Popular Education (London, 1965)Google Scholar, ch. V.
8 See Liverpool Daily Post, 15 November 1888, and Liverpool Review, 21 November 1891; cf. Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, op. cit., pp. 121–22.
9 Cf. Barker, R., “The Labour Party and Education for Socialism”, in: International Review of Social History, XIV (1969), p. 24.Google Scholar
10 The Liver, 13 January 1894. For a view of the traditional elementary school curriculum as a desirable, perhaps necessary, component of subsequent radical education, see Entwistle, H., Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling for Radical Politics (London, 1979)Google Scholar; cf. Thompson, E. P., Education and Experience [Annual Mansbridge Lecture, No 5] (Leeds, 1968), pp. 18, 20.Google Scholar
11 McBriar, A. M., Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar, ch. VII; for a distinction between propaganda and education, see Hodgen, Workers' Education, op. cit., p. 270, citing Cole; cf. Cole, G. D. H., The World of Labour (London, 1913), pp. 16–17, 422.Google Scholar
12 Pease, E. R., TThe History of the Fabian Society, 2nd ed. (London, 1925), pp. 102–03Google Scholar; cf. McBriar, Fabian Socialism, p. 167.
13 See Shafts, 15 December 1893; Labour Leader, 13 October 1894; Porcupine, 11 December 1897; also Liverpool Fabian Society, First Annual Report, 1892–93 (unpag-inated), British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES), Coll. Misc. 375/3.
14 Specifically, with “John Edwards and his Fabian host”; see Porcupine, 17 April 1897. John Edwards, who was of no relation to Joseph, was the Fabian president, and intellectual leader of the local labour movement until his virtual disappearance from public life after 1918; see Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, 15 February 1922, and the biographical sketch by G. Fidler in Dictionary of Labour Biography, VI, forthcoming.
15 Fred Greasley (ILP) to Eleanor Keeling, 7 April 1895, Joseph Edwards Papers, Liverpool Record Office, Ace. 2427; for Joseph, see the obituary notice in the Labour Party Annual Report, 1947, p. 31.
16 Shafts, 15 December 1893. Joseph lived until 1946, and had remarried by then. See obituary notice, ibid.
17 Edwards, Joseph, Economics of Freedom: adjustments necessary to secure to the Belgian people equitable social conditions (London, 1917)Google Scholar; id., Land and Real Tariff Reform, being the Land Reformers' Handbook for 1909 (London, 1909)Google Scholar; cf. Edwards, John, Socialism and the Art of Living (Liverpool, 1913)Google Scholar; McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, p. 291; Shafts, 15 12 1893.Google Scholar
18 See Hobsbawm, E. J., “The Fabians Reconsidered”, in Labouring Men. Studies in the History of Labour, 2nd ed. (London, 1968), pp. 253.Google Scholar
19 Shafts, 15 December 1893; Hamling, W., A Short History of the Liverpool Trades Council (Liverpool, 1948), pp. 27Google Scholar; for the Socialist Society (of which Reeves was secretary), see Porcupine, 12 December 1891; Fabian News, December; First Annual Report, 1892–93.
20 Cf. Pelling, H., The Origins of the Labour Party, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1965), pp. 155Google Scholar, and Pierson, S., Marxism and the Origins of British Socialism (Ithaca, 1973)Google Scholar, ch. 6. Her address to the Fabian Society in January 1894 (given also to the Birkenhead Fabian Society the following month) presented Socialism from “an ideal and ethical standpoint”; see Birkenhead News, 24 February, and Liverpool Fabian Society, Circular No 10, January, BLPES.
21 The first mention of Eleanor appears to be one in connection with the Fabian Cinderella Club, in Circular No 8, November 1893, when she was 22; see also the handbill outlining the objects of the club (n.d. [1894?]), BLPES; for a reference to her school teaching, see for example Mollie Keeling to Eleanor Keeling, 23 December 1895; Margaret Shurmer Sibthorpe to Eleanor Keeling, 17 January 1896, Joseph Edwards Papers.
22 Eleanor Keeling to workers in Lodge Lane Rope [works], 18 March 1896, Joseph Edwards Papers; for her work in the Industrial Council, see LC, January 1896; Porcupine, February 1893 and September 1894; The Women's Industrial News, April 1896. On Jeannie Mole, see Labour Annual, 1895, p. 180Google Scholar, and an article by Joseph Edwards in LC, January 1896. The scope of Eleanor's activities does not appear to have suited her health, “her enthusiasm […] being not always unlimited by the claims of her own health”. Labour Prophet (hereafter LP), April 1896.
23 It was remarked that “there is a wonderful sweetness in your presence”: Mollie to Eleanor Keeling, 5 November 1895, Joseph Edwards Papers; see also Birkenhead News, 24 February 1894, and LC, September 1897 and November 1898. Her column in the Clarion ran from 9 February to 20 April 1895.
24 Their interest in women's emancipation was noted with great satisfaction by the editor of Shafts (Margaret Shurmer Sibthorpe), “though Socialists have not yet grasped the full bearings of this question”: Shafts, February 1896; for the Labour Church commitment, see Labour Leader, 21 April and 21 July 1894; LP, July 1892 and May 1894.
25 Industrial Review, 29 December 1877; for Jones and the coffee houses, see T., “Joff”, Coffee House Babble (Liverpool, n.d. [1915?]), p. 8Google Scholar, and Harrison, Before the Socialists, op. cit., pp. 320–21; for Owenite activity, R. B. Rose, “John Finch, 1784–1857; a Liverpool Disciple of Robert Owen”, in: Building the Union, op. cit., pp. 31–52.
26 “Joff”, Coffee House Babble, p. 26.Google Scholar
27 Pierson, Marxism, op. cit., p. 36, citing Socialist League Correspondence and Papers No 3251/2, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis; LC, January 1896; Liverpool Review, 23 February 1891.
28 Blatchford thought “the cause of Socialism is progressing in Liverpool”, Porcupine, 12 December 1891; Commonweal, April 1896.
29 With Joseph, were John Edwards, Reeves, Mole, Edward Kaney, George Nelson and Joseph Goodman (SDF); Sexton and Bob Manson (“Manzona” of the Chronicle) had joined by 1893. See Circular No 1, December 1892, and First Annual Report.
30 Pease to Joseph Edwards, 28 February 1893, Joseph Edwards Papers; for the SDF. see The Liver, 9 December 1893: “the S.D.F. in this city is a very active organisation.”
31 “Fabian Opportunities”, in: The Liver, 2 December 1893 – 20 January 1894. It also suggests the existence of some first-class minds among Liverpool Fabians. Pease's bias towards “university men” perhaps being unfair, see ibid., 9 December.
32 Porcupine, 24 September 1892.
33 Justice, 19 July 1902, but cf. 8 January 1898, where the Fabian president praised the “uncalculating devotion to principle of the S.D.F.”
34 Sexton, J., Sir James Sexton, Agitator (London, 1936), pp. 150Google Scholar; Labour Leader, 21 July 1894; and Liverpool Daily Post, 30 December 1930, where Morrissey recalled that he and Sexton had joined an ILP which advocated “independence and the full Socialist Programme”, before the formation of the national body.
35 See, for example, the publication of a statement on “Fabian Election Tactics”, for the 1896 International Socialist Congress, which favoured co-operation with the SDF and ILP, in opposition to London Fabians, in Report on Fabian Policy, 1896, BLPES; cf. Poirier, P., The Advent of the British Labour Party (New York, 1958), pp. 35Google Scholar, note.
36 LC, October 1894; ibid., January-February 1895, for Hales's articles.
37 LC, October 1894.
38 Reeves spoke of “so-called Progressives” on the school board, and of a “conspiracy” against the poor; see LC, September 1898; for the Liverpool Housing Association (led by John Edwards) see Fabian News, December 1901. ILP, NAC minutes, 12 November 1898, BLPES, for a request from the Everton branch ILP for a re-opening of negotiations with the SDF.
39 Sidney Webb to Henry George, 8 March 1889 (Webb's underlining), Henry George Letters, microfilm of English correspondence, BLPES; see Wolfe. From Radicalism to Socialism, op. cit., pp. 86ff., for George as an orthodox economist whose writings led later English readers on to a serious criticism of the economic system. George's Liverpool speech was under the auspices of the Liverpool Financial Reform Association, which presented it as a lesson on the expediency of Liberal commitment for the working class; see “Henry George in London and Liverpool, December 1888”. pp. 29. 31, BLPES.
40 ILP, Annual Conference Report, 1894, p. 8; ibid., 1893. pp. 6–7, 14.
41 The Liver, 9 December 1893; Circular No 1.
42 The Liver, 2 December 1893; LC, August 1895.
43 Yeo, S., “A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883–1896”, in: History Workshop, No 4 (1977), p. 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44 Ibid., p. 29; cf. Manson, R. T., Wayward Fancies (Liverpool, 1906), pp. 26, 28.Google Scholar
45 The Bee-Hive, 21 August 1869.
46 Cf. Freedom, May 1909, on the Liverpool Communist School; the syndicalist Fred Bower failed “to understand why some of our comrades disagree with us in this method of propaganda”.
47 See LC, February 1896; Clarion, 9 February, 2 and 30 March 1895.
48 Eleanor advertised her “Liverpool Young Merrie Englanders' Club” in LC, August 1895, and LP, September; an account of the Women's Industrial Council appeared in the Reformers' Year Book 1904, p. 101Google Scholar: “the organisation of women's and girls' clubs for social and educational purposes” included a study of economics and legislation affecting women's trades.
49 The Liver, 13 January 1894.
50 LP, January 1896; cf. Reid, F., “Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain, 1892–1939”, in: International Review of Social History, XI (1966), p. 20.Google Scholar For Eleanor's educational views, see “A New Scheme of Education”, in: Labour Annual, 1895, pp. 145–46Google Scholar; for the Sunday School, LC, February 1896 and January 1897.
51 “Outline Addresses for Children”, in: LP, October 1894; Eleanor also made suggestions for the use of lantern illustrations.
52 LP, May 1896.
53 Blatchford, Robert, Merrie England (London, 1895), p. 160Google Scholar (my emphasis).
54 Practical School Board Reform [Liverpool Fabian Tracts, No 8] (1897).
55 The Liver, 13 January 1894.
56 Ibid.; for labour criticism of the school board, see for example LC, December 1897; Porcupine, 17 November 1900; Liverpool Trades Council minutes, 11 September 1894, Liverpool Record Office, 331 TRA.
57 Labour Annual, 1895, p. 146Google Scholar; in preparation for what she saw as a reverent and prudent exercise of “the most important faculty of procreation”.
58 Ibid., p. 145: “mere externals should be used only to promote the higher life”; cf. Clarion, 23 March 1895, and Katharine Conway in The Workman's Times, 22 July 1893, Caroline Martyn in LC, April 1895 (education “should help children to be beautiful men and women”).
59 Annual Report, 1893–94; LP, July 1892; Shafts, 15 December 1893.
60 Liverpool Pulpit, May 1893; Fabian News, March, May and August 1893. It was still a regular feature in 1900, when the Fabian Society had some eighty active members, see LC and Trade Union Reporter, May 1900.
61 “Church Going in Liverpool”, in: Daily Post, 24 October 1891; much of the nonconformist decline in church attendance was attributed to the considerable population drift to the outskirts (i.e. of the middle class); cf. Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, op. cit., p. 130, and Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive Rebels (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, ch. VIII.
62 Rev. Roberts, H. D., Hope Street Church and the Allied Nonconformity (Liverpool, 1909), pp. 455ff.Google Scholar; for Liverpool Methodism, see Sellers, I., “The Methodist Chapels and Preaching Places of Liverpool and District, 1750–1971” (1971)Google Scholar, typescript in Liverpool Record Office.
63 Liverpool Pulpit, February 1892, title page; cf. Sellers, I., “Salute to Pembroke” (1960)Google Scholar, typescript in Liverpool Record Office, p. 18.
64 Pulpit, December 1892; ibid., February 1892.
65 Ibid., May 1893.
66 For example, “I am quite at a loss to understand why the majority who are not rich should be proud of the minority who are […]. We talk of masters and of men; though God makes no man the master of his brother”, Pulpit, May 1893. For the Edwardses and the Labour Church, see LP, July and September 1892, July 1893 and May 1894. Eleanor was appointed pioneer secretary in 1894, cf. Labour Leader, 21 July 1894.
67 Stubbs, C. W., “The Workers' Comrade King”, sermon of 7 May 1893Google Scholar, in: Pulpit, May 1893 (Stubbs's emphasis).
68 Yeo, “A New Life”, loc. cit., p. 19; cf. Pierson, S., “John Trevor and the Labour Church Movement in England, 1891–1900”, in: Church History, XXX (1960), p. 465.Google Scholar
69 Edwards, J., “The Gospel of Labour”, in: Pulpit, 06 1893.Google Scholar
70 R. A. Armstong, “Capital and Christianity”, sermon of 7 May, ibid.
71 John Edwards, Socialism and the Art of Living, op. cit., p. 38.
72 Clarion, 5 October 1895; Sellers, , “Salute to Pembroke”, p. 32.Google Scholar Aked was seen to take a “formidable stand on the broad social platform”; see Liverpool Review, 14 November 1891, and, for a selection of early sermons at Pembroke, , his Changing Creeds and Social Struggles (London, 1893).Google Scholar
73 Sellers, , “Salute to Pembroke”, pp. 18Google Scholar, 25; cf. Rowbotham, S., “The Call to University Extension Teaching, 1873–1900”, in: University of Birmingham Historical Journal, XII (1969–1970), p. 57.Google Scholar Although Sellers describes Aked as “an eager Fabian”, it would seem that his Fabian leanings were more to the London sort than to the anti-“progressive” Liverpool variety. His association with Liberals, notably during the 1893 municipal elections, brought considerable Socialist criticism. Reeves issuing an open warning that “Your present good reputation can only continue on condition that you come out from among them; by the company you keep shall you be known.” See The Liver, 21 October 1893; cf.Sellers, , “Nonconformist Attitudes in Later Nineteenth Century Liverpool”, in: Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, CXIV (1962), p. 221.Google Scholar
74 C. F. Aked, “Gurth the Son of Beowulph”, in Changing Creeds, op. cit., p. 184.
75 Pulpit, September-October 1894, for correspondence between Sexton and “A Liverpool Merchant”.
76 Ibid., March 1893, which also contains the other Socialist contributions.
77 John Edwards to Joseph Edwards, 12 December 1893, Joseph Edwards Papers; The Liver, 6 January 1894, where Joseph suggested the idea in relation to his advice on propagandist activities, including the “permeation of the press”; he was clearly optimistic about the future of Liverpool Fabianism, even jesting that “a branch of the Liverpool Fabian Society has been started in London!”
78 See Labour Annual, 1898, editorial preface; Reformers' Year Book, 1901, p. 76.
79 Land Reformers' Handbook, 1909, p. 32: Labour Annual. 1898, editorial preface. Eleanor's income from lecturing was also used to help defray the expense of producing the Annual, see the notice ibid., 1900, p. 25.
80 By 1897, Joseph had to assume responsibility for £120 on the issues, which led to several appeals for help: see Labour Annual, 1897, p. 7; Porcupine, 9 October and 6 November 1897; LC, February 1900 and May 1901.
81 The Free Labour Press, February 1896, also declared that the Annual “assumes that a Labour Movement can only be associated with Socialism”; ibid., June 1896; for Joseph's conception, see his editorial prefaces to the 1895 and 1896 Annuals, and The Liver, 18 November 1893.
82 LP, August 1894; Fabian News, August 1902. The sentiment of the Annual's motto was reinforced by a quotation from Tennyson: “Ring out the nobler modes of life / With sweeter manners, purer laws”, editorial preface, 1895.
83 D. Marquand, introduction to The Labour Year Book 1895–1948, op. cit., pp. xii–xiii; the editor of the Chronicle was well aware of this tendency, wishing “to get more Trade Unionism in”, see John Edwards to John Shannon (Trades Council), 20 December 1896, Trades Council Correspondence, Liverpool Record Office, 331 TRA.
84 “One Socialist Party“, in: LP, May 1896; other contributors included Keir Hardie and Tom Mann.
85 William Morris to Joseph Edwards, 5 May 1893, in LP, July 1893, cited by Thompson, William Morris, op. cit., p. 610. The J. Edwardsreferred to in Thompson's note was in fact Joseph, who read out Morris's letter at a Labour Church service on Labour Day; cf. “The Knights of Labor”, in: LP, July 1892.
86 Cf. Thompson, , William Morris, pp. 610–11Google Scholar; for criticism, see for example IX. January 1896, and I.L.P. News, June 1901.
87 Cf. Marquand, introduction, loc. cit., pp. xiv–xv; for the catholicity of Socialist appeal, see Yeo, , “A New Life”, p. 30.Google Scholar Marquand's interpretation is also briefly criticised by Rovden Harrison in a review of the Harvester Press reprints, in: Bulletin of the Society for the'Study of Labour History, No 25 (1973), pp. 113–14.Google Scholar
88 “The Knights of Labor”, loc. cit.,; cf. John Edwards, Liberalism and Socialism, op. cit.. p. 8, and Reeves, Sam, “Socialism: what it is and what it is not”, in: The Liver, 6 01 1894.Google Scholar
89 Fabian News. January 1897 and February 1900.
90 “What is Our Present Business as Socialists?”, in: LP, January 1894. For correspondence with Edward Pease, and notes of a trip to London on Annual business, in 1898, see the Joseph Edwards Papers: Joseph also established contacts abroad, sending copies of Liverpool Fabian Tract No 3 to the United States, LC, September 1895.
91 Labour Leader, 13 October 1894; Competition versus Co-operation [Liverpool Fabian Tracts, No 3] (1894); cf. Porcupine, 31 December 1892.
92 See Economics of Freedom, op. cit.. and the Land Reformers' Handbook (of which there appears only to have been the 1909 issue). According to a notice in Justice, 13 January 1906. Joseph was also involved in collecting radical election literature.
93 See for example Liverpool Review, 9 January 1897; White, B. D., A History of the Corporation of Liverpool, 1835–1914 (Liverpool 1951), esp. pp. 101ff.Google Scholar; Salvidge, S., Salvidge of Liverpool, 1890–1928 (London, 1934)Google Scholar, for the Workingmen's Conservative Association, of which Archibald Salvidge was leader; Brady, L. W., “T. P. O'Connor and Liverpool Politics, 1880–1929” (Liverpool University Ph.D. thesis, 1968)Google Scholar. esp. chs IV and V. See also Clarke, P., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (London. 1971), pp. 45ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
94 See LC, July 1896; ibid., November 1894 and October 1900 for co-operation at school-board elections.
95 Cf. Cole, Margaret, The Story of Fabian Socialism (London, 1961), pp. 32.Google Scholar and McBriar. Fabian Socialism, p. 166. In particular, John Edwards continued to lead study groups and to lecture as a Fabian in the period up till 1918.
96 Thompson, William Morris, p. 614, citing Morris's lecture to the London Fabian Society in 1893, on Communism.
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