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G.D.H. Cole and William Cobbett

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Clare Griffiths
Clare Griffiths
Affiliation:
Wadham College, Oxford, UK.
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Extract

William Cobbett was, during his own lifetime, a highly controversial figure who often found it necessary to defend himself against supposed misrepresentation. His historical persona remains no less controversial. The complexities of Cobbett's career and character have supported a variety of interpretations, and many writers this century have felt the need to define ‘the real Cobbett’. Modern misrepresentations have arisen less from false stories invented to damn him than from the misleading emphases employed to praise him, with both Left and Right seeking in their different ways to appropriate what they see as his legacy. For conservatives, he has been an essentially timeless figure, standing for Old England and all that may have made such a place great. Writers on the Left have treated him rather as a figure of the past, rationalised to fit into the rise of working-class consciousness and organisation, and divested of some aspects unseemly in an early representative of ‘the cause’. Cobbett has been adopted as an important figure for the Left, but readings based on the assumptions about working-class radicalism held by the modern British Labour movement have often found it necessary to exclude aspects of his writings as inconsistent, or at least idiosyncratic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 91 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

Notes

1. Dyck, Ian, William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture (Cambridge, 1992), p. 4.Google Scholar See also his article ‘William Cobbett and the Rural Radical Platform’, Social History, 18, 2, May 1993, 185–204.

2. Dyck, , William Cobbett, p. 2.Google Scholar

3. Williams, Raymond, ‘The Man who Shifted Against the Tide’ (review of George Spater, William Cobbett: The Poor Man's Friend), New Society, LX, 1015, 29 04 1982, 188–9.Google Scholar

4. Wiener, Martin, ‘The Changing Image of William Cobbett’, Journal of British Studies, XIII, 2, 05 1974, 149.Google Scholar

5. , J. L. and Hammond, Barbara, preface to The Village Labourer 1760–1832: A Study of the Government of England Before the Reform Bill (London, 1913 edn.), p. ix.Google Scholar

6. Cobbett, William, Cottage Economy (1821; London, 1926 edn.), p. 3.Google Scholar

7. Other Labour figures were also associated with editions of Cobbett's works: Clynes, J.R. wrote a preface for Cobbett's Easy Grammar in 1923Google Scholar, and Snowden, Philip provided a preface for the edition of Advice to Young Men published in 1926Google Scholar by Davies, Peter, the firm which was later to publish the Coles' edition of Rural Rides.Google Scholar

8. XXII and XXIII in Cole, G.D.H., The Crooked World (London, 1933), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

9. Cole, G.D.H., The Life of William Cobbett (London, 1924), p. v.Google Scholar In fact, Cole cut some of Green's most effusive passages on the countryside, and was at pains to indicate quite clearly where he had left the text entirely as Green had written it (see annotated typescript, Nuffield College, Oxford (hereafter Nuffield), Cole papers, GDHC/A2/16. I am very grateful to Richard Temple for his help while I was working on the Cole papers).

10. Cole, Margaret, The Life of G.D.H. Cole (London, 1971), p. 130.Google Scholar

11. Nuffield, , Cole papers, GDHC/A1/3, Talk to the Cobbett Club, Oxford, 28th 02 1934.Google Scholar The text also appeared in ed. Brown, A. Barratt, Great Democrats (London, 1934)Google Scholar, and Cole, G.D.H., Persons and Periods (London, 1938).Google Scholar

12. Cole, Margaret, G.D.H. Cole, p. 35.Google Scholar

13. ibid., p. 264.

14. Gaitskell, Hugh, ‘At Oxford in the Twenties’, in Briggs, Asa and Saville, John (eds.), Essays in Labour History, in Memory of G.D.H. Cole (London, 1967), p. 12.Google Scholar

15. Rural History Centre, Reading (afterwards, R.H.C.), Acc. No. 61/47.

16. R.H.C., Acc. No. 61/47, Madden, Michael to Editor of Land Worker, 30th 05 1961.Google Scholar

17. Cole, G.D.H., ‘Hodge and his Masters’, New Statesman and Nation, XXXVII, 946, 23rd 04 1949, p. 414.Google Scholar

18. R.H.C., Acc. No. 61/47, Cole, H.J.D. in letter to Jewell, A., Keeper at Museum of English Rural Life, 31st 05 1961.Google Scholar

19. Nuffield, Small Collections, Letters from Madden, Michael to Cole, , 29th 04 5th 05 9th 05 16th 05 and 29th 05 1949.Google Scholar Michael Madden was secretary to the Oxfordshire branch of the National Union of Agricultural Workers.

20. R.H.C., Acc. No. 61/47, Madden, Michael to Editor of Land Worker, 30th 05 1961.Google Scholar

21. See Horn, P.L.R., ‘The Farm Workers, the Dockers and Oxford University’, Oxoniensia, XXXII, 1967, 60–70Google Scholar, and Samuel, H. L., Memoirs (London, 1945), pp. 14–17.Google Scholar At a later date, students from Ruskin College helped N.U.A.W. organisation in Berkshire (Land Worker, June 1922, p. 10). Cole, however, expressed the opinion that any method of propaganda in the villages around Oxford, or indeed in the town itself, was almost impossible (‘Oxford Socialism from Within’, The Socialist Review, vi, 34, December 1910). Local Fabian Societies gave support during the 1913–1914 strike at the Bliss Mill in Chipping Norton (Hodgkins, J.R., Over the Hills to Glory (London, 1978), ch. 11Google Scholar), and it may be this connection to which Madden was referring, though Cole was at that time a Fellow of Magdalen, rather than an undergraduate. Cole was certainly involved in collecting funds for this dispute, and wrote a pamphlet about the strike jointly with Clark, G.N. of All Souls in 1914.Google Scholar

22. Thomas Bayliss, local Methodist preacher, and secretary of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union in Oxfordshire 1872–9.

23. Nuffield, Small Collections, Bayliss, W.J.S. to Hammond, J.L., 20th 01 1939Google Scholar, and Bayliss, W.J.S. to Cole, , 25th 01 1939.Google Scholar

24. The Bayliss' manuscript catalogue of the collection records that the banner was used at demonstrations and carried in the great London procession in support of the borough franchise in May 1876. It also describes a colourful incident during an election in Oxford, when the banner was hung across Hythe Bridge Street from the home of the union secretary. The contest was won by the Liberal, Sir William Harcourt, and a group of Tories captured the banner from the top of a horse bus, though it was later returned (Nuffield, Small Collections).

25. The N.U.A.W.'s journal Land Worker, carried an article by him in July 1919 (p. 2) on the connection between wage regulation and worker organisation, and he addressed the union's conference of executive and organisers in April 1920, speaking on economics (Land Worker, May 1920, p. 3). In 1923, he wrote a piece in New Leader, calling for the Labour Movement to ‘Stand Behind the Rural Workers’, 13th April 1923, p. 6.

26. Guild Socialism Re-stated (London, 1920), pp. 161–2. The Left's limited experience in the countryside contributed to an awkwardness and lack of confidence in tackling rural issues: ‘Socialists applying themselves to rural problems have usually breathed in the manner of fish out of water’.

27. Cole, Margaret, G.D.H. Cole, p. 35.Google Scholar

28. Cole, G.D.H., British Labour Movement – Retrospect and Prospect, Ralph Fox Memorial Lecture, 04 1951, Fabian Special Tract no. 8, p. 4.Google Scholar

29. Not for Cole the romantic mountainous landscape: he approved of hills only if they were ‘green all the way to the top’ (Cole, Margaret, G.D.H. Cole, p. 35Google Scholar). He quoted on several occasions Morris' passage in praise of England, where Morris described a landscape of ‘little rivers, little plains swelling, speedily changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains’ (eg. lecture on ‘William Morris and the Modern World’ at University College, Hull, 1934, published in Cole, G.D.H., Persons and Periods (London, 1938), pp. 284–306).Google Scholar On the identification of the landscape of southern England as the rural idyll, see Howkins, Alun, ‘The Discovery of Rural England’Google Scholar, in Colls, Robert and Dodds, Philip, Englishness: Culture and Politics 1880–1920 (London, 1986), pp. 62–4.Google Scholar

30. Introduction to the Coles', edition of Rural Rides (London, 1930), vol. I, xiii.Google Scholar See also the discussion of Cobbett as a writer in Cole, G.D.H., Politics and Literature, Hogarth Lectures no. 11 (London, 1929), p. 118.Google Scholar

31. Cole, G.D.H., William Cobbett, Fabian Tract 215 (Fabian Society: London, 06 1925), p. 3.Google Scholar In a notice for Cole's, Life of Cobbett, The Dundee AdvertiserGoogle Scholar observed, ‘This biography is, in part, a prose poem on England.’

32. Cole, G.D.H., ‘William Cobbett’, Persons and Periods, p. 143.Google Scholar

33. Wright, A.W., G.D.H. Cole and Socialist Democracy (Oxford, 1979), p. 146Google Scholar; Owen, Gail L., ‘G.D.H. Cole's Historical Writings’, International Review of Social History, xi (1966), 180.Google Scholar

34. Cole, , Cobbett, p. 19.Google Scholar

35. Cole, , Life, p. 268.Google Scholar Despite a recognition that they shared a degree of common ground, it should not be assumed that Cole regarded Carlyle in the same positive light that he did Cobbett: he was very critical of Carlyle elsewhere, and described him as ‘crying for the moon’ (Cole, G.D.H., Politics and Literature (London, 1929), p. 144).Google Scholar The distinction between Cobbett and Ruskin was also highlighted by G.K. Chesterton, who suggested that Cobbett, unlike Ruskin, combined ruralism with realism (Preface to Cobbett, William, Cottage Economy (Peter Davies: London, 1926 edn.), p. viii.).Google Scholar

36. Nuffield, GDHC/A1/3, ‘William Cobbett – A Political Study’, typescript (n.d.).

37. Cole, , Cobbett, p. 5.Google Scholar

38. Cole, , Life, p. 13.Google Scholar

39. Dennis, Norman and Halsey, A.H., English Ethical Socialism: Thomas More to R.H. Tawney (Oxford, 1988), p. 42.Google Scholar

40. Cole, , Cobbett, p. 16.Google Scholar

41. Cole, , Life, p. 12.Google Scholar

42. Cole, , Cobbett, p. 16.Google Scholar

43. Cole, , Life, p. 11.Google Scholar In his use of the word ‘peasant’, Cole was somewhat out of sympathy with Cobbett, who disliked the word, as implying a ‘degraded caste of persons’ (cited Dyck, , William Cobbett, p. 109).Google Scholar

44. Cole, , Life, p. 434.Google Scholar

45. ibid., p. 268.

46. Nuffield, GDHC/A2/15.

47. Cole, , Life, p. 260.Google Scholar

48. ibid., p. 269.

49. Especially J.L. and Hammond, Barbara, The Village Labourer 1760–1832 (London, 1911).Google Scholar It should be noted that an appreciation of Cobbett's significance informed this interpretation as well as arising from it, see Beckett, J.V., ‘The Disappearance of the Cottager and the Squatter from the English Countryside: The Hammonds Revisited’, in (eds.) Holderness, B. A. and Turner, Michael, Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700–1920. Essays for Gordon Mingay (London, 1991), pp. 50–1.Google Scholar The idea of writing The Village Labourer developed from work the Hammonds were doing for a projected life of Cobbett (Clarke, Peter, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978), 158).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. G.N. Clark and Cole, G.D.H., The Strike at Chipping Norton ([Oxford], 1914).Google Scholar

51. A copy of Rural Rides in the library at Nuffield College is inscribed with Cole's name and the date 1912, so he was aware of Cobbett's work by then – though of course owning a book and reading it do not always go together.

52. R.H.C., Papers of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, N.U.A.W/DIII/2; Gooch in address to Farmers' Club, 8th December 1941, Journal of the Farmers' Club (December 1941), 82.

53. e.g. Cole, G.D.H., Chartist Portraits (London, 1941), pp. 135 and 237.Google Scholar

54. Nuffield, GDHC/A1/3, ‘William Cobbett – a Political Study’, GDHC/A1/3. In recent years historians have given more attention to understanding the phenomenon of rural radicalism in its own right, see Reed, Mick and Wells, Roger (eds.), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700–1880 (London, 1990).Google Scholar

55. , G.D.H. and Cole, Margaret (eds.), Rural Rides (London, 1930), vol. I, p. xxxi.Google Scholar William Stafford has also concluded that Cobbett, was ‘disabled by his nostalgic stance’ (Socialism, Radicalism and Nostalgia: Social Criticism in Britain, 1775–1830 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 269).Google Scholar

56. Cole, , Life, p. 268.Google Scholar

57. Cole, , Politics and Literature, p. 119.Google Scholar J.L. Hammond made a similar observation in his introduction to Cobbett, William, The Last Hundred Days of English Freedom (London, 1921)Google Scholar: ‘He was not by nature a Radical, for by nature he hated everything that was new’ (p. 2). Cobbett himself, of course, stressed that he was a Radical by definition: ‘In Politics as well as in Husbandry, I am for going to the root, and therefore am for a radical reform.’ (Political Register, XLII, quoted in , G.D.H. and Cole, Margaret (eds.), The Opinions of William Cobbett (London, 1944), p. 234.)Google Scholar

58. Cole, , Life, p. 11Google Scholar – my italics.

59. Cole, , Cobbett, p. 16.Google Scholar

60. Cobbett, , Rural Rides, vol. I, p. xxxi.Google Scholar

61. Cole, , Life, p. 432Google Scholar; Carpenter, L.P., G.D.H. Cole: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge, 1973), p. 225Google Scholar; Cole, G.D.H., ‘The Importance of History to the Workers’, New Standards, 03 1924, 135.Google Scholar

62. Young, James D., ‘Images of Rural ‘idiocy’ and Labour Movements’, Society for the Study of Labour History, Bulletin, 24, Spring 1972, 36–7.Google Scholar

63. e.g. Mabel Atkinson's review of The World of Labour, Fabian News, XXV, 4, March 1914, 31.

64. , G.D.H. and Cole, Margaret (eds.), Opinions of William Cobbett (London, 1944), p. 19.Google Scholar

65. Cole, G.D.H. and Postgate, Raymond, The Common People (London, 1961), p. 686.Google Scholar

66. Cole, G.D.H., ‘William Cobbett’, Persons and Periods (London, 1938), p. 143.Google Scholar He continued: ‘For the heart of our urbanised England is still in the country.’

67. Cole, , Life, p. 434.Google Scholar

68. , G.D.H. and Cole, Margaret, Opinions of William Cobbett, p. 25.Google Scholar