The
Clarion, a socialist weekly, was
established by Robert Blatchford, a
Manchester journalist, in 1890. The
paper first appeared in Manchester on 2nd December, 1891. Blatchford
announced that the newspaper would follow a "policy of humanity;
a policy not of party, sect or creed; but of justice, of reason and
mercy." The first edition sold 40,000 and after a few months
settled down to about 30,000 copies a week.
In 1893 the Clarion began serializing
Blatchford's book Merrie England.
When it was eventually published as a book it sold 750,000 copies.
In 1895 began to use the work of the illustrator Walter
Crane.
The Clarion newspaper also became involved in a wide-range
of different activities including missionary vans, cycling clubs,
choirs, handicraft guilds and holiday camps. The newspaper also sponsored
Cinderella Clubs that entertain children from the slums. Robert
Blatchford boasted that he would "convert England to Socialism
in seven years". However, it soon became clear that Blatchford
had overestimated the power of the Clarion
and when he was asked about this a few years later, he replied that
"the British working classes are not fit for Socialism yet".
Blatchford upset a lot of the Clarion
readers with his enthusiastic support for the Boer
War and opposition to organisations such as the NUWSS
and the WSPU that were demanding the vote
for women.
Sales fell but revived after the 1906 General
Election, when 29 Labour Party MPs were
elected. Blatchford increased the size of the newspaper and began
to employ talented socialist writers such as George
Bernard Shaw. By 1907 sales of the Clarion
had reached 74,000.
After the First World War Blatchford moved
to the right and became a passionate advocate of the British Empire.
In the 1924 General Election he supported
the Conservative Party and declared
that Stanley Baldwin was Britain's finest
politician. The Clarion ceased
publication in 1931.
The Clarion (8th April, 1893)
(1)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography
(1934)
In
the 1890s Robert Blatchford was attracting recruits to the movement
by his vigorous socialist writings. He established The Clarion,
a weekly socialist and literary journal, and written Merrie England,
a popular textbook on socialism written in the simple and vigorous
English of which he was such a master. This book, which extended to
two hundred pages, was published in a penny edition, which had a sale
of a million copies. No man did more than he to make socialism understood
by the ordinary working man. He based his appeal on the principles
of human justice. He preached socialism as a system of industrial
co-operation for the common good. His arguments and illustrations
were drawn from facts and experiences within the knowledge of the
common people.
(2)
Tom
Hopkinson,
Of
This Our Time (1982)
In the 1890s, before cars
came to dominate roads built for the brief heyday of the stage coach,
there had been a short alliance between two oddly assorted partners
- socialism and the bicycle. Robert Blatchford, a journalist who had
spent some years as a private soldier, founded The Clarion in 1891
as a weekly paper on a capital of £400. Its blend of biblical
socialism with love of the countryside caught the mood of the time
and the magazine prospered. Earnest young tradesmen and craftsmen
took to their cycles at weekends to explore the 'merrie England' of
which Blatchford wrote in a book that would ultimately sell two million
copies, and discussed plans for a socialist Britain in evening classes
and at Workers' Educational Societies during the week. The Clarion
was their bible, and a network of Clarion cycling clubs carried its
message round the country and pushed its circulation up to 60,000.
By 1934, however, most
of the clubs had gone the way of the stage coach, and The Clarion's
trumpet call had sunk to a feeble quaver. With circulation at 15,000
and next to no advertising, it appeared doomed to rapid extinction.
But then Dunbar had an idea. If encyclopedias and sets of Dickens
had induced two million homes to buy the Daily Herald six times a
week, surely similar offers could entice a quarter of that number,
the politically conscious,
to pay twopence a week for a 'poor man's New Statesman'. He managed
to convince his colleagues and the project went ahead.
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