British Agricultural Labourers want to Participate in the Political Life of their Country

Author(s) Frederick Engels
Written 5 June 1877


Written on June 5, 1877
First published in La Plebe, No. 18, June 8, 1877
Printed according to the newspaper
Translated from the Italian
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 24
Collection(s): La Plebe (newspaper)

This and the following articles (see this volume, pp. 181-82, 203-05) were printed unsigned in La Plebe (see also Note 195).

London, June 5

At a meeting of delegates of the agricultural associations which took place a few days ago at Exeter Hall, Joseph Arch spoke out forcefully against the war[1] and received rapturous applause. The leader of the farm labourers' party revealed himself to be an uninhibited advocate of peace, especially because the sacrifices which war entails weigh increasingly heavily on the workers more than on the other social classes. The agricultural labourers in Britain do not yet participate officially in the political life of their country, but these impressive demonstrations of opposition to war cannot help having a certain influence also on those classes upon which the politics of the nation depends. The agricultural labourers are beginning to feel the need of playing a direct part in this political life themselves, and therefore at their meeting at Exeter Hall they also dealt in particular with the extension of franchise.[2] They still constitute a caste of poor pariahs, not only in economic terms but politically too. They therefore hammer at the door of Parliament and ask to go in: they no longer want to be what they have been up till now. One can easily imagine that their claims are not viewed favourably by all those—and they are many, particularly among the clergy—who consider the subjection of the agricultural labourers to be the basis of the whole British politico-economic system. On the other hand, the members of the bourgeois parliamentary opposition are coming forward to take control of this farm labourers' movement themselves and use it to destroy their political opponents currently in government. At the head of this bourgeois opposition stands Mr. Bright, who also spoke at the Exeter Hall meeting and, deftly leaving out the big economic-social issue, made a resounding political accusation against the men who are at present in power. This is understandable: the economic-social terrain is a highly arduous and tricky one for the bourgeoisie. In fact the aristocracy in Britain has always shown itself to be far less inhibited on this terrain because its social position does not force it to speculate, as the bourgeoisie does, on everything and everyone in order to get rich. The workers understand this state of affairs perfectly and so when they want to wrest concessions they turn more hopefully to the aristocracy than to the bourgeoisie, as they have demonstrated in a recent appeal to Lord Beaconsfield.[3] So long as this situation continues, so long as the workers can play see-saw with some small profit between bourgeoisie and aristocracy, Britain will certainly not experience violent socialist agitations such as occur in other countries, where the ruling classes simply constitute, in relation to the workers, a great, reactionary, compact and inexorable mass. But once the working classes are no longer able to draw any profit from the rival competition between the interests of the landed aristocracy and the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, because that competition will no longer exist, then we shall have in Britain too the start of the real revolutionary period. Up till now the aristocracy mollified the working masses with philanthropic concessions; now the bourgeoisie is trying its hand by lending support to the workers' political tendencies and taking possession of them in order to direct them. We are on the brink of the period of universal suffrage: and on this terrain the bourgeoisie is hastening to display all its skills and wiles, in other words to make political concessions in order to safeguard its own economic interests and leave the aristocracy behind. Nevertheless, this whole mechanism of relations between the three social elements— proletarians, bourgeoisie and aristocrats—has had the effect on the proletarians of making them feel no longer like children or sentimentalists but of realising—as a speaker at Exeter Hall aptly put it—that their relations with the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy can only be business relations.

The social movement in Britain—as you can see—is slow, it is evolutionist, not revolutionary, but it is nonetheless a movement forwards.

  1. ↑ The meeting chaired by John Bright was held on May 16, 1877 at Exeter Hall in London. Of the 2,594 participants, 1,218 were members of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union, set up in May 1872, whose membership had reached 86,000 by 1874. Joseph Arch, the Union's leading activist, spoke on the attitude of English agricultural labourers to the Russo-Turkish war. He said that they "were determined their blood should not be spilt and their treasure expended in the support of Turkey ... there was not a class of her Majesty's subjects in the British realm that suffered more from the Crimean war than did the farm labourers. They had felt the pinch of hunger and want for twenty years in consequence of it" (quoted from "The County Franchise", The Daily News, No. 9694, May 17, 1877).
  2. ↑ The following two resolutions were passed by the meeting of May 16, 1877 at Exeter Hall: "That in the opinion of this Conference it would be desirable to adopt an uniform Parliamentary franchise for borough and county constituencies; ... That it would be desirable so to redistribute political power as to obtain a more complete représentation of the opinion of the electoral body" (quoted from "The County Franchise", The Daily News, No. 9694, May 17, 1877).
  3. ↑ Probably a reference to the appeal to Prime Minister Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, signed by representatives of the workers from England, Scotland and Ireland on March 6, 1877 (see "The Premier and Factory Operatives", The Times, No. 28883, March 7, 1877).