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\nMike Sanders<\/strong> writes about Shelley ‘the Chartist poet’ as a catalyst for working class creativity, how he envisioned a communist society, and how the privileged classes refused to hear the revolutionary meanings of his poems.<\/em><\/p>\n One of the unexpected features of the recent General Election campaign was the \u2018co-opting\u2019 of a long-dead Romantic poet as a speech-writer by Team Corbyn. Many of Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s speeches ended with the recitation of the closing lines from Shelley\u2019s \u2018The Mask of Anarchy\u2019:<\/p>\n Rise like lions after slumber<\/em> These lines written almost two hundred years ago in response to the \u2018Peterloo Massacre\u2019 have long been part of the Left\u2019s cultural memory \u2013 anthologised, repeated and recycled for the best part of two centuries. I first encountered them as a teenage punk rocker in 1980 on the back cover of the Jam\u2019s Sound Affects<\/strong> album and the discovery prompted me to buy a selection of Shelley\u2019s poetry from a local second-hand bookshop. In that dog-eared volume, I discovered a poet who could give better shape and expression to some of my own rather more inchoate ideas about the society I lived in and my hopes for a better future.<\/p>\n Subsequently, I came to understand that previous generations of workers had also found in Shelley\u2019s words, \u2018resources for their own journey of hope\u2019 (to adapt Raymond Williams\u2019 wonderful phrase). Working-class appreciation and recognition of Shelley began relatively early. Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England observes; <\/p>\n Shelley, the genius, the prophet, Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire upon our existing society, find most of their readers in the proletariat; the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, expurgated in accordance with the hypocritical morality of today.<\/em><\/p>\n Shelley\u2019s long poem Queen Mab was often described as \u201cthe Chartist\u2019s Bible”. <\/em>Indeed, there is a sense in which Shelley is a Chartist poet insofar as many of his more overtly political poems, such as \u2018Song to the Men of England\u2019, were first published in 1839. <\/p>\n The poetry column of the Northern Star, the leading Chartist newspaper, attests to Shelley\u2019s importance as a catalyst for working-class creativity. In particular, Shelley\u2019s \u2018Song to the Men of England\u2019 is reworked a number of times by various Chartist poets. I would like to suggest that this poem, which identifies the inverse relationship between production and consumption as moral obscenity as well as economic injustice, is even more important than \u2018The Mask of Anarchy\u2019. The poem begins with a series of questions intended to highlight the paradoxical way in which the economy distributes economic rewards:<\/p>\n Men of England, wherefore plough<\/em> Wherefore feed and clothe and save <\/em> Replace \u201clords\u201d, \u201ctyrants\u201d and \u201cdrones\u201d with \u201cbankers\u201d and \u201cbosses\u201d and you have a concise summary of our current economic woes. But Shelley does not rest there, he continues by observing that the workers also produce the means of their own political oppression: <\/em><\/p>\n Wherefore, Bees of England, forge <\/em> Next, Shelley asks his readers if they enjoy the key features of a genuinely human life?<\/p>\n Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, <\/em> Thus far, the poem consists of a series of questions designed both to defamiliarise and thereby make visible the structural features of the economic order. These questions also invite the reader to think. However, in the second half of the poem statements predominate, as Shelley offers two very different views of the future. The first of which is the maintaining of the current economic and political order:<\/p>\n The seed ye sow, another reaps; <\/em> The second envisages a future in which there is a direct correlation between production and consumption.<\/p>\n Sow seed\u2014but let no tyrant reap: <\/em> In the poem\u2019s penultimate verse, Shelley makes clear that social change will require resistance and courage on the part of the oppressed. The \u201cdrones\u201d will indeed shed, if not drink, blood to preserve their privileges if necessary:<\/p>\n Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells\u2014 <\/em> In the final stanza, Shelley makes clear that the choice is one between life and death.<\/p>\n With plough and spade and hoe and loom <\/em> The clarity with which Shelley both identifies the structures of exploitation and oppression, and identifies two very different visions of England\u2019s future in this poem goes some way to explaining the different assessments of his work in the Nineteenth Century (and beyond). The privileged classes simply refused to hear this Shelley, preferring to construct him as a na\u00efve dreamer \u2013 \u201cA beautiful and ineffectual angel\u201d to quote Matthew Arnold.<\/p>\n The Chartists and their successors heard a different Shelley. They heard a Shelley who was in no doubt as to either the necessity or the difficulty of securing political and economic change. The \u201cRise like lions\u201d passage is inspiring, but if we read it in isolation there is a danger of seeing it as a promise of easy victory. For Shelley, the murdered victims at Peterloo were sufficient testament that there would be no easy victory. And the same is surely true for us today.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mike Sanders writes about Shelley ‘the Chartist poet’ as a catalyst for working class creativity, how he envisioned a communist society, and how the privileged classes refused…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":377,"featured_media":12258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[1713,2018,2017],"class_list":["post-12259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-jeremy-corbyn","tag-peterloo","tag-shelley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In unvanquishable number,<\/em>
Shake your chains to earth like dew<\/em>
Which in sleep had fallen on you \u2013<\/em>
Ye are many, they are few.<\/em><\/p>\n
For the lords who lay ye low? <\/em>
Wherefore weave with toil and care<\/em>
The rich robes your tyrants wear?<\/em><\/p>\n
From the cradle to the grave <\/em>
Those ungrateful drones who would <\/em>
Drain your sweat\u2014nay, drink your blood?<\/em><\/p>\n
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, <\/em>
That these stingless drones may spoil <\/em>
The forced produce of your toil?<\/em><\/p>\n
Shelter, food, love\u2019s gentle balm? <\/em>
Or what is it ye buy so dear <\/em>
With your pain and with your fear?<\/em><\/p>\n
The wealth ye find, another keeps; <\/em>
The robes ye weave, another wears; <\/em>
The arms ye forge, another bears.<\/em><\/p>\n
Find wealth\u2014let no imposter heap: <\/em>
Weave robes\u2014let not the idle wear: <\/em>
Forge arms\u2014in your defence to bear.<\/em><\/p>\n
In hall ye deck another dwells. <\/em>
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see <\/em>
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.<\/em><\/p>\n
Trace your grave and build your tomb <\/em>
And weave your winding-sheet\u2014till fair <\/em>
England be your Sepulchre.<\/em><\/p>\n