SMOKY CRUSADE by R M Fox

Chapter 4

REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS

Link to Chapter3 

IN the days before the War - the romantic period of revolutionary oratory - Socialist speakers wore soft felt hats and red ties. Anderson conformed to this custom. He had, too, a well-shaped head, a good broad forehead crowned with a mass of curly hair and a slight cast in one of his eyes which gave them a fine rolling frenzy on the platform. He had energy, audacity and tireless­ness in attack. He would leap on to the platform and challenge all corners. And he was ready to leap on to his opponent's platform, too. Whether he loved Socialism or his own voice best perhaps he himself could not have told us, but if estab­lished society could have fallen before oratory, I am sure Anderson would have brought it down. He could talk all day - in fact, he did spend most of his Sundays talking - and remain fresh, ener­getic and interesting. On Sunday morning he held his meeting at West Green Corner. In the afternoon, snatching a scrappy meal, he went on to Finsbury Park. Here he occupied a disused bandstand around which the people flocked to listen. After buying cakes and tea at the Park restaurant, he took the tram back to West Green Corner and spellbound an audience until mid­night, or even later, when a small dazed group would stumble away convinced that they had assisted in striking thundering blows at the edifice of Capitalism. During his oratory he refreshed himself with long drinks from a lemonade bottle, its gassy sharpness making him hoarse or thin­ning his voice to a husky whisper, but he would talk on until his throat eased again.
     I could not resist these avalanches of oratory, especially as Anderson gave expression to all those feelings of resentment and bitterness which I could not put into words. My only regret was that I had to be up so

SMOKY CRUSADE by R M Fox

Chapter 3

THE HIGH CROSS

Link to chapter 2

From the workshop gate I could see, at the corner of the street, a big stone cross - the High Cross, a relic of the days of chivalry. I thought it marked a stage of the journey taken by the funeral procession of Queen Eleanor in 1290. The story of how she had sucked the poison from a dagger wound inflicted by a Moor upon her husband, King Edward, when he was crusading in the Holy Land was one of the romances of my school­days. Afterwards I learned that this was not one of those famous crosses, yet it held for me the glory and thrill of romantic history.
    Though not so fine as Charing Cross or Waltham Cross it still raised itself to the sky with a proud gesture as if the men who made it said, " We are not so little after all! " My eyes rested gratefully on the delicate stone traceries of the High Cross in those early misty mornings when I hurried by it to work. Almost opposite the High Cross above a shop - which may have been a saddler's - was the skeleton of a horse, propped up with iron supports against the sky. The wind whistled through its unprotected ribs and made play around its knobbly knees. It looked in­credibly mournful and desolate. As a decoration I preferred the medieval cross with its suggestion of beauty and dignity, but as an introduction to an age of realism perhaps the bony skeleton was more fitting. Alas! the age of realism proved too much for its symbol, for the bony skeleton has long since vanished while the High Cross still celebrates the triumph of human hands and minds.
    

SMOKY CRUSADE by R M Fox

 Chapter 2

 I FACE THE WORLD

Link to chapter 1

I soon slipped into the life of the workshop, extracting interest and amusement, as well as enduring boredom. Up in the woodwork shop we boiled cans of tea at breakfast time on the gas jet used for heating glue, and sometimes we fried sausages. Reid, a thick-set, clumsy young man, who was the workshop humorist, gained general applause one morning by cleaning the greasy frying-pan on his mop of hair. Another jest of his was to pour out grey paint from a bucket on to the newly made wooden shutters, then-instead of a paintbrush - he seized a broom and painted vigorously.
     I wore a leather apron now - black and shiny with oil - and with my sleeves rolled up, I ran every morning to the corner shop for "a penny tin of skim milk" for our workshop breakfast. The grocer asked me one morning if it had to be "skim," but I saw no humour in this. About five-thirty a.m., on my way to work, I would buy hot cheese cakes fresh from the oven for a half­penny at a coffee stall. Another halfpenny would buy a cup of hot tea. Thus fortified, the sleepy desolation of my morning journey gave way to a sense of well-being.

SMOKY CRUSADE - R M Fox

Published in 1937, Smoky Crusade by R M Fox is the autobiography of a socialist, anti-imperialist and supporter of the the Irish national revolution whose teenage years were spent in Tottenham. The Radical History Network is republishing those chapters of his autobiography that cover his early years and also his fight against the First World War.

CHAPTER I


THE FIRST DAY

On my fourteenth birthday I left a London elementary school and was flung into industrial life, or, to be exact, I left on Friday and was fourteen on Monday. There was nothing unusual about this, most of the boys at school followed that custom. I do not know what became of any after the school door closed on them and me, except one, whom I met some years later in prison. He recalled himself to my memory. I was then working in the prison kitchen.
    "I was at school with you - poke us a bit of pudden through the window!" he muttered urgently from outside. The others called him my college chum.
    When I left the red-brick building called the Lancastrian School, whose bell at the end of the street had so often hastened my morning toilet, I was anxious to find work and make my way in the world. I was very vague about how to do this. For although I took a vivid and romantic interest in the world around me I had no definite, practical aim. In any case I had to find a job whatever was open. It was not for me to choose.
I went to see an estate agent who advertised for a boy in his office. He was a most gentlemanly man, with

Tottenham 100 years ago; R M Fox's autobiography

Wednesday   13 October   at 8 pm

Meetings venue; The Postmen's Office; at the North London Community House, 22 Moorefield Road, London, N17 (The old Post Office). The venue is just around the corner from Bruce Grove British Rail Station, where Bruce Grove meets the High Road in Tottenham. Wheelchair accessible. Any High Road bus is OK 

Richard Michael Fox - more commonly known as R M Fox - was brought up in Tottenham and went on to become an 'Influential Irish Historian'.  We shall be examining his autobiography 'Smokey Crusade'. R M Fox lived in Bruce Castle Road, attended the Lancastrian primary school on the Roundway, N17, and worked in several local  factories, mainly in the Tottenham Marshes area; and they were 'marshes' in those days. His life can be divided into sections
* Working in Tottenham area factories up to 1912;
* Working around  London and active in the socialist and anti-war movement pre-WW1;
* Anti-war work after 1914, street corner meetings, court martial and prison, released 1919;
* Trade union student at Ruskin College, Oxford, visits to Russia, Germany and Ireland, as a journalist, the  move to Ireland, marriage, and a career as writer and academic.

We are concerned with his first 30 years and can look at three main themes in his book:
1.    Industrial work. He slaved away  for some years in various small plants then some big, organised ones. The original JAP motor cycle engine which eventually moved to Northumberland Park Road, then a sweat-shop on the marshes  and lastly in a  massive plant just over the border into Walthamstow. He worked as a machine operator, often on shifts and subject to the cut backs and the sack. This was the age of Taylorism as described in the mis-titled 'Sabotage', (see Brown below in further reading).  Fox read as he could and later wrote a book on 'Factory Echoes'.  Outside work he was become active socialist and he was a keen union member.  Later, he also lived and worked for a period in Woolwich.