REARRANGED - The life and ideas of Thomas Spence

Meeting - Wed 13 May 2009 at Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent, N22

Please note this is the rearranged meeting from April. Please look at the earlier blog for some of the background surrounding Thomas Spence.

Web pages with material on the life and ideas of Thomas Spence include:

The Political Works of Thomas Spence

The Thomas Spence Society

Film showing - WINSTANLEY

Haringey Independent Cinema are showing Winstanley

THURSDAY APRIL 23rd

HARINGEY INDEPENDENT CINEMA PRESENTS...

Winstanley.

1975, UK, 95mins. Directors: Andrew Mollo, Kevin Brownlow.

YOU POOR TAKE COURAGE,
YOU RICH TAKE CARE.
THIS EARTH WAS MADE
A COMMON TREASURY,
FOR EVERYONE TO SHARE.

The World Turned Upside Down, Leon Rosselson.

Digger, any of a group of agrarian communists who flourished in England in 1649-50 and were inspired by the ideas and writings of Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard. In April 1649 a large group of poor but determined men assembled at St. George's Hill, Surrey, and began to cultivate the common land. These Diggers held that the English Civil Wars had been fought against the king and the great landowners; now that Charles I had been executed, land should be made available for the very poor to cultivate. The numbers of the Diggers more than doubled on various sites during 1649 but their activities alarmed Cromwell's government and roused the hostility of local landowners, who were rival claimants to the common lands.


'Winstanley' is a detailed and dedicated depiction of political idealism and of the Diggers' struggle to establish a proto-communist collective. Brownlow presents all the grim realities of life in post Civil War Britain with fanatical attention to detail and everything from footwear to livestock were thoroughly researched. Undoubtedly this is one of the most authentic recreations of the Civil War era ever filmed and the (ongoing) clash between radicalism and the establishment. Shot in stark black and white, this is a brave, grave and deeply rewarding film that combines historical accuracy with the story of a committed activist.

THURSDAY APRIL 23rd
WEST GREEN LEARNING CENTRE
WEST GREEN ROAD
LONDON N15 3RB

DOORS OPEN: 7pm FILM STARTS 7.15pm ADMISSION: £3.00 WAGED / £2.00 LOW/UNWAGED

If you would like to know more about Winstanley and the Diggers the link below is a lecture on Winstanley by the historian of the Civil Wars of the 17thC Christopher Hill
http://www.diggers.org/diggers/gerard_winstanley.htm

Thomas Spence meeting to be rearranged

Unfortunately the meeting on Thomas Spence had to be cancelled. It will, however, be rearranged for a future date

The Ideas and Life of Thomas Spence

8pm on Wednesday 8 April Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent N22

"What is the national debt?
Money borrowed, by the rich men of the nation, from the rich men of the nation, and placed to the nation's account.

What is done with the money thus borrowed in the nation's name?
The rich men of the nation, give it to each other, under pretence of places and services, civil, ecclesiastical, and military.

Are not those places and services, absolutely and indispensably necessary for the good of the nation?
So far the reverse, that many of those places are fictitious and therefore called sinecure; but almost the whole are created under the specious but false pretence of war, religion, and jurisprudence, as a colour for distributing the public money among themselves."

***

Thus wrote Thomas Spence, who died in 1814 aged 64. Spence was a fighter for the poor and fought for his plan of agrarian socialism and against a society dominated by the riches acquired by landlords.

Rejected by the Newcastle Philosophical Society for his views on landlordism, he moved to London where he sold revolutionary pamphlets and books and was arrested on numerous occasions and served 3 terms of imprisonment. His views were published in his periodical called 'Pig's meat' and famously he wrote a tract called the 'Real Rights of Man' where he argued that Thomas Paine arguments for democracy would still leave the same class in power. Uncowed by this repression he continued to propagandise his ideas on his Plan for society.

Those who followed his ideas after his death were ruthlessly suppressed by the British state.

Spence is one of the great prerursors of the traditions of radical British socialism and political economy and his life and ideas should not be forgotten.

For those who would like to read about his life and ideas before the meeting there is the website of the The Thomas Spence Trust at http://thomas-spence-society.co.uk