It may surprise, but Tyneside was a centre of political thought throughout the centuries. Newcastle, thanks to its industrial pedigree and dense working class population was fertile ground for radical thinking. Events from the continent blew with the wind across the North Sea, and men like Thomas Spence thrusted these "revolutionary" ideals to the masses. Miriam Bibby explores the life of the man born and emboldened on the banks of the Tyne.
The regulations of the Spencean Society hardly sound like a call to arms by terrorists threatening the state. In fact, they seem quite appealing: “THE Society holds a meeting once a week at least, for Lectures, Readings, Free-Debate, or Conviviality, free of admission to all persons of decent demeanour, which is presided at by every member in succession, (the president using a bell to keep order.)”
The Spenceans were nothing if not well-organised, well-read, and highly democratic: “FOR the management of the internal concerns of the society, there are a conservative committee, a treasurer, a secretary, and a librarian, who are each elected quarterly by ballot, the last weekly meeting in March, June, September, and December: they are however removable at all times by vote of the society.”
Yet two centuries ago, the Spencean Society, later known as the Society of Spencean Philanthropists, was a clandestine and subversive group, operating as criminals outside the law. Its activities provoked harsh and repressive responses. They were named in the Seditious Meetings Act of 1817, which although short-lived before its lapse in 1818, stated unequivocally that any organisations using the name Spencean, or following similar aims, were guilty of a serious criminal offence. Potentially, they were committing high treason.
Who was Thomas Spence, this terrible revolutionary who struck fear into the hearts of the authorities, and spent time incarcerated in jail, finally dying in poverty in 1814? Spence was born on the Quayside of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1750. His father was a Presbyterian Scot from Aberdeen who made and sold nets and other items from a booth on the Quayside. Thomas Spence’s father was married twice and had nineteen children. He taught Thomas to read, and Thomas eventually became a schoolteacher in Newcastle.
Local politics set Thomas Spence on his life’s work as a radical. In 1771, the Town Moor of Newcastle upon Tyne was threatened by enclosure, and this provoked Spence’s profound attitude to the land and those who lived and depended on it.
Newcastle’s Town Moor is, for Geordies, hallowed ground. A great sweep of green space in the heart of the city, which no doubt still causes developers with itchy hands to weep into their designer beer, the Town Moor is Newcastle’s grand outdoor space. I first went riding at Danny’s Riding School on Kenton Bar, and my earliest serious horseback memories are the joyous feeling of being led across the Moor on a little grey pony who I seem to remember was called Smokey. Now I’m an equine historian with four ponies of my own, and have contributed many papers and several books to the subject of horses and history. The Town Moor has played a significant part in my own journey, as it did that of Thomas Spence.
The Town Moor was a place where locals had rights of pasturage, and in the seventeenth century there were common coal pits here. It was also the place for individual and community refreshment, sports, and games. Horse races were held here from 1721 onwards. Every year the Hoppings, one of the biggest (and best!) fairs in the country, still draws the crowds.
Many other towns and cities have had Town Moors, but not all have survived. That Newcastle’s Town Moor survives is largely due to the efforts of the city council and Freemen over the centuries, plus the passion of Geordies for their Toon and its Moor. Thomas Spence’s story is rooted in this ground and its history, and he deserves to be better known as a Newcastle-bred radical and activist.
In 1775, after reading Thomas Paine’s “The Rights of Man”, he submitted a paper “The Real Rights of Man” to the Newcastle Philosophical Society, which was rejected. The reason was not lack of quality, or interest. It was because Thomas didn’t play by the rules. He had been selling his paper on the street to anyone who would buy it, “hawking it about like a halfpenny ballad”, in the phrase of Henry Richard Tedder, who wrote about Spence in 1897. Spence was arguing that the real rights of man related to land, and who had the right to live and work on it, and how it should be organised.
Spence was a man with a plan, and by 1787 he was a bookseller in London promoting it, and gaining much support as well as disapproval from the authorities. His first pamphlet, published in 1775 and costing just one penny, had been titled Property in Land Every One's Right. This ran to many editions, including two by Henry Hyndman under a different title, The Nationalization of the Land. This was the paper that would become The Real Rights of Man.
Spence’s response to this issue, spurred on by the threat of enclosure of the Town Moor, was a fundamental one, expressed in the three questions that each potential member of the movement (who also had to be proposed and seconded) had to answer before admission. Published in 1815, these questions were:
1. ARE you of opinion, that the land or territory of a nation is by nature the people’s farm, in which all persons as equal partners, might receive their just share of the rents?
2. ARE you of opinion, that this principle is founded in divine justice, and that its adoption would tend to extinguish war, poverty, oppression, and misery, and restore peace, liberty, security, and happiness to society?
3. ARE you then willing to become a true Spencean Philosopher, by endeavouring to extend a knowledge of these natural rights of mankind?
Spence’s philosophy and philanthropy clearly drew on his religious belief and upbringing. He envisioned a parish-based system of land management, where the parish owned the land and received rent for it. These democratic parishes would be autonomous and all parishioners would benefit equally from the rents; in other words, there would be a social dividend for all.
His plan was to restore “to Society the real blessings of the social compact, by parochial partnerships”. He declared that “all persons are by nature born equal, and to exist must partake of the air to breathe, the light and the heat of the sun, and the productions of the earth and water; it is clear, that nature intended these elements equally for the use of all, and that naturally the land or territory of a nation, is the people’s Farm; which they might hold as a joint-stock Company in partnership”.
Elements of his religious background and also the radicalism of earlier seventeenth century religious and political movements such as the Levellers and Diggers come through clearly in his words. He believed that his plan was “founded on divine and immutable justice, and according to the laws of Moses, which direct the land to be possessed by families; not to be parted with otherwise than by mortgage, nor to be sold, given away, or alienated … as no one had other than a life interest therein”.
The radical aspect of his plan, which provoked such horror in the authorities, would mean no more aristocrats or landlords; universal suffrage, including female suffrage, with politics operating at a local and national level through the parishes; a guaranteed income for anyone unable to work; and rights for children, including the right to live without abuse and free from poverty. Like many philosophers with a Utopian vision, Spence wrote novels so that his ideas would reach a wider audience. These took place in the fictional land of Spensonia.
His Parochial Partnerships were, said Spence, “the only effectual remedy for the Distresses and Oppression of the People”. The problem was greedy landlords who would not accept that they were “but the stewards of the Public, for the LAND is the PEOPLE's FARM” and “Landed Monopoly is indeed equally contrary to the benign spirit of Christianity”. "The Profit of the Earth is for All," concluded Spence.
Spence is often credited as being the first Englishman to use the phrase the Rights of Man. However, he credits this to an extraordinary person well-known to him at Marsden Grotto on the Durham coast not far from Sunderland: “A man who had been a farmer, and also a miner, and who had been ill-used by his landlords, dug a cave for himself by the seaside, at Marsden Rocks, between Shields and Sunderland, about the year 1780, and the singularity of such a habitation, exciting the curiosity of many to pay him a visit; our author was one of that number. Exulting in the idea of a human being, who had bravely emancipated himself from the iron fangs of aristocracy, to live free from impost, he wrote extempore with chaulk above the fire place of this free man, the following lines:
Ye landlords vile, whose man's peace mar,
Come levy rents here if you can;
Your stewards and lawyers I defy,
And live with all the RIGHTS OF MAN
When he wrote this, which is a reference to a character known as Jack the Blaster, Spence was in jail in 1794 on charges of high treason. That was how seriously the authorities viewed him and his followers, in an age where aristocrats increasingly feared proletarian radicalism and revolt. A few supported it, albeit fashionably and often briefly, such as Byron’s one and only speech in the House of Lords in support of Nottinghamshire loom operators. In contrast, Byron’s wife, Annabella Milbanke, maintained a genuine life-long interest in reform in many areas of life, from the allotments movement to local schools. It is right that the names of both Annabella Milbanke (as Lady Noel Byron), and Thomas Spence appear on the Reformers Monument in Kensal Green Cemetery.
As well as land reform (rather than nationalisation) through his system, Spence, as a committed educator, was in favour of spelling reform. This was based on a phonetic spelling system, which he believed would assist in bringing about greater equality, and ultimately to his visionary world of peace and plenty. When he was tried for producing a seditious libel (The Restorer of Society to its natural State) he not only defended himself but published his defence in phonetic script (Dh'e 'imp'ort'ant Tri'al' öv To'mis Sp'ens) two years later. He was jailed and fined for libel.
The Spenceans in fact come across as a society thoroughly infected by a wicked Geordie sense of humour and bluntness. They were fond of songs, and quite happy to set their radical words to better-known tunes of the day, such as “God Save the King”, like this one known as “A Song to be sung at the Commencement of the Millenium”:
Hark! how the Trumpet's sound,
Proclaims the Land around
The Jubilee!Tells all the Poor oppress'd,
No more shall they be cess'd;
Nor Landlords more molest
Their Property.
The Spencean Philosophers appropriated the tune of “Rule Britannia” for this radical version entitled “The Spencean Jubilee”:
Now let us hail the glorious Day,
When Justice shall bear sov’reign Sway,
When Man to Man shall equal be,
Rejoicing in the Jubilee.
Rejoice and hail the rising dawn,
Of Freedom's Day that Spence has shewn.
Shall Tyrants lord it o'er Mankind,
Shall they the galling Shackles bind;
Which thus enthrall the Bulk of Man,
’Gainst God and Nature’s lib’ral Plan?
It’s not hard to see how the followers of Thomas Spence got right up the noses of the authorities, and governments fearing revolution from below in the post-French Revolutionary world. Thomas flew by the seat of his revolutionary pants, and he paid the price for it on more than one occasion. As well as drawing the disapproval of the law, it’s also not surprising that this abrasive and committed character had a host of admiring followers, who maintained the Society of Spencean Philanthropists even after his death. Harriet Martineau was one admirer, as were the African Caribbean activists William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn. The Society of Spencean Philanthropists also had links to the Society of United Irishmen, which included Catholics, Protestants, and Dissenters from diverse backgrounds. The Spencean Philanthropists were involved in the Spa Field Riots of 1816 and the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820.
Thomas Spence died in London on 8 September 1814. Officially he had been a bookseller and coin dealer, and fond of throwing tokens to passers-by to encourage them in his philosophy. At his funeral, which many of his followers attended, medals were handed out and a pair of scales paraded to remind the observers of his strong sense of justice. Let’s give the ebullient and committed Thomas the last word: “This plan, then, if rendered general and applied to all nations, would remedy all the evils, of which society has to complain, by establishing natural and divine Justice, and producing all that happiness expected from the Millennium”.
Miriam was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is a historian, author, editor, and broadcaster. She specializes in equine history and is the co-editor-in-chief of Cheiron, the International Journal of Equine and Equestrian History. She has edited equestrian and archaeology magazines, and was a tutor and course developer for the University of Manchester’s networked learning course in Egyptology for twelve years. Her PhD was on the topic of the Galloway horse, and a monograph is forthcoming. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
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