The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Wordsworth Classics)

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Almost 100 years after it was first published, the relevance of this work, and it's ability to speak to us in the 21st century is surely a stark indictment of our time. The first great English novel about the class war ... witty, humourous, instinctive and full of excitement, harmony and pathos' As Owen thought of his child's future there sprung up within him a feeling of hatred and fury against the majority of his fellow workmen." The burning injustices of class society had, by this time, made Tressell an impassioned evangelist for the socialist cause. One such example, again recorded in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, was the 1905 case of a man who had murdered his children rather than see them starve. In the book, Frank Owen briefly considers this fate for his own family, remarking that it might be a kinder end than the one the system had in store for them. This fear of the workhouse animated both Tressell and his protagonist throughout their respective journeys.

Putting his talents to good use, Tressell designed and made the Hastings SDF banner which was later to be adapted for the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Tragically, this banner was taken to Birmingham for safe keeping in the 1930s and has never been recovered since. Only a photograph survives, but it is fitting that Tressell should have contributed in this way. Britain’s labour movement banners are probably the only things which surpass the work of Morris and Crane as aesthetic contributions to the international socialist movement. Declan Kiberd has argued that Pádraic Ó Conaire's seminal novel in Irish, Deoraíocht, has many parallels in its progressive socialism with Tressell's The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. [20] Use of Tressell's name [ edit ] Clarke, Frances (4 April 2018). "The Irishman whose novel stirred the English working class". The Irish Times . Retrieved 10 February 2022. With ingenuity, and in the mode of tragedy, we are shown in a hundred different and nasty ways, how man abuses his fellow man. Thankfully we are also shown how alternatives to this dystopia might be possible.But it is in this criticism of misguided philanthropy that the book's status as a "working-class classic" runs into trouble. Noonan's approach is a product of the late-Victorian socialist revival when hopes of political transformation swept Britain with religious fervour. Socialists started to display the same kind of moral certainty as the Salvation Army; activists likened themselves to missionaries. Noonan himself found a niche in the Social Democratic Federation run by his fellow middle-class Marxist, Henry Hyndman. And this elevated approach, of a secular priesthood bringing salvation to the fallen, is exactly the tone Owen adopts with his fellow philanthropists. Their work as hired 'temporary hands' in a painter and decorating firm, is short term and uncertain. Desperately trying to keep themselves and their families out of the workhouse, this vulnerability is fully exploited by their employers. Tressle who worked as a painter and decorator himself, uses his knowledge of this trade, and almost certainly anecdotal experience, to describe their profession, and therefore their 'plight' with a dark realism.

Rose, David; "What MPs Read" LRB.co.uk (Letters, Vol.24 No.6), 21 March 2002 (Retrieved: 8 September 2009) Noonan was born in 37 Wexford Street, Dublin, Ireland, [3] the illegitimate son of Samuel Croker, a former Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who was by the time of the birth a retired Resident Magistrate. [4] [5] He was baptised and raised a Roman Catholic by his mother Mary Noonan. His father, who was not Catholic, had his own family but attempted to provide for Robert until his death in 1875. [6] [5] I read the complete, unedited text, after being given it as a rather thoughtful Christmas present. It is rightly heralded as a classic piece of working-class literature, as it takes you into the brutish yet everyday horrors endured by the British working-class, at a time when socialism was beginning to gain ground. After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their merriment increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a pound’s worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took their tools – the Machinery of Production – the knives away from them, and informed them that as owing to Over Production all his store-houses were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down the works. Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour.’

How socialism can organise production without money - Adam Buick and Pieter Lawrence

a b Harker, Dave (2003). Tressell: The Real Story of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. London and New York: Zed Books. p.xvii. ISBN 1-84277-384-4. It was because they were indifferent to the fate of THEIR children that he would be unable to secure a natural and human life for HIS. It was their apathy or active opposition that made it impossible to establish a better system of society under which those who did their fair share of the world's work would be honoured and rewarded. Instead of helping to do this, they abased themselves, and grovelled before their oppressors, and compelled and taught their children to do the same. THEY were the people who were really responsible for the continuance of the present system."

F. C. Ball, One of the Damned: The Life and Times of Robert Tressell, Author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979.Relief that is, from any illusion that things will probably be ok; that we have learnt from mistakes of the past, and that we are at the dawn of some enlightened benevolent age. Have ever hear of the joke about watching paint dry. This the book that sets right This union book not an easy read but very rewarding one it is like The Grapes of Wrath set in wallpaper. And what is particularly interesting about this book is that all of the excuses and explanations and victimisations and lies that were told then to justify why we have poverty and unemployment and hardship are exactly the same ones that are used today. For this alone, it is worth reading this book.

While poignant and beautifully written, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a deeply uncomfortable read that, unlike many tales, doesn’t have a happy ever after. An important and powerful book, it’s clear to see why almost a century after its publication it made its way onto a list of the nation’s best loved books. About The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Those who worked were looked upon with contempt, and subjected to every possible indignity. Nearly everything they produced was taken away from them and enjoyed by the people who did nothing. And then the workers bowed down and grovelled before those who had robbed them of the fruits of their labour and were childishly grateful to them for leaving anything at all." Writing in the Manchester Evening News in April 1946 George Orwell praised the book's ability to convey "[w]ithout sensationalism and almost without plot... the actual detail of manual work and the tiny things almost unimaginable to any comfortably situated person which make life a misery when one's income drops below a certain level". He considered it "a book that everyone should read" and a piece of social history that left one "with the feeling that a considerable novelist was lost in this young working-man whom society could not bother to keep alive". [4]

About the author

Noonan began to work as a painter in Hastings, Sussex, but at much lower wages and in far poorer conditions than he had experienced in South Africa. Kathleen was initially sent to boarding and convent schools, including St. Ethelburga's Girls High School, a Roman Catholic convent at Deal, Kent; but in 1904, she transferred to the coeducational and Protestant St Andrew's Public Elementary School in Hastings. [10] It is very funny book, very sad book and very Union book. The sadness part of this book is that it was published in April 1914 to show paint trade was been treat and by end of year it didn't matter because WWI started and the paint was drying in the poppy fields in blood. The Clarion could count tens of thousands of weekly readers by the time Tressell had settled in England. But it was far from the only red star on the horizon — socialist politics were on the rise across the country with the number of parties and organisations growing year on year. Hastings, however, lagged behind. In 1906, just as the Labour Party was making its first electoral breakthrough, the town was caught in an election between a Liberal and a Tory — with no socialist on the ballot. A membership card for the Hastings branch of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), which counted Robert Tressell among its members. (Credit: Hastings Museum and Art Gallery)