In 1949 the octogenarian William Henry Brown travelled to Rome to witness the inauguration on the Aventino of the monument of Giuseppe Mazzini, a personal pilgrimage, sealed by his gesture of kneeling in reverence in front of the Italian former exile’s vestige. W. Henry Brown, a second generation Mazzinian born ...
(Show more)In 1949 the octogenarian William Henry Brown travelled to Rome to witness the inauguration on the Aventino of the monument of Giuseppe Mazzini, a personal pilgrimage, sealed by his gesture of kneeling in reverence in front of the Italian former exile’s vestige. W. Henry Brown, a second generation Mazzinian born in East London in 1868 to an active co-operator, had studied at Toynbee Hall and had personally met veterans of the co-operative movement, such as Holyoake, and Christian Socialists, Edward Vansittart Neale and Thomas Hughes. Joining Oscar Spinelli, Vice-president of the Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative, for the ceremony in Rome, Brown was acutely aware of the impact that Mazzini’s thought had had on his fellow co-operators at home. While the support of British radicals for the Italian Risorgimento revolutionary is well-known, labour historians have reserved scant attention to the long legacy of Mazzini’s doctrine amongst English co-operators. Indeed, as Italy was unified, a second generation of Mazzinians was born in England, to include future trade union and Labour leaders.
This paper will trace some of the evidence of Mazzini’s long legacy in his country of exile, where his ideas on association were recognised by English co-operators as providing the basis for the harmonious working of society. While Mazzini’s followers struggled to affirm his principles in Italy, where Italian workers were increasingly drawn towards Bakunian and Marxist solutions, Mazzini’s writings were regularly consumed by English co-operators, some of whom are remembered as ‘the most enthusiastic of the British Mazzinians’. These included northern, self-improved colliers and miners - such as Chester Armstrong and Labour Leader John Wilson - and radical reformers, such as Henry Bolton King, who in the late 1880s founded a Mazzini Club within the adult educational institute of Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. The indissoluble link between morality and politics of Mazzini’s doctrine and the centrality of education in society greatly coloured Bolton King’s practical idealism when setting up a model village of agriculture co-operation in Warwickshire. Throughout England Mazzini’s readings were regularly supplied to co-operative reading rooms, providing workers with materials which inspired their faith in the harmonious co-operation of classes through association. Indeed, Mazzini’s lasting legacy within the English ‘Left’ was reflected by a survey amongst Labour Leaders published in William Stead’s Review of Reviews in 1906, which indicated the Italian exile as one of the authors who had most deeply influenced them.
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