William Morris was one of the outstanding Marxists in the period after Marx’s death. Morris propagated basic revolutionary socialist ideas on the nature of capitalism, class struggle, the state, trade unions and on party organisation, helping to educate the new layer of working class militants who rebuilt the British labour movement in the period of New Unionism and beyond.
Morris also made a distinctive contribution to the development of Marxist ideas, for example on the nature of work and on the vision of a classless, communist society. But arguably his most significant contribution – and certainly one with great contemporary relevance, was his conception of a socialist ecology.
Morris’ ideas have long been recognised in this respect. In his Introduction to Political Writings of William Morris, the Stalinist historian AL Morton wrote: “The working out of a truly self-renewing ecological basis for the earth may well be the next great task before humanity, a task impossible for capitalism, possible though still not easy through Socialism. The profound wisdom of Morris can be of immense value to us in attempting it.” (1973 p.30)
In this respect Morris was a pioneer and an innovator – he evolved from conservationism to integrate ecology within a Marxist framework. His views have much to teach us today in our age of climactic convulsion.
Morris had a lifelong commitment to the conservation of the built and rural environment. Looking back on his life of more than sixty years, Morris told the Daily Chronicle (23 April 1895) of his childhood, growing up near Epping Forest and exploring the Essex river marshes: “I was always a lover of the sad lowland country”, “with the great domed line of the sky, and the sun shining down.” (Paul Thompson, The Work of William Morris, 1991 p.6)
In 1854 at the age of 20, Morris travelled through Northern France. The historian Paul Thompson argues that this experience shaped the future landscape of his socialist novel set in the classless, communist future, News from Nowhere. Morris wrote detailed descriptions of the fields and attacked the need to travel there by “a nasty, brimstone, noisy, shrieking railway train… verily railways are ABOMINATIONS”. (1991 p.8)
Morris later joined the fight to preserve Epping Forest from railway schemes, which were finally defeated between 1880 and 1883. He was active in the Commons Preservation Society in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The Society was responsible for legislation obliging landowners to take account of the public interest, and for the preservation of public spaces such as Wimbledon Common and Hampstead Heath. He was also active in the Kyrle Societies, an early urban environmental pressure group founded in 1875. More famously, he was a founder and committee member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), known as Anti-Scrape. (Paul Thompson 1991 pp.8-10)
In March 1882, Morris supported a campaign against the London and South Western Spring Water Company sinking a well at Carshalton, which would have greatly affected the flow of the River Wandle. In the same month he added his name to a petition opposing the Submarine Railway Company's plan to build a Channel Tunnel.
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