William Morris

William Morris in political context

The William Morris exhibition Anarchy & Beauty at the National Portrait Gallery is well worth a visit for anyone interested in Morris, his art, and the late nineteenth-century socialist movement. The opening section, a rounded appreciation of Morris, is a marked contrast to the common view of him as a largely apolitical purveyor of Victorian handicrafts. As well as some of Morris’s early wallpaper designs and an armchair produced by his collaborator and friend Philip Webb, we find the 1893 paperback edition of News from Nowhere. The justly famous imagining of a less alienated and more...

Forum & Reviews

Letters, debate and reviews. Notes on Holocaust denial, drugs policy, Catholicism, the national question, William Morris. Download PDF

Forum

Article by William Morris and other letters on Trainspotting, Ireland, The X Files and Immigration. Download PDF

The Day Is Coming

Come hither, lads, and hearken, for a tale there is to tell, Of the wonderful days a-coming, when all shall be better than well. And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of the sea, And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be. There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to come Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home. For then--laugh not, but listen to this strange tale of mine - All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine. Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his...

Forth the Banners Go: The Day Is Coming.

Come hither, lads, and hearken, for a tale there is to tell, Of the wonderful days a-coming, when all shall be better than well. And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of the sea, And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be. There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to come Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home. For then--laugh not, but listen to this strange tale of mine - All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine. Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his...

Resources for "New Unionism: how workers can fight back"

Resources, including a reading pack, for the 18 February 2012 dayschool "New Unionism: how workers can fight back". Agenda for the day - click here to download as a PDF Reading pack - click here to download as a PDF Slides from workshop on working-class political representation: Keir Hardie - click here Henry Hyndman - click here Alexander MacDonald - click here William Morris - click here Philip Snowden - click here Will Thorne - click here

Reclaiming William Morris

How Morris became a socialist is rather more complicated than is generally thought. Morris himself only made rare statements about how he became a socialist, spread out in his writings over 16 years. One of the things that finally convinced him was, ironically, John Stuart Mill’s attack on Fourier’s utopian socialism. Before that, however, the crucial influence on him was the British social critics, such as Carlyle, Cobbett and Ruskin. They convinced him absolutely that capitalism as a system was wasteful, that it destroyed workers’ enjoyment in their work, and that it destroyed artistic...

William Morris: Ecology and the shift to socialism

The sixth part of a series by Paul Hampton Sometime in 1882, William Morris decided he was no longer a radical and began to associate himself explicitly with socialism. He stated in How I Became A Socialist (16 June 1894) that by the summer of 1882 he was ready “to join any body who distinctly called themselves Socialists.” (Edward Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, 1976) In January 1883 Morris joined the Democratic Federation and began his agitation for socialism — a commitment that he would maintain to his death. He continued to be a dedicated conservationist. In his...

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