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Edward Carpenter
Peter
Tatchell reviews Edward Carpenter
– A life of Liberty and Love, by Sheila
Rowbotham (Verso).
This is one of the best
political biographies for many years. As
well as being a book about a little-known
icon of past history, it is bursting with
ideas that are still relevant to the future
of humanity – for LGBT and straight
people.
Author Shelia Rowbotham,
the much-loved socialist feminist historian,
has written an incredibly moving, inspiring
account of the personal and political life
of the prophetic gay English author, poet,
philosopher and humanitarian, Edward
Carpenter (1844–1929).
Arguably the true pioneer
of the LGBT rights movement in England, he
lived openly and defiantly with his lifelong
partner George Merrill.
In the nineteenth
century, he wrote some the earliest essays
and pamphlets advocating homosexual law
reform and spoke out enthusiastically for
women’s rights.
Unlike many others, he
understood the connection between sexism and
heterosexism – that the struggle for women’s
rights and gay rights are closely tied
together (a view that was resurrected by the
Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s and
by OutRage! in the 1990s).
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Edward Carpenter
in 1875. |
Decades ahead of his time
on many social issues, Carpenter advocated
green socialism, women’s suffrage,
contraception, curbs on pollution, sex
education in schools, pacifism, animal
rights, recycling, prison reform, workers’
control, self-sufficiency, vegetarianism,
homosexual equality, naturism and free love.
His socialism was
libertarian, decentralised, self-governing,
cooperative and environmentalist, with a
strong streak of anarchism, individualism
and (nonreligious) spiritualism. He argued
that socialism was as much about the way we
live our personal lives as about changing
the economic, political, social and cultural
systems.
We need to change our
hearts and minds before we can overturn the
iniquities of capitalism, he observed.
Otherwise, we might end up replacing one
tyranny with another.
Echoing the left-wing
Arts And Crafts Movement, which was often
derided by the Marxists of the Social
Democratic Federation, Carpenter’s vision of
socialism included a cultural renaissance to
promote access to the arts for everyone, not
just the rich. He saw things of beauty as a
way to uplift the human spirit.
Carpenter himself was not
without fault, occasionally expressing
anti-Semitic sentiments, which were standard
and rife (but nonetheless not excusable) in
the late nineteenth century. For someone who
distanced himself from the mainstream and
the mob on most issues, these lapses are
surprising and lamentable.
Initially, he was a
member of the Social Democratic Federation
(a forerunner of the Communist Party), but
disagreements with the SDF’s advocacy of
violence prompted Carpenter to leave the
organisation in the 1880s and help to found
the Socialist League, where he worked
closely with Eleanor Marx, William Morris
and Edward Aveling.
In 1893, he joined with
Kier Hardie, George Bernard Shaw and Ben
Tillett to form the Independent Labour Party
(ILP). He stuck with the left, despite the
shameful homophobia of some left-wingers,
including Frederick Engels and later George
Orwell.
I recall meeting Fenner
Brockway, the legendary ILP leader
(1888–1988), in 1983, when he was 93 years
old. He enthused about Carpenter’s
trail-blazing ideas, praising him as one of
the greatest thinkers of the last 100 years.
Probably he was.
This book is a
fascinating, engaging insight into the life
of a truly remarkable man. Read it.
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