Radical ancestors of place

I’ve been interested in radical history for years – the history of struggle and change by which rights have been established. It isn’t taught in schools, this colourful history of refusal to sit down and shut up. I think that’s a great shame, and that young people would benefit enormously from knowing that much of what they have, was fought for. It’s hard not to show up and vote when you understand that people died to get that right. Knowing about the struggles of the past makes you less complacent about what we have now, and more conscious that it could be taken away.

It is being taken away.

It was with no small amount of delight that I found out about radical ancestors of place yesterday. Selsley Common, where I like to walk and sit at the burial mound, was a location for several huge Chartist gatherings seeking universal suffrage.  I heard of processions to Rodborough (another place I walk frequently) and meetings up there, and tales of Diggers down in Slimbridge (where I used to live).

I’m even more excited to find that there is a ‘Radical Stroud’ group, exploring and re-imagining local history. Generally speaking, the poor do not make it into history books. We tell very narrow stories about the past and those tend to revolve around men with land, wealth and power. I learned in the last few weeks that one of the reasons the poor are absent from museum collections is that the possessions of the poor were used until they wore out, or broke, or were turned into something else. Worn out clothes become ragrugs and quilts. This relationship with objects leaves no artefacts to curate. Many of our poor ancestors were illiterate, leaving no written record of their opinions. Their presence and activities must be inferred from what others said about them, records not free from bias.

Yesterday was the 13th July, anniversary of the birth of poet John Clare.  He was a literate worker, a rare voice from what is usually a great historical silence. There is a movement afoot to have his birthday become a day akin to Burns Night. Peasant poetry could do with a lot more recognition and this sidles towards another soap box issue of mine – the way in which anything designated as ‘folk music’ ‘folk art’ or ‘craft’ tends to be undervalued compared to the ‘high art’ that goes with wealth, patronage and social approval.