About the Book
Not many novels about working-class life have been reprinted over a hundred times in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Russia, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Japan. Even fewer have sold over a million copies. Hardly any have been so often adapted for the stage, or featured on TV and radio. Above all, none have been passed from hand to hand as often by workers, and taken to their hearts. Robert Tressell‘s novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is straightforward and highly readable, but it is also a very odd book. After all, novels don‘t usually explain key points of Marxist theory. True, it has humour, parody, pathos, irony, rage, little victories, defeats, arguments and ideas, and it is brim full of contempt for the ruling class. But what practical political appeal can a tale of isolated Socialists, fighting for a Co-operative Commonwealth, possibly have today? Dave Harker describes Tressell‘s life, puts his book in its historical context, and traces its success over the past ninety-odd years. This is the story of the left in Britain, from the Socialist Federation in the late 19th century, through to the trade union movement and New Labour today.
Table of Contents:
A publication history of RTP
Introduction
1. Who was Robert Tressell?
2. The two souls of Mugsborough socialism
3. Ragged trousered philanthropists
4. A faithful picture of working-class life?
5. The damnably subversive book
6. Pope's bloody mess-up of the work
7. For circulation amongst the unconverted
8. A dream of Fred Ball
9. King Street were lost
10. Comrade Tressell
11. The modern Lazarus
12. One of the damned
13. The end of history?
14. Tressell, Marxism and hope
About the Author :
Dave Harker has been a trade union and socialist activist for over thirty years. He co-edited The Big Red Song Book (1977 & 1981), and wrote One for the Money: Politics and Popular Song (1980). His Fakesong: The Manufacture of British "Folksong", 1700 to the Present Day (1985) was one of eleven volumes in the Popular Music in Britain series, which he co-edited.
Dave Harker has been a trade union and socialist activist for over thirty years. He co-edited The Big Red Song Book (1977 & 1981), and wrote One for the Money: Politics and Popular Song (1980). His Fakesong: The Manufacture of British "Folksong", 1700 to the Present Day (1985) was one of eleven volumes in the Popular Music in Britain series, which he co-edited.
Review :
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has been described as "the bible" of the English Left, and by Arnold Kettle as the "real foundation of socialist realist literature in Britain". Yet the novel and its author, writing under the name Robert Tressell, have suffered scholarly neglect out of all proportion to their influence. With the benefit of previously unpublished source materials, this ‘biography‘ of a book weaves it into the history of British socialism, from its first publication in 1914 three years after the death of its author, through the reconstruction of the original text after over 40 years of abridged versions, to the burgeoning of the "Tressell heritage industry" from the 1980s. Concluding with a passionate, ‘no prisoners‘ reaffirmation of its spirit, Dave Harker has produced what will undoubtedly become the unignorable benchmark study of the one book by "the greatest socialist writer Britain has produced".
As the anti capitalist movement grows and disgruntled Labour Party members and trade union and other activists across the world look to it for a way forward, so there is a renewal of ideas. This book makes a most valuable contribution to this process showing in rich detail how one of the key socialist works of the last century has never stopped stimulating debate and argument on the all important question: What is to be done?
Dave Harker uses the history of Robert Tressell and his book to illuminate the failures of the left in Britain. This is a sharp and uncomfortable read for everyone who claims to be a socialist.
This is not only the most accurate biographical account of Robert Tressell, the Irishman who wrote the classic novel of English working class life. It is also a life history of his book, and of its extraordinary impact on 20th Century British Socialism. Harker draws on a deep knowledge of the political and cultural history of the left in order to place Tressell and his work in their contexts. He rejects the reverential tone in which Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is often discussed, subjecting its politics to a toughly critical appraisal. Tressell admirers may not agree with Harker‘s analysis, but they should be grateful to him for the way in which his meticulous research and challenging arguments will stimulate new discussion of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
Without any doubt Tressell is the most researched and comprehensive study into The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, tracing its influence on social, political and literary thinking from when it was first published through to the present day. Able to quote from some previously unpublished material Dr. Dave Harker has produced a most interesting and informative book, invaluable to the "ordinary" reader and the "student" alike. It is essential reading for all those who seek a fuller understanding of the Tressell story.
By following the extraordinary history of RTP and the inspired (if varied) effect it has on generations of workers, artists and intellectuals, Harker manages to give us a fresh and compelling insight into the shifts and changes within the British radical (and not so radical) left in the twentieth century. It operates as multi-layered detective story - first, into the enigma of the elusive Tressell himself the extraordinary tale of the re-emergence of the full text after almost fifty years, and, finally, the vicissitudes, visions, compromises and downright betrayals of socialism. I only wish I had had this book to guide (and challenge me) when I was first adapting the play for the stage.
