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Back to topThe Marx Memorial Library - and 37a Clerkenwell Green - has been central to Clerkenwell's radical history for centuries. The building itself hosted meetings of the International Working Mens' Association and lectures by Karl Marx before providing office space for Lenin to edit the revolutionary newspaper Iskra during his London exile. The MML has a pocket watch cast by the IWMA marking the campaign for the eight hour day, in addition to a display copy of ISKRA in our Lenin Room.
Between the 17th and 18th centuries, the print industry was first developing in nearby Fleet Street. This enabled easy distribution of pamphlets and newsletters critical of the government and ruling class, handed out in places such as local coffee shops and public houses, which helped to foster revolutionary zeal in the people of this very poor borough.
This pamphlet addressing the Trades' Unions was published by the Socialist League, which was based in Farringdon Street.
We hold the text of a trial at the Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green of Thomas Briellat in 1793 for 'seditious words'.
In the late nineteenth century the building was rented by socialist artist William Morris, to establish the “Twentieth Century Press” which published many radical pamphlets, the newspaper Justice and books promoting socialism; the Library holds original copies of many of these.
Later, it became the headquarters of the first UK Marxist party, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). With the foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920, its Daily Worker newspaper (now known as The Morning Star) was first published on nearby Farringdon Road. The MML holds complete collections of both newspapers, as well as some archives of the SDF.
Clerkenwell Green has been the meeting point of demonstrations for centuries including the peasants revolt, the chartist movement, solidarity with the Tolpuddle Martyrs and May Day marches. Our collections reflect this activity and include texts on chartism, ceramics dating back to the Peterloo massacre and newspapers and other printed material on the trial and arrest of the Martyrs.
Clerkenwell has had a number of revolutionary residents who are featured in our collections. Dan Chetteron (1820-1895) was an athist and socialist who was born in Clerkenwell and badly injured by police during a Chartist demonstration on Clerkenwell Green in 1848. He produced the quarterly 'Chatterton's Commune: The Athiestic Communist Scorcher' which put forward his ideas on working-class self organisation developed from the Paris Commune.
Publications about the building and the area held by the library include:
Books:
37a Clerkenwell Green, 1737-1987 by Mary Sinclair Rosser
An historical walk through Clerkenwell (1980) by Mary Cosh
Pamphlets by Andrew Rothstein:
A house on Clerkenwell Green
Lenin in Clerkenwell (REF: YA14 / LEN)
William Morris at Clerkenwell (REF: YA14 / WIL)
Reds on the green: a short tour of Clerkenwell Radicalism, 2005 (REF: YE01 / RED)
Pamphlets printed here, such as:
A factory as it might be (1907) by William Morris
A short history of the Paris Commune (1903) by E. Belfort Bax, 1903 REF YF150
A socialist view of the new trade unionism (1893) REF YA04 / SOC
An appeal to the young by Kropotkin (1914), REF M20
Photographs of local May Day protests and gatherings from the 1950s onwards, incluidng some on Clerkenwell Green:
PHOTO/SUB/May Day UK
Social Democratic Federation
The MML holds the archives of this political party, the first in the UK to be founded on Marxist principles. Items of interest include:
SDF Song book YA04 / SOC
Social Democratic Federation Subscription Card of Albert Inkpin (1905) MSS/45
Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0