On the subject of Merrie England

The Observer draws our attention to a little book called Merrie England:

When Merrie England (quoted above) was published in 1893, it became a literary sensation almost overnight. Written in vivid, plain English by the Manchester-based socialist campaigner and journalist Robert Blatchford, the book was presented as “a series of letters on the Labour problem, addressed to John Smith, of Oldham, a hard-headed workman, fond of facts”.

To this fictional resident of one of Lancashire’s grimmest mill towns, Merrie England advocated a socialist transformation of the most advanced capitalist economy in the world. Using his Latin pen-name, Nunquam, Blatchford deployed satire and polemic to call for communal collaboration to replace competition and chasing profit as the driving force in human lives.

“Take the case of a tram guard working, say, 16 hours a day for £1 a week,” begins one of Nunquam’s rhetorical salvos. “That man is being robbed of all the pleasure of his life. Now there ought to be two guards working eight hours at £2 a week. If the tram company makes big dividends the cost should come out of those dividends.”

The implication there is that the dividends are enough to cover the wage bill going from £1 a week to £4 a week. And if we're honest about it we too would probably say that if dividends are four times the entire wage bill then there's a bit of room for a pay rise. We're not, however, entirely sure that the example is factual.

The paper uses this as a lead in to a discussion over the Labour Party's woes:

It has been estimated that 149 of Labour’s 232 constituencies voted Leave, in defiance of the party’s wishes and at odds with the overwhelming majority of Labour’s mainly professional membership. 

Well, yes, seems about right. However, the part that really interests us is this small detail:

Blatchford’s coruscating critique of free market economics and the culture of individualism became part of the warp and weft of the nascent Labour party.

Those were heady times for a British working class growing in confidence and taking its first political steps. Over a century later, the modern Labour party could use a Merrie England.

Possibly so. It's just that looking at the frontispiece of the original we note something that amuses. The publication was (in part) funded by advertising quack medicines to those stout working classes.

How's that for sticking it to the capitalists and critiquing the free markets?