THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814)

THE THOMAS SPENCE TRUST

93 Woodburn Square, Whitley Lodge, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 3JD

Tel. 0191 2529531

It’s good to welcome the establishment of The Thomas Spence Trust, founded by a group of Tyneside activists intent on celebrating and promoting the life and work of that noted pioneer of people’s rights, pamphleteer and poet Thomas Spence (1750-1814), who has born on Newcastle’s Quayside in those turbulent times.

Spence served in his father’s netmaking trade from the age of ten but went on later to be a teacher at Haydon Bridge Free Grammar School and at St. Ann’s Church in Byker under the City Corporation. In 1775, he read his famous lecture on the right to property in land to the Newcastle Philosophical Society, who voted his expulsion at their next meeting.

He claimed to have invented the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ and chalked it in the caves at Marsden Rocks in South Shields in honour of the working-class hero ‘Blaster Jack’ Bates, who lived there.

He even came to blows with famed Tyneside wood-engraver Thomas Bewick (to whom a memorial has been recently established on the streets of Newcastle) over a political issue, and was thrashed with cudgels for his trouble.

From 1792, having moved to London, he took part in radical agitations, particularly against the war with France. He was arrested several times for selling his own and other seditious books and was imprisoned for six months without trial in 1794, and sentenced to three years for his Restorer of Society to its Natural State in 1801.

Whilst politicians such as Edmund Burke saw the mass of people as the ‘Swinish Multitude’, Spence saw creative potential in everybody and broadcast his ideas in the periodical Pigs’ Meat.

He had a stall in London’s Chancery Lane, where he sold books and saloup, and later set up a small shop called The Hive of Liberty in Holborn.

He died in poverty ‘leaving nothing to his friends but an injunction to promote his Plan and the remembrance of his inflexible integrity’.

The Thomas Spence Trust organised a mini-festival to celebrate Spence in 2000 when it published a booklet on his life and work, together with related events, with the aid of Awards for All.

Trust founder-member, poet Keith Armstrong has written a play for Bruvvers Theatre Company on the socialist pioneer which has been performed at St. Ann’s Church and other venues in the city.

Now the Trust has successfully campaigned for a plaque on the Quayside in Newcastle, where Spence was born. The plaque was unveiled on Monday June 21st 2010, Spence's 260th birthday, with a number of talks, displays and events coinciding with it.

Further information from: Dr Keith Armstrong, The Thomas Spence Trust, 93 Woodburn Square, Whitley Lodge, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 3JD. Tel. 0191 2529531.

SPEECH BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG AT UNVEILING OF SPENCE PLAQUE

On behalf of The Thomas Spence Trust and Newcastle City Council, I’m delighted to welcome you here today to unveil a plaque in honour of that great free spirit, utopian writer, land reformer and courageous pioneering campaigner for the rights of men and women, Thomas Spence. Myself and other members of our Trust, especially Peter Dixon and Tony Whittle, with the support of people like Professors Joan Beal, Alastair Bonnett and Malcolm Chase and activists like Michael Mould, Alan Myers and Councillor Nigel Todd, have campaigned for well over 10 years for some kind of memorial to Tom Spence and it is with great pride that we assemble here with you today.

We know that Spence was born on the Quayside on June 21st 1750, 260 years ago to this the longest day and Summer Solstice. We know that his father Jeremiah made fishing nets and sold hardware from a booth on Sandhill and his mother Margaret kept a stocking stall, also on Sandhill, but it has not been possible, all these years on, to pinpoint the exact location of Thomas Spence’s birthplace, which is why this plaque has been installed here at Broad Garth, the site of his school room and debating society and where he actually came to blows with Thomas Bewick because of a dispute over the contentious matter of property. Bewick gave Spence a beating with cudgels on that occasion but, surprisingly enough, they remained lifelong friends. As Bewick said of Spence: ‘He was one of the warmest Philanthropists in the world and the happiness of Mankind seemed, with him, to absorb every other consideration.’

In these days of bland career politicians, Spence stands out as an example of a free spirit, prepared to go to prison for his principles - the principles of grass roots freedom, community and democracy, for the human rights of people all over the world.

Spence mobilised politically in taverns in Newcastle and later in London. That is why this afternoon, after this short ceremony, you are all invited to join us across the road in the Red House to raise a glass for Tom and to hear informal talks, poems and songs in his honour. You can hear further talks on Spence tonight at the Lit & Phil, courtesy of the Workers’ Educational Association, and next Monday at Newcastle Library, along with a display of his works, and, if you like, you can join some of us at Marsden Grotto, South Shields, tomorrow lunchtime, where Thomas first chalked the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ on a cave wall, to raise another glass for this man who in his own words ‘dared to be free.’

This plaque puts Thomas Spence on the map for all of those pilgrims who hold human rights and political freedoms dear. It does not trap his free spirit rather it gives his life and work fresh wings.

Thanks to you all for coming this afternoon on this proud day for both The Thomas Spence Trust, Newcastle City Council and the citizens of this great city of ours.

I’ll now hand over to the Lord Mayor who will unveil the plaque, after which my friend Gary Miller, esteemed singer and songwriter, will perform a folk song which I’ve written as a tribute to Tom.

FOLK SONG FOR THOMAS SPENCE

Down by the old Quayside,

I heard a young man cry,

among the nets and ships he made his way.

As the keelboats buzzed along,

he sang a seagull’s song;

he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,

sold socks and fishing nets,

through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.

In this theatre of life,

the crying and the strife,

they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,

he gave up all his life

just to be free.

Up and down the cobbled Side,

struggling on through the Broad Chare,

he shouted out his wares

for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,

he was a man the likes you rarely see.

With a pamphlet in his hand,

and a poem at his command,

he haunts the Quayside still

and his words sing.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

(from the music-theatre piece ‘Pig’s Meat’ written for Bruvvers Theatre Company)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK COMMON (1903-1968)

'The one faculty with which school infallibly endures its pupils, that of being bored. It is very important, of course, that every child should, in the course of time, become fitted with this negative capability. If they didn't have it, they'd never put up with the jobs they are going to get, most of them, on leaving school. Boredom or the ability to endure it, is the hub on which the whole universe of work turns.' Jack Common.

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The partnership with County Durham and the City of Tuebingen in Germany was established in 1969.  

Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong, who gained his doctorate at the University on Durham in 2007, following on from Bachelor's and Master's degrees there, first visited Tuebingen in November 1987, with the support of the County Council and the Kulturamt in Tuebingen, to give readings and talks there for a period of a month. Since then he has travelled to the city over 30 times and helped arrange for Durham poets, musicians and artists and their counterparts in Tuebingen to visit their respective cultural twins.

Keith will be back in Tuebingen in November 2013 to participate in a symposium about writer Hermann Hesse, who lived and worked in Tuebingen in the 1890s, and there are plans for Sara Hauser to come to Durham in 2014.

The twinning continues to go from strength to strength. Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong and folk rock musician Gary Miller, lead singer of Durham band the Whisky Priests, travelled to Tuebingen at the end of March 2012 for performances in pubs, cabaret venues and schools where they performed with Tuebingen poet Tibor Schneider who visited Durham in October of that year as part of the ongoing exchange. Tibor joined his Durham counterparts for readings at Durham University and at the Half Moon Inn. He was also interviewed on BBC Radio Tees concerning his Durham visit.

Keith Armstrong and Gary Miller returned the compliment with a trip to Tuebingen in March 2013 where they performed again in bars, cafes and schools with poets Tibor Schneider, Sara Hauser and Tuebingen musicians. 

In 2011, Tuebingen rock musician Juergen Sturm jetted in with his music partner Mary Jane at the end of October for pub gigs, including a twinning event in Durham on Monday 31st October featuring Juergen and Mary Jane with Durham folk musicians and poets. That followed on from a visit to Tuebingen in South Germany in early April 2011 by Keith Armstrong and photographer/artist Peter Dixon. The intrepid pair worked together on a touring display featuring Armstrong's poems and Dixon's photographs documenting the unique link between Tuebingen and Durham which was staged initially in the Durham Room at County Hall, Durham in November. Armstrong performed his poetry in cafes, bars and schools and met up with Tuebingen friends, old and new, with the multi-talented Dixon capturing all of it on film. 

This trip reciprocated a visit to Durham in November 2010 by Tuebingen poets Henning Ziebritzki and Carolyn Murphey Melchers, when Juergen Stuerm also took part in a series of pub performances. There was a special event at Clayport Library, Durham City on Monday November 1st with the Tuebingen poets and special guests from Durham, followed by a rousing session in the Dun Cow when Juergen, with Mary Jane, and his Durham counterparts, Gary Miller and Marie Little belted out their lively songs.

In addition to his most recent visit, Armstrong was in Tuebingen in May 2010 with Gary Miller for performances in his favourite Tuebingen bar ‘The Boulanger’ and at a local school. This followed a special guest appearance in 2009 at the biannual Book Festival, a reading with Tuebingen counterpart Eva Christina Zeller and a visit to local schools. Eva visited Durham for readings in schools and at a special event on May 13th 2009 at Clayport Library which also featured poets Katrina Porteous, Jackie Litherland, Cynthia Fuller, and William Martin, as well as Doctor Armstrong and music from the Durham Scratch Choir and Andy Jackson.

A highly successful series of events were held in 2007 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the literary/arts twinning established by Keith Armstrong when he first visited Tuebingen in 1987 for a month’s residency, supported by Durham County Council and Tuebingen’s Kulturamt. Since then, there have been readings and performances in pubs, universities and castles, schools, libraries, book festivals, jazz and cabaret clubs, even in Hermann Hesse’s old apartment, involving poets, writers, teachers and musicians from the twin partnerships of Durham and Tuebingen.

Tuebingen’s music duo Acoustic Storm, poet/translator Carolyn Murphey Melchers and Cultural Officer visited Durham and the North East in October/November 2007. The musicians performed in Durham schools and pubs and there was a special evening in Durham’s Clayport Library to celebrate the twinning, with Keith Armstrong launching his new Tuebingen poetry booklet and performances by poets Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Katrina Porteous, William Martin, Michael Standen, Ian Horn, Cynthia Fuller, Hugh Doyle and musicians Acoustic Storm, Marie Little and Gary Miller. Margit Aldinger of the Kulturamt in Tuebingen and Brian Stobie of the International Department, Durham County Council, also addressed the audience.

For the record, here's a list of those who have made it happen so far:

Tuebingen visitors to Durham since 1987:

Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Karin Miedler, Gerhard Oberlin, Uwe Kolbe, Johannes Bauer, Eva Christina Zeller, Simone Mittmann, Florian Werner, Juergen Sturm, Mary Jane, Wolf Abromeit, Christopher Harvie, Eberhard Bort, Marcus Hammerschmitt, Henning Ziebritzki, Andy and Alessandra Fazion Marx, Otto Buchegger, Tibor Schneider.

Durham visitors to Tuebingen since 1987:

Keith Armstrong, Michael Standen, Julia Darling, Andy Jackson, Fiona MacPherson, Katrina Porteous, Marie Little, Ian Horn, Alan C. Brown, Linda France, Jackie Litherland, Cynthia Fuller, Margaret Wilkinson, Jez Lowe, Jack Routledge, Gary Miller, Matthew Burge, David Stead, Hugh Doyle, Peter Dixon.

These events were supported by Tuebingen’s Kulturamt and Durham County Council.

FURTHER INFORMATION: NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS TEL. 0191 2529531.

HEXHAM TANS

'Hides lifted from a lime-pit were soaked for days, scraped and ‘bated’ in solutions of dog excrement and ground bark before hanging up to dry.'

You ancient company

of skinners and glovers,

you gossiping crafts.

You hatters and tanners,

leather-dressers and cutters,

we can hear you and sniff you in Hexham’s dank lanes.

You clockmakers and bookbinders,

pipemakers and joiners,

we touch your worksore hands.

You shoemakers and collarmakers,

weavers and saddlers,

we bear your burdens and your smiles.

You dressmakers,

ropeworkers,

cabinetmakers,

basketmakers.

Tinsmiths and

millwrights,

butchers and

engravers.

You 1000 sewing women in your homes,

you bakers and tapestry-makers,

you’ve led us here -

we worship you,

we drink your sweat.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

'Hexham had a leather trade of some antiquity, and it was certainly important in the 17th century. In the early 19th century about 1,200 out of Hexham's 6,000 inhabitants were involved in the leather trades. One firm alone made 50 dozen [pairs?] of gloves per week, and the overall total was 23,504 dozen [pairs?] per year in 1823, using some 98,000 skins. The Hexham glove making industry was heavily dependent upon outwork. There were, in 1823, 71 men and boys employed as leather dressers and glove cutters, 40 boys employed as dusters, and 1000 women in Hexham and the surrounding area were employed in domestic outwork i.e. sewing. The tanneries which mainly supplied the glovers only employed about 20 people.

The gloves, known as ‘Hexham Tans', were being mainly sent to the London Market, and then re-exported to America. However, during the course of the 19th century Hexham failed to develop machine cutting and sewing on the factory system, and glove making became yet another urbanised industry, especially in Leeds.'

IN GRONINGEN MUSEUM

(for Maria and Marieke)

Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers.

Pictures of the weary traveller

sleeping on a train,

slipping slowly down,

sipping seeping rain.

Images of a little boy

learning how to speak,

lips leaking words,

lilting leaping streets.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly.

Eyes floating in the museum

glance from another day,

gorgeous girls on fire,

glaring golden rays.

Flames of a shattered light

bursting on the walls,

buds blazing with life,

blooming beauty curls.

In her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights.

Strands of a lover’s hair

playing in my face,

painful pangs of lust,

pulling parting lace.

Curves of a winter’s bones

thread through my breath,

tears trickling away,

teasing threadbare dress.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.

Shards of sunlit ale

flickering in my throat,

feelings filtering in the air,

fear framing boats.

Canals of soaking memories

drowning in my eyes,

drifting darlings of the past,

draped delicate thighs.

A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high.

Tunes from the fields

call a city’s voices,

coursing chords of love,

crazy calming noise.

Choirs of Groningen fish

hollering in the dawn,

heavenly hearts of folk,

history’s hopes are torn.

They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

IN THE FIRE STATION, WHITLEY BAY

The screen

in the corner

flashes celebrity images

above the hunched heads

of craggy regulars.

Subtitles punctuate

the horror of Syria,

shallowness of Beckham’s mouth

gabbing

like a demented fish

over supping plebs.

Their talk is of aches and pains

and scraping through,

their question time has no answers,

only weary

resignations.

The TV mocks

the ordinary

struggles

to bring up soft babies

with tough futures.

The thing

is forced upon us,

dumped upon us,

scoffing

at the weak

on cheap beer.

It says:

DAVID CAMERON IS IN WASHINGTON .

Well, we are drinking in Whitley Bay

and HE,

he can piss off.

In the Fire Station,

we have thirsts to slake,

bets to be placed

on whether we’ll make it

through to another tomorrow

just the same

and just as unjust.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

VIEW FROM ZOLLERNBLICK

View from Zollernblick is the second collection of essays based on the European Regionalism symposia at Freudenstadt in Baden-Württ temberg, organised since 1991 by Christopher Harvie and Eberhard Bort. Networking Europe: Essays on Regionalism and Social Democracy was published by Liverpool University Press in 2000.

View from Zollernblick Regional Perspectives in Europe. List of Contributors: Eberhard Bort, Peter McCarey, Wolfgang Mössinger, Alison Harvie, David Walker, Tom Hubbard, Paul Gillespie, Klaus Stolz, Lesley Riddoch, Robin McAlpine, James Mitchell, Christopher Harvie, Tom Gallagher, John Osmond, Ian S Wood, Thomas Leuerer, Eberhard Bort, Peter Conradi and Helmut Doka, Henry Cowper, Terry Brotherstone, Patricia Conlan, Paul Salveson, Douglas McLeod, Noel Spare, Irene Quaile-Kersken, Frank Conlan, Stefan Büttner, Sarah Boyack, Richard Demarco, Owen Dudley Edwards, Tessa Ransford, Mario Relich, Allan Massie, Neal Ascherson and Keith Armstrong.

Again, an array of regional perspectives on constitutional politics, policy areas and cultural connections reflect the lively and diverse conversations so characteristic for these unique annual meetings of minds in the Black Forest, with contributions by academics, journalists academics, journalists, writers and politicians from Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland, Germany and other European regions. 

This book is also a Festschrift for Chris Harvie who, as a Scottish historian, a Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen, and a Member of the Scott ish Parliament, has been the spiritus rector - or Lord of Misrule - at the Zollernblick gatherings. 

£14.99

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