Page 25 - History 2020

provokes his readers by describing himself as both a Tory (“I am, and my father was

before me, a violent Tory of the old school”) and a Communist; “the reddest of the
red”. Morris was clearer about this: he defined himself as a Communist and a
Marxist. But he has also been called “Ruskin in action”. Indeed, it could be that said
that his mission was to reconcile Ruskin and Marx.

William Morris: England is a garden
I’ve always found Morris one of those titanic Victorian polymaths who achieved in so
many diverse fields - designer, artist, writer and socialist - that I’ve never quite got to

grips with him. Like Ruskin, his vision ran directly contrary to modern industrial
civilisation. The pioneers of socialism tended to argue that the key task was to
redistribute the wealth produced by capitalism. Morris went much deeper than that.
Possibly more than anyone apart from Marx, he explores the very nature of wealth,
work and production. And, like Ruskin, he takes as his benchmark, not politics or
economics, but art.

William Morris is a big deal on Amazon. When you first go in, you get scented drawer
liners, beeswax wraps, posters, cushion covers, prints, make-up bags, tapestry
shoulder bags, umbrellas, books of wallpaper patterns, a collection of postcards, a
calendar, art and craft books and a poetry collection. Only then comes the book I’m
focusing on here: News From Nowhere (1890). This presents a Utopian vision of a
future socialist Britain. Yet Morris the artist lies at the heart of this too. I’m not clear
what he’d have made of all this mass-production of his designs; above all he was the
prophet of the hand-made and the enemy of the factory system.

Morris was born to wealth; his inheritance meant he never had to work; yet he died
relatively young, it is assumed worn out by a lifetime of hard work. He was a driven
man. He wrote poetry, fiction, books and articles on art, architecture, crafts and
design and the best-known utopia in modern English literature. He researched,
taught himself and single-handedly revived long-extinct crafts in hand weaving and

printing. He was entirely self-taught. He founded a successful business designing,
making and selling hand-crafted luxury products and later a limited-edition hand
printing press. In addition to all this, he earned a national reputation as a political
activist and a leading figure in the revival of socialism in the later Victorian era. As
well as designing, writing and running his businesses, he toured and lectured,
marched and demonstrated. He was caught up in “Bloody Sunday” (19 November
th
1887) one of the biggest and most violent protest meetings of the 19 century,
where police fought with demonstrators as cavalry and infantry looked on; George
Bernard Shaw and Eleanor Marx were there. Next day in another protest, a

demonstrator was killed by a police horse; Morris spoke at his funeral. And beyond