Page 26 - History 2020

all this, he founded the first pressure group to protect historic buildings and to

protect them from over-zealous Victorian restorers.

Morris was the first to say “England is a garden.” The quote comes from News from
Nowhere (1890), Morris’ utopian novel. In News from Nowhere a Londoner awakes in
the future. He adopts the name “Mr Guest” and is shown around, taken on a small-
boat trip via the Thames by a group who are going north to help with the harvest.
Industrial civilisation has passed away. In its place is a new world, created by a period
of revolution and civil war. It is rural, agricultural, peaceful, harmonious in an almost

child-like naivety, simpler and above all beauty is part of everyday life and work.

Morris takes his starting-point from Ruskin: “The lesson which Ruskin teachers is that
art is the expression of man’s pleasure in labour; that it is possible for man to rejoice
in his work. Unless man’s work becomes again a pleasure to him, all must toil and live
in pain.” If not, “the result of thousands of years of man’s efforts on earth must be
universal and degradation.”

Work, which Morris never needed to do, was the heart of his socialist vision. In News
from Nowhere work is undertaken voluntarily, according to people’s aptitudes and
wishes. People take pleasure in getting strong and fit from spells of road repair and
harvesting which they undertake part time. Clothing is simple yet colourfully
embroidered. People use simple products which are hand-made yet beautifully
decorated. Money is not used; people barter their goods and services. Beauty in
architecture abounds. Factories and factory towns are no more, though a few

machines are used when their benefits are proven. Rural values and country life have
taken over. The false needs of the emerging consumer society of modern times have
disappeared; the people have decided to produce only what they need for a good life
for all.

Guest awakens back in his own time. The precise details of how the Revolution will

lead to this future utopian society and it will operate are hazy. Morris is often
accused of being naïve and sentimental. But describing the political nuts and bolts is
not his purpose. He himself said that the only way to judge a utopia is to ask what it
reveals about the temperament of the author. News from Nowhere reveals Morris as
a visionary. The novel is a vivid dream-like, visionary challenge to the most basic
assumptions underlying Victorian society.

There are obstacles for the modern reader. Morris loves dropping in alarming
medieval words, quoth he; Guest enjoys being out-a-doors; he goes a-shopping.

Remarkably, however much has changed in this much-changed futurist utopia, the