THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS
Robert Tressell and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Mugsborough-on-Sea
by Steve Peak
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, HASTINGS BECAME A DIFFERENT PLACE. A PAINTER AND DECORATOR IN THE LOCAL BUILDING TRADE FOUND LIFE IN THE TOWN SO DREADFUL THAT HE STARTED PUTTING TOGETHER A VIVID DESCRIPTION OF IT IN A NOVEL THAT WAS TO CHANGE
BRITISH SOCIETY –
HASTINGS INTO MUGSBOROUGH. AND TURN
R
obert Tressell’s picture of the horrors and miseries of Edwardian Mugsborough in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists inspired the 1926 General Strike, the election of the 1945 Labour Government that created today’s welfare state, and the rise of militant trade unionism in the 1960s and 70s which seemed to almost threaten capitalism itself. Labour’s veteran leader Michael Foot called it ‘the bible of trade union organisers a n d
working class agitators’. Tony Benn has come to Hastings many times to pay tribute to Tressell, attracting large crowds to hear his speeches. 8
THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘05
The Original Ragged TRousered Philanthropists
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was first published in 1914 in edited form, and had an immediate impact, despite costing six shillings, a day’s pay in the building trade.
today’s New Labourites find it uncomfortable. The sentiments are too blunt, its story-line unsophisticated, the emotions too crude and the whole thing out-of-date.
Since then, the book has appeared in 110 different formats, reprints and languages — including Japanese!
But in Hastings the book is just as alive and powerful now as when it first appeared. And on the streets of the town it is clear The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was as much a factual documentary as a novel. Many of the buildings and settings described by Tressell can still be seen, along with descendents of the philanthropists.
The first full version of the 250,000 word manuscript was published in 1955, by the left-leaning Lawrence and Wishart. Penguin began publishing it in shortened form in 1940, first bringing it out as an unedited Classic in September 2004. Oxford University Press has scheduled its own first edition for the summer of 2005. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a working class novel: a story with a message, written for ordinary people, by an ordinary person. But many of
What was it that Tressell saw in this rundown seaside town that turned him into a revolutionary socialist? And what can we see of those things today? Tressell himself was not what he seemed. He was not a local working man — and his real name was not Tressell. He was born in Dublin in