Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

Roses and Revolutionaries

In 1992, an estate agent in Forest Hall, a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, advertised for sale a nine- bed-roomed property, Earlington House, for the then not inconsiderable sum of £200,000. The house had served as a home for First World War soldiers and subsequently as a ballet school until it became a private residence. The house was sold with an acre of land in which there was a Viking grave and headstone. The Agent’s particulars of sale included an attractive feature- the property had once been “owned and farmed by the first communists to form a commune in Britain”. It’s not clear what the property was used for before 1895 when Franz Kapir, an exiled Bohemian tailor, and his comrades leased the house and the twenty acres of surrounding land. Kapir had fled from Bohemia to Newcastle in 1893. As well as a tailor, Kapir who called himself Frank Kapper was a professional agitator. He once encouraged unemployed workers to raid food shops to feed their children. His ideas included the establishment of a cooperative farm whose members could live and work together share any profits. Kapper’ s ideas came straight from those of Peter Kropotkin. Prince Peter Kropotkin The Russian anarchist was then in exile living at the hotbed of anarchism Bromley, Kent. He wrote to Kapper and his colleagues on the 16th February 1895. They had asked Kropotkin to become treasurer of the Clousden Hill Commune. Kropotkin’ s ideas that so attracted Kapper were those on scientific horticulture. In the letter Kropotkin refused the job of treasurer, but advised the communists: “That a new community, instead of imitating the example of our forefathers, and starting with extensive agriculture, with all its hardships, accidents, drawbacks, and amount of hard work required, very often superior to the forces of the colonists, ought to open new ways of production as it opens new ways of consumption. It must, it seems to me, start with intensive agriculture - that is, market gardening culture, aided as much as possible by culture under glass. Besides the advantages of security in the crops, obtained by their variety and the very means of culture, this sort of culture has the advantage of allowing the community to utilise even the weakest forces; and every one knows how weakened most of the town workers are by the homicidal conditions under which most of the industries are now organised.” The entire document can be found in the Kropotkin archive. Kapper’ s original horticultural idea was to plant vines in glasshouses heated with local coal to produce wine for the mining communities. That plan was soon abandoned. Instead, the glasshouses that were erected were planted with 4000 rose bushes. The flowers were hawked by the children of the commune to Newcastle where they were sold to couples attending the regular weekend dances. At its peak, the commune had about thirty members. Clousden Hill became an essential stopover for anarchists and revolutionaries on their “grand tour”. Jim Connell visited the commune with anarchists from all over Europe, the United States and South America. After a socialist newspaper trumpeted the wonders of the Commune, an entire Austrian village decided to emigrate to Clousden Hill, though happily they never arrived. The Commune members were never great agriculturalists. One described how “the fowls would not lay, bees refused to swarm, rabbits ran away and ducks died. One of the newly purchased cows proved to be blind, another went mad, while a third died young when calving”. Nigel Todd, a local historian, who has researched the history of the Clousden Hill Community, gives two reasons for its decline. “They were constantly short of capital. The members also had great difficulties in reaching decisions. The Commune’s rules meant that each decision required unanimity amongst the members. The meetings were interminable. They included in their meetings visitors who may have been at Clousden Hill for a few weeks!” Eventually Kapper and the original members left, and their project became a “cooperative” enterprise run by a Dane called Rasmussen. That cooperative undertaking eventually went bankrupt in 1902. And what was to have been a utopian commune as famous as Robert Owen’s “New Harmony” fizzled out. New Harmony Cheers t

posted by Tony @ Thursday, October 21, 2004