posted on 20 Jul 2019

Tressell: The Real Story of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Dave Harker

There’s something almost legendary about Robert Tressell’s only book, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It’s a book that became obligatory reading for anyone involved in or even remotely interested in trade unions, UK socialism or what is broadly referred to  as ‘the Labour Movement’ and is regularly given the accolade of being the first genuinely proletarian novel.

But it’s also a book with a rather mysterious past – published posthumously and appearing initially in a brutally edited version that didn’t see a ‘true’ version released until the late 1950s. It’s author too is enigmatic – Robert Tressell was in fact the pen name of Robert Noonan, a skilled sign-writer and painter/decorator who lived variously in South Africa, Ireland and Hastings. But like so many working class people of the early 20th century, he didn’t leave too much by way of a documented trail to help prospective biographers.

Dave Harker has set about trying to piece together what does exist into a coherent whole and it’s clearly a labour of love. Many of the sources for what is known about Noonan/Tressell are word of mouth; tapping into the memories of his daughter in particular and into the research of Fred (F.C.) Ball who was the first to have a shot at producing a biography and who is generally acknowledged as one of the prime authorities on Tressell and RTP. But what I think Harker especially brings to subject is his ability to locate the author and the development of his ideas in the context of the birth of socialism and Left thinking at the beginning of the 20th century.

It’s commonplace today to be amused by the seemingly endless schisms that the Left can create within its own ranks but what this book shows us is that from the very outset, it was ever thus. And Noonan/Tressell was very much part of the debate – something that gets reflected in the text of the book:

“ The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is characterised by a highly contradictory and selective realism, and its socialism is deeply contradictory and problematical.”

Harker continues the theme of placing the book and its influence in the context of the changing political debates within the Left as the 20th century rolls on. What I found really interesting was the way in which the book’s content and guiding philosophy seem to become less important as time goes by and the notion that this is a factual and accurate portrait of working class life and exploitation in early 20th century capitalism simply gets accepted as fact. By the late 20th century it’s almost not necessary to have read the book as long as you can name drop it – RTP becomes a sort of shorthand for legitimate proletarian literature that speaks truth to power.

The review of Tressell’s book on the Worker’s Liberty website reflects one of the real strengths of the novel – the authenticity of the working environment:

‘RTP captures the flavour of working life. The characters - Crass, Misery, Sweater, etc. - are instantly recognisable, as are their political discussions at tea breaks and in the pub. The character closest to the author is Owen. He sees the importance of the bourgeois press, the 'Daily Chloroform' or the 'Daily Obscurer', the views of which are parroted by the workers. Workers such as Sawkins (the Sneak) who says, "We're over-run with 'em! Nearly all the waiters and the cooks where we was working last month is foreigners."’

And it is this aspect of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists that often causes discomfort – Tressell/Noonan was clearly deeply disappointed by the working class’ ability to be their own worst enemy. The character of Owen, who is undoubtedly largely based on the author himself, is at the centre of the famous expositions of Marxist economics ( the famous ‘money trick’ episode for example) but he’s an exhausted, dying man who spends much of his life being disappointed by his fellow workers:

"As Owen thought of his child's future, there sprang up within him a feeling of hatred and fury against his fellow workmen. They were the enemy. The ragged trousered philanthropists, who not only quietly submitted like so many cattle to their slavery for the benefit of others but defended it and opposed and ridiculed any suggestion of reform. They were the real oppressors." 

This was a view of the working class heavily influenced by the Social Democratic Foundation that Noonan/Tressell belonged to and one which was heavily criticised by the likes of Engels who saw them as quasi-religious evangelists.

Unlike the sparse details of the biographical material, Harker is on more solid ground when it comes to documenting the fascinating history of the way the book found its way into print after Noonan’s death and the various terrible assaults on the text that publishers and editors thought were necessary in order to find an audience. The fact that there’s anything approaching a full, unedited final version is pretty amazing really and is down to some degree to the work of Fred Ball. The version that we now have is as close to the final manuscript as its possible to get and includes all the ‘repetitions’ that previous editors had thought unacceptable. Kathleen, Noonan’s daughter and the first custodian of the manuscript, said that she thought the repetitions in the script were deliberate because her father always believed it was necessary to tell people the same thing several times in order for them to take notice and remember it.

I found Harker’s book a pretty awe-inspiring piece of scholarship – not just for the light it casts on book and author but because it is in many ways a potted history of the Left in the 20th century and a graphic depiction of how a book like RTP can become a unifying force amongst those who share a common destination but differ violently on how to get there.

 

Terry Potter

July 2019