RedAnarchist
26th January 2004, 11:55
'A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. The race that lives in those ruinist cottages or in dark wet cellars in measureless filth and stench, must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity'.
The lowest stage of humanity - the words of Fredrich Engels (1820-1895) from his classic 'The Conditions of the Working Class in England' written in 1844, and that particular piece describes the worst part of the new industrial Manchester – an area called ‘Little Ireland’ where now stands Oxford Road Railway Station. Engels was a German émigré living in Manchester to manage the family’s textile mill in Weest, Salford. It was in Manchester that Fredrich met another German émigré - Karl Marx (1818-1883). It may well have been the appalling conditions of the new working class that could have been the spark for these two men to create Marxism and subsequently communist revolution. Legend has it that it was in Chethams Library that the ideas of revolution crystalised in their minds. Engels and Marx worked together on the communist manifesto of 1848 at the library and it is thought that Engels’ direct personal experience of conditions in Manchester fed into his political thinking and by that route into Marx’s as well. He was responding in a very human way to the misery and squalor that was all around in a city that was changing by the day where family groups huddled together under the same roof, in damp, insanitary conditions.
Thanks to Engels and others who wrote down what they saw, we can begin to understand just what was happening in Manchester and the rest of the Lancashire mill towns in the 19th century.
The lowest stage of humanity - the words of Fredrich Engels (1820-1895) from his classic 'The Conditions of the Working Class in England' written in 1844, and that particular piece describes the worst part of the new industrial Manchester – an area called ‘Little Ireland’ where now stands Oxford Road Railway Station. Engels was a German émigré living in Manchester to manage the family’s textile mill in Weest, Salford. It was in Manchester that Fredrich met another German émigré - Karl Marx (1818-1883). It may well have been the appalling conditions of the new working class that could have been the spark for these two men to create Marxism and subsequently communist revolution. Legend has it that it was in Chethams Library that the ideas of revolution crystalised in their minds. Engels and Marx worked together on the communist manifesto of 1848 at the library and it is thought that Engels’ direct personal experience of conditions in Manchester fed into his political thinking and by that route into Marx’s as well. He was responding in a very human way to the misery and squalor that was all around in a city that was changing by the day where family groups huddled together under the same roof, in damp, insanitary conditions.
Thanks to Engels and others who wrote down what they saw, we can begin to understand just what was happening in Manchester and the rest of the Lancashire mill towns in the 19th century.