'[Harry] McShane began his education in Marxism by reading Justice and The Socialist, the respective organs of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist Labour Party. But the former, he found, preached a "narrow stupid Marxism",while the latter printed page after grey page on the materialist conception of history. Even with A.P. Hazell's penny pamphlet, A Summary of Marx's 'Capital', it took him a full week to master the labour theory of value. Like most working-class readers he preferred Blatchford's Clarion, where an unideological socialism was leavened with breezy articles on literature, freethought and science'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry McShane Print: Serial / periodical
'After a miserable Catholic school education...periodic unemployment allowed [Joseph Toole] to study in the Manchester Reference Library. There he discovered, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mill, Emerson, Dickens, Morris, Blatchford, Shaw and Wells, and of course John Ruskin..."Study always left me with a deep feeling that there was so much amiss with the world. It seemed that it had been started at the wrong end, and that it was everybody's business to put the matter right".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book
'When I was living in Sallie's home one of the male boarders who called himself a Socialist showed me some articles in a Sunday paper written by Robert Blatchford, "Nunquam", dealing with slums and sweated industries. These articles excited much interest, and many were the arguments in Mrs. J's house as to the rights or wrongs of the matter.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Newspaper
'When, a year later, a senior apprentice -a Clarion Scout -gave me a copy of the penny edition of Blatchford's "Merrie England" of which he had sold a large quantity "round the frames", its matter was so very different from what its title had led me to expect that I put it aside unread. Years later circumstances caused me to hunt out this copy of "Merrie England" and give it serious consideration. I read it with avidity from end to end. In less than an hour it had done my business completely. Why I would hardly so much as look at a book which, later on, had so enduring an effect on me is worth puzzling out.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'Do you read Blatchford in the Weekly Despatch? He is very good this week on "The Danger of the Submarine" and warns us again.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry William Williamson Print: Newspaper
