KARL MARX
A LONDON WORKERS' MEETING
London,  January 28, 1862
As everyone knows,  the work ing class, which is such a predominating constituent of a
society that since time immemorial has not  had a peasant
estate, is not  represented in Parliament. Still, it is not  with out  political influence. No  important innovation, no  decisive
measure has ever been carried out  in this country  without
pressure from without. Either the opposition  needed such
pressure against the Government  or the Government  needed
it against the opposition. By  pressure from without the Eng lishman means great, extra-parliamentary popular demon strations, which naturally cannot be staged without  the active
participation of the working  class. Pitt knew  how  to use the
masses against the Whigs  in his anti-jacobin war. The Catholic Emancipation, the Reform  Bill, the repeal of the Corn
Laws, the Ten Hours  Bill, the war against Russia and the
rejection of Palmerston’s Conspiracy Bill174 were all the
fruit of stormy  extra-parliamentary demonstrations, in which
the working  class, sometimes artificially incited, sometimes
acting spontaneously, now  as persona dramatis, now  as the
chorus, played either the main part or, if the circumstances
so  demanded, the noisy  part. So  much  the more  striking is
the attitude of the English working  class in regard to the
American Civil War.
Unbelievable and daily increasing distress exists among
the workers  in the northern  manufacturing districts, caused

by  the mills being closed or put  on  part-time, the blockade
of the slave States serving as a pretext. The other sections of
the working  class do not  suffer to the same extent; but  they
suffer keenly from the repercussion of the crisis in the cotton
industry on  the other industries, from the drop in exports  of
their own  products to the northern  United States as a result
of the Morrill tariff and from the complete cessation of this
export  to southern  United States as a result of the blockade.
At the present moment,  English intervention in America
has accordingly become a bread-and-butter question  for the
working  class. Moreover,  no  means of inflaming its wrath
against the United States is scorned by  its “natural superiors”. The only  large and widely circulating workers ’ organ
still in existence, Reynolds's Newspaper, was bought  six
months  ago for the express purpose  of reiterating weekly in
raging diatribes the caeterum censeo175 of English intervention. The working  class is therefore fully aware that the
Government  is only  waiting for the intervention cry from
below,  the pressure from without to put  an end to the Amer ican blockade and to distress in England. Under these circumstances, one cannot but  admire the obstinacy with which
the working  class keeps silent, or breaks its silence only  to
raise its voice against intervention and for the United States.
This is a new,  splendid proof of the indestructible thorough ness of the English popular masses, that thoroughness  which
is the secret of England’s greatness and which, to speak in
the hyperbolic language of Mazzini, made the English private
seem a demigod during the Crimean War and the Indian
insurrection.
The following report of a mass meeting of workers held
yesterday in Marylebone, the most  populous  borough  of
London,  may serve to characterise the “policy” of the work ing class:
Mr. Steadman, the chairman, opened the meeting with
the remark that the business  before them was to decide how
the English people were to receive Mr. Mason and
Mr. Slidell.
They had to consider whether these gentlemen came here to free the
slaves from their chains or  to forge a new  link for these chains.

Mr. Yates:
“On  the present occasion the working  class ought  not  to keep silent.
The two  gentlemen who  are sailing across the Atlantic to our  land are
agents of tyrannical slave-holding states. They are in open  rebellion
against the lawful constitution of their country  and come here to induce
our  government  to recognise the independence of the slave states. It is
the duty of the working  class to voice its opinion  now,  if the English
Government  is not  to believe that its foreign policy is a matter of
indifference to us. We  must  show  that the money  expended by  this people
on  the emancipation of the slaves cannot be allowed to go  to waste. If
our  government  were acting honestly, it would  be supporting  the North ern States heart and soul in the suppression  of this terrible rebellion.”
After a detailed defence of the Northern  States and the
observation that “Mr. Lovejoy ’s violent tirade against Eng land was provoked  by  the slanders of the English press” , the
speaker proposed  the following motion:
“This meeting resolves that Mason  and Slidell, agents of the rebels,
now  en route from America to England, are wholly  unworthy  of the
moral sympathies of the working  class of this country, since they are
slave-holders as well as the confessed agents of the despotic faction
that at this moment  is engaged in rebellion against the republic of the
United States and is the sworn  enemy  of the social and political rights
of the working  class in all countries.”
Mr. Whynne seconded the motion,  declaring, however,
that as a matter of course every personal insult to Mason
and Slidell was to be avoided during their stay in London.
Mr. Nichols, a resident “of the extreme North of the
United States” , as he himself announced, was in fact sent
to the meeting by  Mr. Yancey and Mr. Mann  as the
advocatus diaboli. He  objected to the motion:
“I am here, because you  have free speech here. In our  country  the
Government  has not  permitted anybody to open  his mouth  for the last
three months. Liberty has been crushed not  only  in the South,  but  also
in the North. Many  Northerners  are opposed  to the war, but  they dare
not  say so. No  less than two  hundred newspapers have been suppressed
or their premises wrecked by  mobs.  The Southern  States have the same
right to secede from the North  as the United States had to separate from
England.”
Despite Mr. Nichols’s eloquence the first motion  was carried unanimously. He  then rose once more  to state that if
they held it against Mr. Mason  and Mr. Slidell that they

were slave-holders, the same reproach would  apply to
Washington,  Jefferson, etc.
Mr. Beales refuted Nichols in a detailed speech and then
moved  a second motion:
“Whereas the Times and other misleading journals are making ill-
concealed attempts to misrepresent English public opinion  on  all American
affairs, to involve us  in war with millions of our  kinsmen  on  any pretext
whatever, and to take advantage of the dangers now  imperilling the
republic to defame democratic institutions—
“therefore this meeting considers it the particular duty of the workers,
since they are not  represented in the Senate of the nation, to declare their
sympathy  with the United States in its gigantic struggle for the maintenance of the Union,  to denounce the base dishonesty and advocacy of
slave-holding indulged in by  the Times and kindred aristocratic journals,
to express themselves most  emphatically in favour of a policy of strictest
non-intervention in the affairs of the United States, in favour of settling
all disputes that may arise by  commissioners  or courts of arbitration appointed by  both  sides, to protest against the war policy of the organ of
the stock-exchange sharks, and to manifest the warmest sympathy  with
the endeavours of the Abolitionists to bring  about a final solution of the
problem  of slavery.”
This motion  was unanimously  adopted, as was the concluding proposal “to transmit copies of the resolutions adopted to the American Government  through  Mr. Adams as an
expression of the sentiments and opinions  of the working
class of England” .
on  January 28, 1862
Published in Die Presse Translated from the German
No.  32, February 2, 1862