1. Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford was an English socialist campaigner, journalist, and author in the United Kingdom.
35 Facts About Robert Blatchford
1. 2.
Robert Blatchford was noted as a prominent atheist, nationalist, and opponent of eugenics.
3.
Robert Blatchford continued her acting career for nine years, and Blatchford spent much of his early life close to the stage.
4.
Robert Blatchford was first employed as an odd job boy in a lithographic printing works, for which he earned a salary of eighteen pence a week.
5.
At the brush maker factory, Robert Blatchford met Sarah Crossley, whom he would marry in 1880.
6.
On May Day 1871, Robert Blatchford walked to Hull, then continued on to London via Yarmouth.
7.
Robert Blatchford served with the Irish regiment 103rd Dublin Fusiliers and the 96th Regiment of Foot.
8.
The pleasures of army life stimulated some of Robert Blatchford's best writing, but in 1877 he left the army to become a clerk in the Weaver Navigation Company.
9.
Around this time Robert Blatchford became frustrated with his job and decided that he wished to become an artist.
10.
Robert Blatchford's writing career began in 1882 at the Yorkshireman newspaper, where he had a sketch published.
11.
Robert Blatchford obtained his first full-time writing job through his friend Alexander Muttock Thompson, who worked for the Manchester Sporting Chronicle.
12.
In 1885, Robert Blatchford began to write for the Manchester Sunday Chronicle.
13.
The largest political influence on Robert Blatchford was the South Salford Social Democratic Federation.
14.
In 1890, while based in Manchester, Robert Blatchford became actively involved in the Labour Movement.
15.
Robert Blatchford founded the Manchester branch of the Fabian Society, and launched a weekly socialist newspaper, The Clarion, in 1891.
16.
Robert Blatchford supported the Boer War, which lost him support from some sections of the labour movement.
17.
Robert Blatchford denounced his "cosmopolitan friends, who are so cosmopolitan that they can admire every country but their own, and love all men except Englishmen".
18.
Robert Blatchford criticised the "smug, self-righteous prigs" in the labour movement who, while "despising military glory, are yet so eloquent over the marksmanship and courage of the Boers".
19.
Robert Blatchford was critical of the Labour Party, which was founded in 1900, for what he perceived as its complete subservience to Liberalism, especially in its Cobdenite internationalist views on foreign policy.
20.
When Joseph Chamberlain launched his crusade for Tariff Reform in 1903, Robert Blatchford's response was ambiguous.
21.
Robert Blatchford said he did not believe in tariff reform as applied by Conservatives, but that a socialist government would find it a necessary instrument.
22.
Robert Blatchford justified his attacks as being because Labour was too close to the Liberals.
23.
Robert Blatchford was a vegetarian and in Merrie England he mentioned the economic, health and humanitarian benefits of a vegetarian diet.
24.
The Clarion Movement was split when Robert Blatchford swung his paper in support of the British participation in the First World War.
25.
The circulation for The Clarion fell by 10,000 in a week but when in September 1914 Robert Blatchford wrote a page of The Weekly Dispatch every Sunday its circulation rose by 50,000.
26.
Robert Blatchford visited France in October 1914 and was shocked by the conduct of the Germans in waging war.
27.
In 1915, Robert Blatchford formed the National Democratic and Labour Party as a splinter from the right wing of the British Socialist Party and for the 1918 General Election, the NDP stood in eighteen constituencies and returned nine Members of Parliament with 156,834 votes.
28.
Robert Blatchford's wife died in 1921, and later he took an interest in Spiritualism.
29.
When Sir Edward Hulton sold most of his newspapers to Lord Rothermere, Robert Blatchford wrote a letter to The Morning Post:.
30.
Later on, Robert Blatchford believed Churchill's conduct redeemed what he considered his past political errors.
31.
On 17 December 1943, Robert Blatchford died in Horsham, Sussex at the age of 92.
32.
Robert Blatchford based his appeal on the principles of human justice.
33.
Robert Blatchford preached Socialism as a system of industrial co-operation for the common good.
34.
Mr Robert Blatchford is still living, hale and hearty, his mental powers undiminished aged 83.
35.
Only the men who were in the Socialist movement in those days can know the great part Robert Blatchford took in making it popular, and of the personal devotion he inspired by his writings.