BLATCHFORD, Robert, and others.

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Blatchford family collection. An extensive archive of the personal, literary, and political activities of the Blatchford family from the mid-19th to the late 20th centuries.Robert Blatchford (1851-1943) emerged from a brush-maker's apprenticeship in Halifax to become a highly influential socialist campaigner, journalist, and author. Philip Snowden, Labour's first Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote of Blatchford's pre-war campaigning that "No man did more than he to make Socialism understood by the working man" (p. 58).In 1890, Blatchford helped found the Clarion, a weekly socialist newspaper: in 1893, a series of articles were reprinted as Merrie England, a primer on socialism. The Manchester Guardian famously wrote that "for every British convert made by Das Kapital there were a hundred made by Merrie England" (quoted in Thompson, p. 101).Although Blatchford disliked party politics, he founded the Manchester branches of both the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party and maintained close friendships with many prominent Labour politicians. In addition to his political campaigning, Blatchford was a prominent atheist, vegetarian, and opponent of eugenics.This archive illustrates the familial life of Robert Blatchford and his children. It reveals the extent to which Blatchford's devoted family circle provided a balance to the intense pressures of his professional life. Blatchford married Sarah Crossley, whom he had met during his ill-fated apprenticeship, in 1880. The c

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