International Socialism
In 1848 John Bedford Leno joined the First International, which had been started by his friend, George Julian Harney. He attended International Meetings (the first international) at Jacques, a cafe kept by a French exile in Chapel St. just off of Oxford Street, London.
After one such meeting he was approached by the Russian revolutionary, Alexander Herzen, who inquired whether he would mind running an underground printing office for him. It would be used to print leaflets which were to be used to flood Russia with revolutionary literature. John Bedford Leno eagerly agreed and they arranged to meet again. Herzen never showed up and it seems he had been forced to flee, later being caught and thrown into prison in Siberia.
John Bedford Leno met Karl Marx several times while he was in London. After a public meeting of the Reform League in 1855 an impromptu committee meeting was held in the parlour of a tavern in Chancery Lane. Here John Bedford Leno reminisced about conversing with the Russian who he found to "be deeply interested, a firm believer in the doctrines and who never ceased to advocate".
When Napoleon III visited England in 1858 Leno arranged for an "appropriate welcome" to be made. Leno had a hatred of Napoleon because of his "betrayal of the French Republic" (Napoleon became Emperor of the French after a coup in 1851), and believed he was no friend of England. This view was shared by other Chartists, Lord John Russell, Gladstone and John Bright. Leno printed 10,000 leaflets advertising Napoleon's visit and called for demonstrations at Cheapside and Long Acre. The French refugees in London responded in great numbers, wanting revenge for their expatriation. Napoleon was the main subject of debate in London debating halls at this time and it was in one of these that Leno gave a speech arguing for regicide in certain circumstances i.e., when a monarch used a nation's troops for their own or unconstitional ends, as Napoleon had done.
John Bedford Leno was also a Delegate of the International and a member of the committee appointed to meet Lajos Kossuth in 1851 and Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1864, the Hungarian and Italian revolutionaries.
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Famous quotes containing the word socialism:
“This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)