Post by FKoE unlogged on Jun 24, 2004 15:06:38 GMT -5
ONE hundred years ago, the great and the good watched the King lay the foundation stone for Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, but before that there was a secret ceremony for the city's poor.
ALL the toffs from the fine city of empire, the merchants and the ladies in their fur stoles, tossed gold coins into the hole, where the foundation stone was to be laid to a grand house of God.
Perhaps they thought the money would buy them favoured places in Heaven, just as it had on Earth.
But two pals, one Protestant and the other Catholic, whose early hatred for each other had been crushed by their common faith in Socialism, felt differently about this cathedral being built in Liverpool.
Was it not the sweat and the blood of poor men that would soak into the great sandstone blocks of the largest Anglican cathedral in the world?
But there would be no mention of such people, or their deaths and injuries, on the foundation stone to be unveiled by King Edward VII accompanied by Queen Alexandra.
Jim Larkin, the trade union leader, and Fred Bower, one of the highly-skilled stonemasons working on building, often talked along these lines.
They had known each other since childhood in Liverpool's Dingle area. At first their different branches of Christianity had made them enemies. They had "wanted to kill each other", Bower was later to write.
But that was "infantile ignorance", soon overcome by a shared desire to improve the wretched conditions of the masses.
Larkin, a docker and impassioned waterfront orator, who would become one of the most distinguished trade union leaders of his generation, walked around the site.
"Within a stone's throw from here, human beings are being housed in slums not fit for swine," he observed.
What could be done? Larkin and Bower decided to hold their own foundation ceremony on June 27, 1904, three weeks before the King, Queen, the civic dignitaries, and all their flunkies.
Bower, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871, but reared in Liverpool, began composing a message "from the wage slaves employed on the erection of this cathedral" to a future socialist society.
In his use of "trust", in the following passage, Bower means monopoly capitalism.
"This message, written on trust-produced paper with trust-produced ink, is to tell ye how we of today are at the mercy of trusts," he wrote. "Building fabrics, clothing, food, fuel, transport, are all in the hands of money-mad, soul-destroying trusts. We can only sell our labour power as wage slaves on their terms. The money trusts today own us. In your own day, you will, thanks to the efforts of past and present agitators for economic freedom, own trusts. Yours will indeed, compared to ours, be a happier existence. See to it, therefore, that ye, too, work for the betterment of all, and so justify your existence by leaving the world the better for your having lived in it. Thus and thus only shall come about the Kingdom of God, or Good, on Earth. Hail, comrades, and farewell."
The message, along with a copy of the Clarion and the Labour Leader, were placed in a biscuit tin and covered. On July 19, the foundation stone was lowered on top of it, giving Liverpool the Secret of the Stone.
The secret held until 1936 when it was revealed in Bower's autobiography, Rolling Stonemason, which has been compared in its descriptive strength and sympathy for the oppressed to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist By Robert Tressell, the pen-name of Robert Noonan, the Irish house-painter, who died in 1911 of bronchial pneumonia aged 40 in the Royal Liverpool workhouse hospital.
He was buried in a pauper's grave in the city's Walton Cemetery.
And, at 1.30pm on Sunday (June 27), there is an open invitation to the people of Liverpool to attend "an Alternative Centennial Celebration" in front of the stone at the cathedral.
It is being organised by the Merseyside Construction Safety Campaign and Liverpool TUC.
It will be addressed by campaign member Ron Noon, a writer and senior labour history lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University.
Noon, the son of seaman Henry, attended St Swithen's School, Croxteth, before studying history at Leicester University and then Leeds University, where he was awarded his post-graduate MA.
LIKE Bower and Larkin, he is a passionate man, believing that their memories should not be forgotten. He is completing a book about them to be called The Secret in the Stone. He also working on a lengthy article to be published in a history journal to be jointly produced by the JMU and Liverpool University at the end of the year. By the time of his book's publication, Bower was ill with the stonemason's disease, silicosis. He was a man of sympathy with a profound hope in a better tomorrow. Earlier in his life he had written articles and poems which were published in Larkin's Irish Worker between 1911 and 1914.
Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in 1908, becoming the leading figure in the Great Dublin strike of 1913. He dedicated his life to the rights of working men, fostering strikes
and strife in England, Ireland and the USA. He died in 1947.
Ron, a father of four from Allerton, is standing by the inscription on the foundation stone. "To the glory of God this foundation stone was laid by Edward VII on the 19th day of July 1904," it reads.
"Rather ironically, before the King duly did his bit, this biscuit tin had been buried with these documents addressed to a future and better society," says Ron. "Fred Bower was the first stonemason to cut a stone on the site."
After seeing two men throw gold coins down the 12 ft hole where the foundation stone was to be placed, Bower spoke to Larkin about his idea for the biscuit tin.
"Two days later Bower left Liverpool on the White Star liner Baltic on her maiden voyage to the New York to get work as a stonemason.
"Now we have a centennial celebration linked in with a part of the people's history, if you like, which happened three weeks before the official celebration.
"The idea of our alternative commemoration is for people from the labour movement and a variety of fields to pay their respects to the memory of Bower and Larkin and most particularly their vision and their ideals. They may have been utopian and naive to some people, but they had a belief in a better tomorrow. Men like them and Tressell have given people a cause for hope.
"That is why the 27th is for the workers, stonemasons, dockers and everybody else. It is a people's day - it is not a top down history with the majority of people in the city left out."
* FILM maker Ken Loach, former trade union leader Jack Jones, writer Jimmy McGovern and actor Ricky Tomlinson are among patrons of the book, which will be sold at the News From Nowhere bookshop, Bold Street, Liverpool, at £2.50
Service celebrates achievement
A CELEBRATORY service is being held at Liverpool Cathedral at 4pm on July 19 to coincide with the exact time that King Edward VII unveiled the stone.
All 2,500 places will be taken.
The invitees include members of parishes within the diocese as well as
cathedral workers and volunteers.
There will be a procession of civic dignitaries, VIPs and descendants of stonemasons and other craftsmen who were working on the building in the early days. The cathedral wasn't finished
until 1978. Some people who actually worked on it will be in the congregation.
The Dean of Liverpool, the Right Reverend Rupert Hoare, is officiating at the service, in the company of the the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones.
source
ALL the toffs from the fine city of empire, the merchants and the ladies in their fur stoles, tossed gold coins into the hole, where the foundation stone was to be laid to a grand house of God.
Perhaps they thought the money would buy them favoured places in Heaven, just as it had on Earth.
But two pals, one Protestant and the other Catholic, whose early hatred for each other had been crushed by their common faith in Socialism, felt differently about this cathedral being built in Liverpool.
Was it not the sweat and the blood of poor men that would soak into the great sandstone blocks of the largest Anglican cathedral in the world?
But there would be no mention of such people, or their deaths and injuries, on the foundation stone to be unveiled by King Edward VII accompanied by Queen Alexandra.
Jim Larkin, the trade union leader, and Fred Bower, one of the highly-skilled stonemasons working on building, often talked along these lines.
They had known each other since childhood in Liverpool's Dingle area. At first their different branches of Christianity had made them enemies. They had "wanted to kill each other", Bower was later to write.
But that was "infantile ignorance", soon overcome by a shared desire to improve the wretched conditions of the masses.
Larkin, a docker and impassioned waterfront orator, who would become one of the most distinguished trade union leaders of his generation, walked around the site.
"Within a stone's throw from here, human beings are being housed in slums not fit for swine," he observed.
What could be done? Larkin and Bower decided to hold their own foundation ceremony on June 27, 1904, three weeks before the King, Queen, the civic dignitaries, and all their flunkies.
Bower, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871, but reared in Liverpool, began composing a message "from the wage slaves employed on the erection of this cathedral" to a future socialist society.
In his use of "trust", in the following passage, Bower means monopoly capitalism.
"This message, written on trust-produced paper with trust-produced ink, is to tell ye how we of today are at the mercy of trusts," he wrote. "Building fabrics, clothing, food, fuel, transport, are all in the hands of money-mad, soul-destroying trusts. We can only sell our labour power as wage slaves on their terms. The money trusts today own us. In your own day, you will, thanks to the efforts of past and present agitators for economic freedom, own trusts. Yours will indeed, compared to ours, be a happier existence. See to it, therefore, that ye, too, work for the betterment of all, and so justify your existence by leaving the world the better for your having lived in it. Thus and thus only shall come about the Kingdom of God, or Good, on Earth. Hail, comrades, and farewell."
The message, along with a copy of the Clarion and the Labour Leader, were placed in a biscuit tin and covered. On July 19, the foundation stone was lowered on top of it, giving Liverpool the Secret of the Stone.
The secret held until 1936 when it was revealed in Bower's autobiography, Rolling Stonemason, which has been compared in its descriptive strength and sympathy for the oppressed to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist By Robert Tressell, the pen-name of Robert Noonan, the Irish house-painter, who died in 1911 of bronchial pneumonia aged 40 in the Royal Liverpool workhouse hospital.
He was buried in a pauper's grave in the city's Walton Cemetery.
And, at 1.30pm on Sunday (June 27), there is an open invitation to the people of Liverpool to attend "an Alternative Centennial Celebration" in front of the stone at the cathedral.
It is being organised by the Merseyside Construction Safety Campaign and Liverpool TUC.
It will be addressed by campaign member Ron Noon, a writer and senior labour history lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University.
Noon, the son of seaman Henry, attended St Swithen's School, Croxteth, before studying history at Leicester University and then Leeds University, where he was awarded his post-graduate MA.
LIKE Bower and Larkin, he is a passionate man, believing that their memories should not be forgotten. He is completing a book about them to be called The Secret in the Stone. He also working on a lengthy article to be published in a history journal to be jointly produced by the JMU and Liverpool University at the end of the year. By the time of his book's publication, Bower was ill with the stonemason's disease, silicosis. He was a man of sympathy with a profound hope in a better tomorrow. Earlier in his life he had written articles and poems which were published in Larkin's Irish Worker between 1911 and 1914.
Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in 1908, becoming the leading figure in the Great Dublin strike of 1913. He dedicated his life to the rights of working men, fostering strikes
and strife in England, Ireland and the USA. He died in 1947.
Ron, a father of four from Allerton, is standing by the inscription on the foundation stone. "To the glory of God this foundation stone was laid by Edward VII on the 19th day of July 1904," it reads.
"Rather ironically, before the King duly did his bit, this biscuit tin had been buried with these documents addressed to a future and better society," says Ron. "Fred Bower was the first stonemason to cut a stone on the site."
After seeing two men throw gold coins down the 12 ft hole where the foundation stone was to be placed, Bower spoke to Larkin about his idea for the biscuit tin.
"Two days later Bower left Liverpool on the White Star liner Baltic on her maiden voyage to the New York to get work as a stonemason.
"Now we have a centennial celebration linked in with a part of the people's history, if you like, which happened three weeks before the official celebration.
"The idea of our alternative commemoration is for people from the labour movement and a variety of fields to pay their respects to the memory of Bower and Larkin and most particularly their vision and their ideals. They may have been utopian and naive to some people, but they had a belief in a better tomorrow. Men like them and Tressell have given people a cause for hope.
"That is why the 27th is for the workers, stonemasons, dockers and everybody else. It is a people's day - it is not a top down history with the majority of people in the city left out."
* FILM maker Ken Loach, former trade union leader Jack Jones, writer Jimmy McGovern and actor Ricky Tomlinson are among patrons of the book, which will be sold at the News From Nowhere bookshop, Bold Street, Liverpool, at £2.50
Service celebrates achievement
A CELEBRATORY service is being held at Liverpool Cathedral at 4pm on July 19 to coincide with the exact time that King Edward VII unveiled the stone.
All 2,500 places will be taken.
The invitees include members of parishes within the diocese as well as
cathedral workers and volunteers.
There will be a procession of civic dignitaries, VIPs and descendants of stonemasons and other craftsmen who were working on the building in the early days. The cathedral wasn't finished
until 1978. Some people who actually worked on it will be in the congregation.
The Dean of Liverpool, the Right Reverend Rupert Hoare, is officiating at the service, in the company of the the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones.
source
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