Down House: A unique place in the history of science and evolution

by Carole Barclay
 

The works of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx shook and shocked Victorian Britain. Although they lived less than 20 miles apart from each other they never met. But Marx genuinely admired Darwin's On The Origin of the Species despite its “crude English style” and even sent Darwin a personally inscribed copy of the recently published second edition of Das Kapital in 1873.

            Down House was Darwin’s home for 40 years until his death in 1882. Darwin and his wife Emma remodelled the house and its extensive gardens, which Darwin used as an open-air laboratory. Here Darwin worked on his theory of evolution that was first published in 1859.

In Darwin’s day the house was in the village of Downe, a parish in Kent. It later became a girls’ school and the home of the Darwin Museum. Now part of Bromley in Greater London, the house, gardens and grounds is run by English Heritage and open to the public throughout the year.

            There’s plenty to see. Anyone interested in the life and times of Darwin will be fascinated by the gardens and the exhibits in the museum as well as rooms that have been restored to appear as they would have looked in Darwin’s day. There’s the inevitable visitors’ shop for books and souvenirs, and a very welcome café in the courtyard.

But beware – plan your journey unless you’re driving because it’s not easily served by public transport. Although you can get trains from central London to Bromley South or Orpington you’ve then got to get a bus for the rest of the journey.

Down House is in Luxted Road, Downe, Kent, BR6 7JT. The house, garden and grounds are open to the public at the usual English Heritage rates. There’s free parking and Down House opens daily from April to the end of October, and on weekends only from November until the end of March.

Forty Fighting Years!

Raising a glass to the NCP!

 by New Worker

correspondent

Forty years is a long time in anyone’s book. For a Party that some said would only last six weeks it’s an immense achievement said Andy Brooks at the New Communist Party’s foundation day celebration at the historic Marx Memorial Library in London last weekend. The NCP leader paid tribute to all the effort, sacrifice and hardship that comrades had endured to ensure the survival of the Party over the years, during the formal part of the commemoration on Sunday.

Comrades gathered in the hallowed hall of the building that was once the centre for the pioneering socialists of the 19^th century and the base for Lenin, who worked there for nearly two years editing Iskra, the Bolshevik newspaper that was smuggled into Czarist Russia to help build the revolutionary movement.

Andy Brooks: We are the Party of Lenin and Stalin but also of Sid and Eric

“We are the party of Lenin and Stalin but we are also the party of Sid French and Eric Trevett,” Andy Brooks said. Sid and Eric were lifelong communists who founded the NCP in 1977 on the principles of working-class unity, Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Forty years later the NCP and its weekly paper, the New Worker, continue to keep up the fight. This was reflected in the contributions from the honoured guests that included old friends from the Italian communist movement (PC) and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (ML) along with ambassadors and other diplomats from Cuba, Democratic Korea, Laos and Vietnam.

Two ambassadors, Laotian Comrade Sayakane Sisouvong and Comrade Nguyen Van Thao from Vietnam, spoke highly about the NCP’s solidarity work, and Comrade Jorge Luis Garcia from Cuba warned about the new American threats to the socialist island in the Caribbean. The consistent work in solidarity with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was highlighted by Comrade Song Gi Kim from the Democratic Korean embassy and this was also taken up by Dermot Hudson, the chair of the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA).

National Chair Alex Kempshall recalled the NCP’s efforts over the decades to build working class and communist unity when he called on Michael Chant of the RCPB (ML) to say a few words about the long-standing friendship between our two parties. And soon after Michael and Lesley Larkum, both accomplished musicians, played an interlude of light classical music that included a Korean folk-song and a piece arranged by one of their comrades, Cornelius Cardew, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1981.

No NCP celebration ends without an appeal for the fighting fund and this was given in rousing style by our national treasurer, Daphne Liddle. It clearly went down well with the comrades who raised £1,338 for the New Worker on the day!

Anti-fascists outnumber EDL in Westminster

Weyman Bennett in the middle of the police kettle

 by New Worker correspondent

WESTMINSTER was buzzing with protests and demonstrations last Saturday: there were people demanding affordable housing and an end to demolition of council estates with the removal of low income residents to all points of the compass far from London, to make way for grand developments of luxury flats that will be bought for £millions and then stand empty as investments.

There was a women’s right march and there were people demanding justice for the victims, survivors and bereaved of the Grenfell fire, with the full death toll still not known, and fearful that the tragedy will add their numbers to those being forced out of London.

And there were people protesting at the shameful deal being stitched together by what is left of Theresa May’s Tory government with the extreme right-wing bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This is to create a coalition that would have a tiny majority in the House of Commons to try to ward off Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s promise to waste no opportunity to bring this government down.

These four honourable causes merged into one protest in Parliament Square whilst not far away, at the top end of Whitehall and the corner of Trafalgar Square, anti-fascists from Unite Against Fascism (UAF) were assembling to express solidarity with the victims of the Finsbury Mosque terrorist attack and to try to block a planned march by the Islamophobic English Defence League (EDL), which was the EDL’s response to the terrorist attack near London Bridge and Borough Market a couple of weeks ago.

There were not as many of the UAF as usual because many comrades were engaged in other protests: bad housing is killing and injuring more low paid workers, including Muslims and other minority ethnics, than all the shades of fascism, racism and terrorism put together.

Meanwhile the racists were gathering in the Lord of the Moon pub at the top end of Whitehall as usual with the entrance to the pub guarded by a triple cordon of police.

To top it all there were serious roadworks outside the Houses of Parliament – Big Ben /The Elizabeth Tower was swathed in scaffolding – and all along the Victoria Embankment a new giant sewer is being installed to replace the one built by Joseph Bazalgette after the Great Stink of London in 1858 forced Parliament to close.

This meant that traffic in Whitehall was choc-a-bloc and the usual crowds of tourists from all over the world were sweeping back and forth like herds of confused wildebeest, packing all pavements as they were forced into long detours to find somewhere safe to cross the road.

And the Metropolitan police were out in great numbers telling everyone where they could and could not go.

Large numbers of police forced the UAF demonstrators on to the Embankment, where a special pen had been prepared to keep them kettled in one place. They included UAF joint general secretary Weyman Bennett and former Anti-Nazi League leader Paul Holborough.

The kettling was to clear the way for the EDL to march, also to the Embankment. But as they marched crowds of young anarchist anti-fascists ran alongside, jostling the police protective cordon and filling the air with chants of: “Fascist scum, off our streets,” and music blasted from huge loud speakers in a trailer pulled by bicycles.

For a while all was confusion and noise until superior numbers of police finally managed to force the anarchists into the same area as the UAF anti-fascists, nearly doubling their numbers.

The EDL turn-out was very low, between 40–50 as they huddled under trees under the sudden first rain London had seen for a few weeks. They made their Islamophobic speeches close to the boarded-up sewage replacement excavations as the ghost of the Great London Stink emanated from drains and manhole covers.

The EDL had intended to march on Parliament but their way was firmly blocked by the assorted anti-fascists and they were forced to leave in low spirits.

Not long after that the UAF and other anti-fascists left, heading towards Parliament and singing “Refugees are welcome here” to the tune of Camptown Races, to join the other demonstrators from Parliament Square, who had by this time marched up Whitehall to stand opposite Downing Street.

Justice for the Grenfell Tower victims

by New Worker correspondent

Anger at the incompetence, greed and indifference of the ruling class towards the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire erupted on the streets of London with protests and candle-lit vigils throughout the week demanding justice for the victims of the fire that swept through the 23-storey block which housed up to 600 people. Last Saturday hundreds returned to Westminster in support of the survivors and to demand full funding for fire-safety. Although the official death toll stands at 79, residents believe at least 120 perished in the flames and others believe that the true figure is even higher.

Tottenham MP David Lammy, whose friend, the artist Khadija Saye, died in the fire, thinks that there may have been a cover up to prevent rioting in the area. The Labour MP has repeatedly questioned the number of dead, describing the figure of 79 as “far, far too low,” and said that “failure to provide updates of the true number that died is feeding suspicion of a cover-up.”