Socialism

Walter Crane is best know for his contribution to children's story books. Using a range of imagery borrowed from classical sources and Medieval iconography, Crane changed the way that children learnt to read with his visual approach to learning.

Today I went to the People's History Museum in Manchester and saw quite a different side to Crane's work. This shrine to socialism delivers a history of the development and rise of the labour party from colonialism through Socialism and Communism. Very much on the side of the working class, the museum's approach is to offer an insight into the hard fight for the vote that the new industrial north went through; beginning with the 1819 Peterloo massacre where 18 ordinary workers lost their lives in a peaceful protest turned ugly, and ending with the new labour governments installation in 1945.

Crane was a supporter of Socialism, of people owing the means of production between them. This poster, typical of his work, shows the people overruling the sly serpent capitalism. It seems that Crane, rather like the museum, is very vague about who 'they' are. The poor? The workforce? An underclass? Who is it that only has 'their chains to lose' as Marx put it, under a socialist regime?

For Crane, he believed that artists would prosper under Socialism and had a very idealistic view of the whole thing, shaped it seems by his work and friendship with William Morris. Maybe he thought he could sell more books if his art was liberated from the capitalist monster?!

I also very much liked the caricature poster of Scots coming and taking jobs off English workers. Some things never change...