Handforth Clarion Club House 1903 -1936

Handforth Clarion Club house September 1903-1936

Denis Pye

Handforth Clarion Club house, was located on the outward road between Cheadle and Handforth, about half a mile off the main Manchester-Wilmslow road. This rambling old building had oak beams and panelling inside. there was a sitting room, a kitchen, and a room which was made into a library, well stocked books - especially Clarion Press Publications.

The four dormitories held a total of fifty beds, and there were tents to sleep at least a dozen more outside in the summer.. "fresh air fiends" said a publicity brochure can always be accommodated with a blanket in the haystack". Eventually wooden outbuildings were constructed by Clarion volunteers provided a dinning room to seat 200, and a billiard room.

A comfortable sitting room. Here the presiding genius was Edward Fay, the much loved Clarion writer “Bounder” who had died in 1896 at the age of 43 and whose picture adorned the wall. There was a card room as well as a library and reading room.

The Clarion Club house was flanked by two orchards and was secluded enough to minimise the possibility of causing annoyance to local people.

Tom Tyas, secretary of the Handforth Clarion Clubhouse recalled it as “a happy combination of natural forces”. The bicycle itself “brought within easy reach all the things which the new philosophy taught (people) to enjoy”. It offered an “escape from city life after the daily round of toil” and gave them “the power to roam on the King’s Highway”.

Annual Sheffield Clarion

Assembly Meet 1914

13th & 14th June 1914

Handforth Club House

Saturday

A good number travelled from Sheffield. Comrades Dormand and F.J.Bookes and Mrs B; E. Clayton, Mrs Clayton and youngsterMrs Melling; Mr & Mrs Reynolds & youngsters; Barton R. E.Cheetham Staleybridge were represented: Comrade Hepworth; Jagger; Stubbin; Garside; and Jack Ramsden.

The weather was glorious and an enjoyable time was spent.

After a good tea, we rambled to neighbouring villages, presumably to post letters and buy stamps, but the post offices were not attractive, so after putting the question we decided on a visit to a certain house, well-advertised, and a rest for

“Clubbers”.

On our return supper was served, and then the impromptu concert was merrily going until the early hours. Then – rest, do you say, sleep, eh!

When a chap finds his bed dropped and no bedclothes, w

hy he sits and watches for the next move and he gets it. Down! Someone howls. What a tussle – and Handforth is a “haven of rest”! Anyhow, quietness reigns at last, and 6 am comes , and, hang it, some of them want to get out. Fine morning, get out for fresh air, and all this kind of bunkum. Well, those that want may, and leave the lazy ones until breakfast is ready. We laz

y ones barricaded the door, but when we wanted to get out the door was locked.

But the youngster Clayton saved us – his Dad was inside.
Sunday morning we routed Stalybridge at Crick

et. The scores are not available, but our mighty swipers Brookes and Melling just revelled in it. Jack Ramsden played well for the gentlemen, and it was hot. Fancy, when the ball was lost, John Hall – hoping it could not be found! There’s cricket for you. Bravo Sheffield.

We must not forget the ladies. They were up betimes playing tennis. Some people cannot sleep. Perhaps our s

erenade on the Saturday night made them sleep lightly.
Those who remained the Sunday afternoon were enable to hear Ramsden sing, and a jolly good concert they had.

Shall we go next year

Handforth Clarion Club House 1917
"The Home of Clarion Fellowship"

Book in if you wish to stay for your holidays at the cheapest, best, and jolliest holiday-place on earth, as we are full up every week that passes.

next week we shall have Jack Ramsden and Party who will sing songs galore on Saturday and Sunday 1 and 2nd September 1917
Book in by writing to the steward, Clarion Club house, Handforth, Cheshire.

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Tom Goom visited Manchester to see the new abode of the Clarion Club House committee. Today is the last day for planking down that £1,300. for years the Handforth settlers have struggled and saved to get a place that shall be all their own; so that all the voluntary work that that is put into the place shall belong to the present and future generations of members.

The Clarion Club House movement stands easily in the first rank of clarion achievements and though there is a war on the opportunities offered by the present venture are so many and so splendid that it will be a thousand pities to lose the estate at Northern Etchells

loans are urgently required. telegraph them today to the Secretary , Clarion Club house, outwood road, handforth, Cheshire. Northern Etchells must be secured. a scheme for early repayment of all loans is drafted and I will outline it next week. for the present the need is for loans and plenty of em

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Handforth - history week just concluded. We have completed purchase of the thirty five acre estate for £1,950 and raised the entire money necessary in loans from members and friends. the Manchester Clarion Choir delighted us in the orchard and we had the pleasure of again entertaining a party of wounded solders; tennis fanatics finished their tournament. there is still room for numberless shareholders (Clarion 24 August 1917)

Tom Groom - Clarion Cyclorama Clarion 24th August 1917

Sylvia Pankhurt - Clarion Cycling Days 1896-1898

CLARION

Pedalling Days

By Sylvia Pankhurst

The Clarion - March 1931

I was fourteen years of age and my sister, Christabel, two years older (1896), when we joined the Manchester Clarion Cycling Club. For the next two years we rode with the club almost every Sunday. We knew, of course, all the Clarion people : Robert Blatchford "Nunquam," Montague Blatchford "Mont Blanc," "Dangle" A.M Thompson and Edward Fay (the "Bounder") and the rest.

We read them weekly and saw them sometimes. Edward Fay's funny articles in the Clarion were too funny for me, for I was never amused by the jokes which make most people laugh, only by the funniest things which happened, as it were, by accident. But when the "Bounder" (Edward Fray) came to stay with us we all liked him tremendously. He had that lovable quality which make one feel a man is an old friend when first one meets him. We were all very sad when he died.

Mrs. Bennett, an active member of the Clarion Club, taught us to ride. The first time she led us into the main road I was surprised to find myself in collision with a pony and trap which met me from behind a furniture van. The pony's head struck me hard on the right arm and shoulder, and down I went with a bang. I saw stars. Mrs. Bennett took me into a little shop in Handforth, where my spill occurred, and gave me a glass of lemonade with a beaten up egg in it, and I rode on, forgetting my bumps.

We had a host of friends in the club. Haylock, the captain, and almost every member of the club helped me at some time or other in mending my punctures—I was fearfully unlucky in that respect—and in pushing me up the last little bit of the steepest hills. As the youngest member of the club, I doubtless got special consideration, but everyone was kind to everyone in that genial company.

The "Clarionettes," as they called themselves, were merry people ; their joyous cries of "Boots !" and "Spurs !" rang through the country lanes. Clarion slang was a fertile product, which amazed me, and which would certainly have shocked our father, who was a purist in the matter of speech, had we indulged in it.

Socialists, as a rule, were very keen and strenuous in those days, and the road to Socialism seemed by no means so long and difficult as it appears to-day, and most of the comrades, even the oldest, confidently expected to reach it in their own lifetime. The "Clarionettes" were much criticised by the ) I.L.P.'ers (Independent Labour Party) and the B.S.P.'ers (British Socialist Party) for not being sufficiently active and serious in Socialist work. I have often heard the cyclists reply by telling of the good work they had done in the past in sticking little red gummed labels with appropriate mottoes on trees and fences wherever they rode. This activity was before my time, and I wished they would revert to it, being myself of strenuous mind.

Yet, though they held only very occasional meetings of any sort, and did little direct propaganda, the Clarion people carried a leaven of Socialist conversation and argument into rural districts then wholly untouched by any Socialist or Labour propaganda. A copy or two of the Clarion, and perhaps some other literature, would generally be left behind.

Week in, week out, the Clarion clubs took hundreds of people of all ages away from the grime and ugliness of the manufacturing districts to the green loveliness of the country, giving them fresh air, exercise and good fellowship at a minimum of cost. The clubs promoted a frank, friendly comradeship amongst men and women, then very much less common than it is to-day.

When I see a pair of pink legs flash by on the back of someone else's motor-cycle, I sometimes think that the owner of the pink legs is having a much less interesting journey than was ours on our humble "push bikes," noise less, and under our own control. The miss of the pink legs cannot afford a motor-bicycle of her own in most cases, and the push bike doubtless seems to her too slow in these rapid days, but I think we had the best of it.

At our journey's end was always an enormous shilling tea, in which phenomenal quantities of bread and butter and tinned fruit rapidly disappeared, then a walk round, and frequently afterwards a brief "sing-song," sometimes joined by members of other clubs who had ridden that way. Jack Ramsden, I remember, was much admired at Clarion functions for his singing of the "Lowland Sea," and Harry Lowerison bubbled over with tales and songs.

One of the great events of those days was the camp at Pickmere, in Cheshire, where Clarion people and other Socialists spent a summer holiday in tents, and maintained relays of poor little children from the slums of Manchester and Salford—the Cinderella children, as Blatchford had named them.

A great factotum in the camp was "Billy de Bulwell"; his real name I have forgotten. De Bulwell was the nick-name he assumed as a joke, because he had been born in Bulwell. Swarthy as a Spaniard, grimy as a coal-heaver poor as a church mouse, he was ever ready with a bitter jest at the expense of riches and aristocracy. He was kindness itself to the children and had the gift of making the naughty ones "good as gold.". (Ed believe "Billy de Bulwell" is in the picture above at Handforth on left - certainly fits Sylvia's discription)

"Chaise" was so called because the members of the club fancied in him a resemblance to a racing cyclist of that name. He was a great favourite, full of fun and antics and always willing to peel "spuds," wash "pots" or carry loads.

Many a puncture he has mended for me. It was pleasant when the campers sat on the grass in 'the evening taking turns to talk and tell tales. I remember old Mr. Wadsworth telling us that as a young lad in dreary Salford he had become a Socialist through studying butterflies; the loveliness of the insects had bred in him a desire for beauty also in the human world.

One of the women members who never rode, but helped with the children and the general work of the camp, was regarded, I think, by all with special affection. Tolerant, gentle and selfless, we knew that she was dying of consumption, but no word of complaining ever escaped her lips. She did not live long, but she outlived the most beautiful and popular girl in the club—one of those rare beings whose society everyone seeks. Behind her death was the common tragedy of pinching scarcity in a working-class home where wages are small and life hard, as it was in those days even more than to-day.

The Handforth Clubhouse was an ambitious undertaking. We all looked forward to its achievement. My father took shares in it for us all. I have some of them somewhere to this day.

Before the clubhouse was established we had ceased to ride. My mother and Christabel went to Switzerland for a visit. During their absence my father was suddenly taken ill. He died before my mother could return. Christabel stayed in Switzerland for a year; for my life had become far too serious and too anxious to leave room for cycling. That was the end of our membership in the Clarion Club, but afterwards, when I came to London, I wrote for some time a weekly article in the Clarion.

I ceased to write it only because the growing demands of our East London Federation of the Suffragettes, editing its organ, The Women's Dreadnought, and the intermittent hunger strikes I had to endure under the "Cat and Mouse" Act at last made it impossible to fit in the Clarion article.

END

Quotes and Notes from Sylvia Pankhurst -The Suffragette Movement states

Christabel despite protrstations from her father secured a bicycle (book states 1906 but must have been 1896) a top of the range £30 Rudge Whitworth

"our parents took it as a matter of course that if Christabel rode I must go with her as a companion" however Sylvia's bike was made from a family friend out of gas piping

"Thenceforward every available day was spent in cycling. though the journeys were often too long for me, and I could scarcely pedal the last miles, the Sundays with the club were pleasant. it was delightful to be out in the country away from the grime of Manchester"

Sylvia and her family attended a Clarion camp where "Crowds of young men and women, generally rather ostentatious in their love-making, in what was then the Clarion way, came down there, and parties of "Cinderella" children were brought in relays for a week's holiday. She noted that Robert Blatchford was also in attendanc.

End

The first meeting of Manchester Clarion Cycling Club was held at the Labour Church Institute, 3 St John's Parade, Deansgate, Manchester on Wednesday evening next, the 16th January 1895, at 8 p m.

Harry Pollitt, Manchester Clarion recalls the summer of 1912-13 on Clarion speaking tours.

Meeting at the Openshaw Socialist Hall they cycled into the countryside spreading the word of socialism – when they meet fellow Clarion cyclists they would greet them a chorus of "Boots", the answer was"Spurs" –

They went into villages of Cheshire and at a suitable spot would dismount from their bicycles and led by Harry Fisher or Jim Crossley would sing:

In Youth as I lay dreaming, I saw a country fair,
Where plenty shed its blessings round and all had equal share.

Where poverty's sad features were never, never seen
And idlers in brotherhood would meet with scant esteem.

The unaccustomed sound of singing brought people to stand around and Harry would then make a ten minute speech, they would wind up the meeting by by singing "England Arise". Returning in the evening they repeated the performance in another village.

HANDFORTH CLARION CLUB HOUSE

A favourite destination for the Clarion cyclists was Handforth Clarion Club House opened in September 1903.

Harry Pollitt & The Manchester Clarion's

Harry Pollitt and the Clarion's

One of Harry Pollitt's early comrades was Charlie Openshaw. He was an Engineer and literature secretary at the Openshaw Socialist Society (established in 1906) and later a founding member of the Communist Party in 1920.

Charlie Openshaw states:

"We were in the Clarion Cycling Club together. Off we'd go on our bikes into the country. We'd put up fly posters round about, choose a spot, and hold a meeting. We didn't always get many listening, but by God, we enjoyed it."

Harry Pollit himself recalls the summer of 1912-13 on Clarion speaking tours.

Meeting at the Openshaw Socialist Hall they cycled into the countryside spreading the word of socialism – when they meet fellow Clarion cyclists they would greet them a chorus of "Boots", the answer was"Spurs" –

They went into villages of Cheshire and at a suitable spot would dismount from their bicycles and led by Harry Fisher or Jim Crossley would sing:

In Youth as I lay dreaming, I saw a country fair,
Where plenty shed its blessings round and all had equal share.
Where poverty's sad features were never, never seen
And idlers in brotherhood would meet with scant esteem.

The unaccustomed sound of singing brought people to stand around and Harry would then make a ten minute speech, they would wind up the meeting by by singing "England Arise". Returning in the evening they repeated the performance in another village.

A favourite destination for the Clarion cyclists was Handforth Clarion Club House opened in September 1903.

Manchester Clarion Cycling Club had been established on Wednesday 16th January 1895 with its Secretary being Mr R. Dawson, 697 Rochdale Road, Manchester, and Mr C. Ellinger, 53 Palmerston Street, Moss Side, Manchester.

Harry Pollitt states:

"I have heard a lot of scoffing at (Clarion) fellowship" ... "but in this club it was reality which made hard, poverty stricken lives much brighter." Harry Pollitt even attended the Clarion's famous Easter meet in York (March 1913) with one thousand Clarion cyclists, Harry on the Sunday speaking to a huge audience from a Clarion van.

The Openshaw Socialist Society meet at the Openshaw Socialist Hall, Margaret Street off the Ashton old road opposite the Alhambra.

Its construction by voluntary labour began in March 1907 and it was officially opened on July 20th by John Hodge MP (Smelters Union).

At the opening three inscribed stones were laid at ground level, that of the Openshaw Socialist Society to the singing of

"England arise", that of the Clarion cyclists to the "Red flag", that of the Clarion vocal union (Choir) to the "Comrades' song of hope".

The Openshaw Socialist Hall was rectangular, the long side facing on Margaret Street, the elevation pleasant and dignified, presenting a series of arched windows and a handsome doorway on the right topped by a stone inscribed "Socialist Hall 1907".

The visitors entered a vestibule from which rooms opening on each side ended in a double stair leading to the big hall on the floor above. It could seat 400 and had an excellent parquet floor for dancing. Between the two entrances was a low platform, above a gallery ran the whole width of the building, on the opposite wall was a large painting by Walter Crane, with scrolls bearing the words "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman". The tall windows and high angled roof gave an exhilarating impression of light, space and elegance, the ample basement contained more rooms.

Charlie Openshaw along with the young Harry Pollitt polished the parquet floor of the Hall every Sunday morning.

Michael Walker

Source:

Daily Worker 11 July 1960
Harry Pollitt Kevin Morgan
Harry Pollitt John Mahon