What a delight it was recently to have been approached by an Eastbourne based artist and researcher whose work has included the exquisite Eastbourne Samplers.

These are “a series of seven textile pieces… snippets quoted from Engel’s letters, either written in Eastbourne or referring to it, are stitched on domestic linen, overlaying a background of texts from the Communist Manifesto in the original German. The works reference the entanglement of the personal and political, the quotidian and polemical in his astute and humorous observations, as pertinent and delightful today as they were were when he wrote them”.

Thank you so much to Solveigh Goett for aproaching Peoples Eastbourne. We look forward to working with you on both a future display of these unique art pieces and also more explainers on this website.

Carol Mills

LINKS 

More on Solveigh’s work:-

https://artindependentscholar.academia.edu/SolveighGoett

Solveigh’s Instagram account:-

https://www.instagram.com/solveigh.goett

Engels in Eastbourne Campaign has partnered with Peoples Eastbourne.

The Engels in Eastbourne campaign was set up in 2015 with the aim of celebrating and making accessible Eastbourne’s Radical History, ensuring the towns radical stories were NOT forgotten. We have been actively pursuing a number of projects since this time including:-

● An Engels Plaque at 4 Cavendish Place;

● A Paul Robeson Room at The Winter Garden;

● A commemoration of George Meek (Eastbourne’s famous Bath Chair-man);

● West of the Pier Information Boards (7 in total)

● An Eastbourne home for The International Workers Mural.

The campaign has experienced highs and lows and to cut the long story short, none of the above have been achieved so far.

THIS IS WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED SO FAR:-

● The Engels in Eastbourne Radical History Tour and Radical History Seafront Trail.

● Guided EiE walks during Eastbourne’s Walking Festivals.

● A International Workers Mural Brochure.

● The Engels in Eastbourne University of Brighton website.

● “Call Me Mr Robeson” performance by Tayo Aluko at The Grove Theatre.

● The Engels in Eastbourne Conference at The View Hotel, 2003. Organised and hosted by the University of Brighton together with The International Association for Marx and Engels Humanity Studies MEIA. (And supported by the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton).

● The People’s Eastbourne website.

• The 2 central International Workers Mural panels exhibited in Sussex Modernism at The Towner (23^rd May to 28th Sept 2025).

ALL WELCOME

Last year we set up Peoples Eastbourne as the forwards movement for Engels in Eastbourne. “Peoples Eastbourne”, as a name reflects well the range of projects covered and the broader scope of Eastbourne’s Radical History than the singular project on the Engels Plaque. You are all invited to visit Peoples Eastbourne website for ongoing information and various activities happening Eastbourne.

Please contact us at hello@peoples.eastbourne.com

Link Tree https://linktr.ee/peopleseastbourne

International Workers  Mural  – 2 central panels exhibited in Eastbourne

If you’ve been following the radical history of Eastbourne then you will know about the International Workers Mural or “The Forward March of Labour” that used to be displayed in the reception of Unite the union’s Eastbourne Centre (formerly the Transport and General Workers Union Recuperation Hotel and Education Centre, and now The View Hotel Eastbourne).

This 89ft mural was removed 10 years ago during refurbishments when the hotel was being rebranded for tourism. It is now being stored in boxes in Birmingham.

There has been a long (as yet unsuccessful) campaign for the mural to be displayed again, in full, in Eastbourne. Hopefully at a permanent site. This is, of course, a huge ask, considering a huge site would need to be found. An associated idea was to find a storage home for the mural  in Eastbourne, thus making it convenient for the various panels, at various times, to be exhibited as and when a suitable event was happening.  Again, no suitable local  storage could be identified.

But all is not lost. The mural’s 2 central panels have found their way from Birmingham and are currently being exhibited at the Sussex Modernism Exhibition at Towner Eastbourne Gallery (until 28th September). The exhibition is curated by Dr Hope Wolf. It is well worth a visit; some of us have been several times as there is so much to see. This is a ticketed exhibition. Hopefully, enough of you will be able to visit.

Thank you to Hope for including the 2 mural panels in the exhibition, and also in her book, Sussex Modernism – Yale University Press London.

Hopefully, perhaps new life might be breathed into the People’s Eastbourne and Engels in Eastbourne Campaign to bring the mural back.

• More about the mural and a brochure of the 14 panels can be found here, along with the artist’s notes.
• Details of Sussex Modernism exhibition here.
• Video of a Poetry Club poem inspired by the mural here.
• People’s Eastbourne website here.
• Any questions? Please contact me at: hello@peopleseastbourne.com

Carol Mills

Engels in Eastbourne

People’s Eastbourne

Engels in Manchester – International Conference

University of Salford

30 November – 1 December 2024 – Manchester/Salford

Co-hosters: 

–    The International Association of Marx-Engels Humanities Exchange and Studies (MEIA)

–    University of Salford

–    Canterbury Christ Church University

–    The Marxism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom (PSA)

Call for Papers – 

Manchester and Salford were the world’s first industrialized factory-cities of the railway age. They were surely what Marx and Engels had in mind when they wrote in the Communist Manifesto of ‘whole populations conjured out of the ground’. Engels knew the twin cities from the age of seventeen, taken there by his father on a business trip. And it was to Manchester that he took Marx – on his very first trip abroad – in the summer of 1845. After that their personal and epistolary – and indeed pecuniary – relationship was more to do with Manchester than anywhere else, till Engels retired the two of them to London in 1869.  Manchester and Salford were the world’s first industrialized factory-cities of the railway age. They were surely what Marx and Engels had in mind when they wrote in the Communist Manifesto of ‘whole populations conjured out of the ground’. Engels knew the twin cities from the age of seventeen, taken there by his father on a business trip. And it was to Manchester that he took Marx – on his very first trip abroad – in the summer of 1845. After that their personal and epistolary – and indeed pecuniary – relationship was more to do with Manchester than anywhere else, till Engels retired the two of them to London in 1869.

We invite paper-proposals on these themes below, though other ideas will certainly be considered:

• Class/gender/race conflict and urban politics in the industrializing world
• Modernization, colonialism, empire, wage/slavery, global political economy, primary products and luxuries, consumption and addiction, ‘free’ and forced markets
• International and intra-national politics of revolution, war and counter-revolutionary reactions
• Ecology, built environment, environmental change, climate change, pollution, public health
• Social reproduction, kinship and domesticity, women and gender-oppression, sexualities and socialisms/communisms
• Philosophy and politics, philosophy and science, dialectic and logic, materialism and idealism, industrial technologies and capital accumulation
• Political organization and action, coalitions and strategies, constitutional liberalism and social democracy, parties and networks, agitators and activists, resistance and progress
• Consent and obligation, compulsion and freedom
• Marx and Engels, associates and collaborators, opponents and enemies, wives and partners, servants and family members
• Museums and memorials, memory and recovery, publicity and propaganda, visuality and meaning-making, culture and communication
• Practical materialism, utopian thinking, pasts and futures, histories and knowledge
• Geographies, sociologies, human sciences, physical sciences, hermeneutics, positivism, spaces, places

Requirements:

1. Proposals should include name(s), affiliations, title, abstract (up to 200 words) in Word or PDF format by email to info@themeia.org.
2. Proposals can be for individual papers or full panels (up to 3 papers, 1 discussant, 1 chair).
3. The organisers particularly encourage proposals from postgraduate students, early career scholars and scholar-activists.
4. There are plans for selected papers to appear in a special issue in an academic journal and/or an edited volume with a major publisher.

Schedules:

• Deadline for paper and panel proposals – 1 October 2024
• Acceptances posted – 15 October 2024
• Programme announced – 25 October 2024

Registration for Participation:

Please send your application to this email: info@themeia.org including your name, organization, position, and the dates you will attend.

Socialist History special issue

One product of the Engels in Eastbourne conference was a special issue of a journal Issue 65 – Friedrich Engels – Socialist History with four essays which originated with the conference –

Revisiting Engels’s ‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’
Sheila McGregor

Engels’ revolutionary accounts of the June Days uprising
Kate Connelly

Engels on Colonialism – Ireland and the Agency of the Colonised
Ken Olende

Navigating Lemonade Seas – Frederick Engels, Utopian Socialism and Strategies for Emancipation
Judy Cox

Many thanks to the Socialist History Society for their work here with this publication, and to the contributors themselves for excellent essays.

Conference delegates supporting efforts to commemorate Eastbourne’s radical history

Thanks again to everyone who came to the Engels in Eastbourne conference which was a great success, with delegates from across the world attending and great talks and discussion – and it will hopefully act to raise awareness about Eastbourne’s radical history and the connection to Friedrich Engels both locally, nationally and internationally. Safe journeys home to all who came!

Please register by 1 May 2023 if possible – thank you.

The refurbished Winter Garden in Eastbourne is going to dedicate a special Paul Robeson Room in honour of Robeson’s legendary performances at the venue during the 1930s period and a special commemorative programme of events is being put together to help launch this.  So far these include a special performance of ‘Call Mr Robeson’ by Tayo Aluko at the Grove Theatre in Eastbourne on Friday 4 November 2022 – details of how to book tickets please see here: https://grovetheatre.onlineticketseller.com/events/20265

Thank goodness Western imperialism has learnt the lessons from their attempts to invade and occupy Afghanistan in 1839!  

Summer is here and many of us are headed for the seafront. We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful place. Do you recognise this art work of Eastbourne’s wonderful beach ? Who painted it? Where did it used to be sited in Eastbourne?

Some of the Trade Unionists amongst us will recognise it. There used to be a fantastic International Workers Mural in the dining area of The View Hotel, formerly the Transport and General Workers Union Recuperation Hotel and Conference Centre. It was painted by an Arts Collective that included Michael Jones, son of the Great Trade Unionist Jack Jones.