Thomas Spence was an English Radical

Radicalism (historical)

The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

 and advocate of the common ownership

Common ownership

Common ownership is a principle according to which the assets of an enterprise or other organization are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or by a public institution such as a governmental body. It is therefore in contrast to public ownership...

 of land.

Life

Spence was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and was the son of a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 net and shoe maker.

Spence was one of the leading English revolutionaries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spence was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814.

The threatened enclosure of the Town Moor in Newcastle in 1771 appears to have been key to Spence's interest in the land question and journey towards ultra-radicalism. His scheme was not for land nationalization

Nationalization

Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...

 but for the establishment of self-contained parochial communities, in which rent paid to the Parish

Parish

A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

 (wherein the absolute ownership of the land was vested) should be the only tax

Tax

To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...

 of any kind. His ideas and thinking on the subject were shaped by a variety of economic thinkers, including his friend Charles Hall

Charles Hall (economist)

Charles Hall was a British physician, social critic and Ricardian socialist who published The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States in 1805, condemning capitalism for its inability to provide for the poor. In the book, Hall argued that inequalities in wealth and the production...

.

At the centre of Spence's work was his Plan, known as 'Spence's Plan'. The Plan has a number of features, including:

1. The end of aristocracy and landlords;
2. All land should be publicly owned by 'democratic parishes', which should be largely self-governing;
3. Rents of land in parishes to be shared equally amongst parishioners;
4. Universal suffrage (including female suffrage) at both parish level and through a system of deputies elected by parishes to a national senate;
5. A 'social guarantee' extended to provide income for those unable to work;
6. The 'rights of infants' to be free from abuse and poverty.

Spence's Plan was first published in his penny pamphlet Property in Land Every One's Right in 1775. It was re-issued as The Real Rights of Man in later editions. It was also reissued by, amongst others, Henry Hyndman

Henry Hyndman

Henry Mayers Hyndman was an English writer and politician, and the founder of the Social Democratic Federation and the National Socialist Party.-Early years:...

 under the title of The Nationalization of the Land in 1795 and 1882.

Spence may have been the first Englishman to speak of 'the rights of man'. The following recollection, composed in the third person, was written by Spence while he was in prison in London in 1794 on a charge of High Treason. Spence was, he wrote,

the first, who as far as he knows, made use of the phrase "RIGHTS OF MAN", which was on the following remarkable occasion: A man who had been a farmer, and also a miner, and who had been ill-used by his landlords, dug a cave for himself by the seaside, at Marsdon Rocks, between Shields and Sunderland, about the year 1780, and the singularity of such a habitation, exciting the curiosity of many to pay him a visit; our authorw as one of that number. Exulting in the idea of a human being, who had bravely emancipated himself from the iron fangs of aristocracy, to live free from impost, he wrote extempore with chaulk above the fire place of this free man, the following lines:

Ye landlords vile, whose man's peace mar,

Come levy rents here if you can;

Your stewards and lawyers I defy,

And live with all the RIGHTS OF MAN

Spence left Newcastle for London in 1787. He kept a book-stall in High Holborn

High Holborn

High Holborn is a road in Holborn in central London, England. It starts in the west near St Giles Circus, then goes east, past the Kingsway and Southampton Row, and continues east. The road becomes Holborn at the junction with Gray's Inn Road....

. In 1794 he spent seven months in Newgate Gaol

Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison was a prison in London, at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey just inside the City of London. It was originally located at the site of a gate in the Roman London Wall. The gate/prison was rebuilt in the 12th century, and demolished in 1777...

 on a charge of High Treason, and in 1801 he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for seditious libel. He died in London on 8 September 1814.

His admirers formed a "Society of Spencean Philanthropists," of which some account is given in Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....

's England During the Thirty Years' Peace. The African Caribbean activists William Davidson

William Davidson (conspirator)

William Davidson was an African-Caribbean radical executed by the British government-Early years:Davidson was the illegitimate son of the Jamaican Attorney General and a local black woman. At age fourteen he travelled to Glasgow to study law. In Scotland he became involved in the movement for...

 and Robert Wedderburn were drawn to this political group.

Spence explored his political and social concepts in a series of books about the fictional Utopian state of Spensonia

Spensonia

Spensonia is a fictional Utopian country created by the English author and political reformer Thomas Spence. Spence laid out his ideas about Spensonia in a series of literary works published in the late 18th century:...

.

Spence's Phonetic System

Spence was a self-taught radical with a deep regard for education as a means to liberation. He pioneered a phonetic script and pronunciation system designed to allow people to learn reading and pronunciation at the same time. He believed that if the correct pronunciation was visible in the spelling, everyone would pronounce English correctly, and the class distinctions carried by language would cease. This would bring a time of equality, peace and plenty: the millennium. He published the first English dictionary with pronunciations (1775) and made phonetic versions of many of his pamphlets.

You can see examples of Spence's spelling system on the pages on English from the Spence Society.

The Rights of Children

Spence's angry defense of the rights of children has lost little of its potency. When his The Rights of Infants was published in 1796 it was ahead of its time. Spence's essay also expresses a clear commitment to the rights of women (although he appears unaware of Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women').

Selected publications

• The Real Rights of Man (1793)
• End of Oppression (1795)
• Rights of Infants (1796)
• Constitution of Spensonia (1801)
• The Important Trial of Thomas Spence (1807)

External links

• The Thomas Spence Society
• Thomas Spence, The Real Rights of Man, 1775.
• M. Beer, ed., The Pioneers of Land Reform: Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, Thomas Paine, 1920.

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