On John Wesley, John Cartwright and the Reform Conversation

[danieldwilliam]

I like to think about strategy and I like to think I’m a hard headed pragmatist. Maybe I am but I’m also sentimental and I’m a story-teller. In recent months I’ve been inspired by two statues, outside two houses, of two men. Really I’ve been inspired by the organisations they built. I’m inspired by how they built their organisations and about the story that tells me about how the Reform Movement can prosper in the UK.

The first is a a statue of John Wesley in Bristol. It stands in the courtyard of the New Rooms, the  chapel and meeting rooms and hostel built by the Methodist community in Bristol. Being a Methodist in Bristol was hard work in the 18^th Century. If you were against slavery Bristol was not the place to go for an easy life. The New Rooms are designed with no low windows, so that it was harder for mobs of irate Bristolians to break them. The pulpit is only reachable by going up into the gallery and then down into the pulpit, to make it harder for irate Bristolians to drag the preacher out of the pulpit and beat him.

The New Rooms are very elegant, simple and beautifully light, they are a lovely place to contemplate God, or in my case Reform. Above the chapel is a hostel and office space. Here the Wesley’s stayed when the were in Bristol. Any one of the hundreds of Methodist preachers could stay there as they criss-crossed Britain bringing their message of faith and social justice to the peoples of Britain. Every Methodist preacher in Britain passed through the New Rooms and ate a meal at the table in the refrectory.

Then the preachers would continue with their circuits, gathering their congregations. They would gather their congregations whereever they could find them and talk to them outside, in the sunshine or the rain. They would talk with whomever would listen.

The New Rooms were a nexus for the Methodist movement. It is where the conversations happened.  All the little conversations about who is doing what, and all the big conversations about how their community worked, and lived. They broke bread together and shared their lives, both in word and deed. Then they went out to talk with people who wanted to talk, and to talk with people who didn’t want to talk.

The second statue is of John Cartwright, the Father of Reform. His statue stands in the garden of a square where he made his final home in Bloomsbury.  Cartwright created the London Corresponding Scociety, The Hampden Clubs and others like them, which brought working men and women together, physically and through correspondence to talk about Reform, about Universal Suffrage and how they might achieve it. The clubs and societies he founded were often persecuted and eventually outlawed. He was due to speak at a large public meeting of the Manchester Patriotic Union in 1819. This became the Peterloo Massacre. Cartwright died in 1824, eight years before the Great Reform Act of 1832 widened the franchise and for the first time Britain approached democracy.

What links these men and what I find inspirational about them and useful for the Reform Movement is that they both set out to create spaces for conversation.  Spaces for people to talk who didn’t already have a voice. They each put time and effort into walking the land talking to people, encouraging and facilitating a wide, diverse and deep conversation. They encouraged other people to go out and facilitate their own conversations. Out of that conversation, out of the structures they put in place for conversation grew organisations that lead to profound social and political change in our country.

In the 21^st Century we don’t necessarily need to gather congregations or found clubs. I don’t see myself tramping from town to town for the next ten years.  The method of the 18^th and 19^th centuries are not necessarily the methods for the 21^st.  The lesson I take from John Wesley and John Cartwright is this.  The Reform Movement needs to talk.  The Reform Movement needs to talk amongst itself.  We need to talk about our goals and our aims and our methods. We need to talk about our values and aspirations.  Then, we need to go and talk to people who are not in the Reform Movement. We need to ask them about their values and aspirations.  We need to talk with them about our common goals. We need to have thousands and thousands of conversations.  Conversations between two people. Conversations amongst hundreds of us gathered togethered. Quiet pints in dark pubs, Skype calls after hurried dinners,  rowdy curries after conferences, emails, blogs, pamphlets, facebook status. Conversations with friends, with colleagues, with allies, conversations with those undecided or uniterested or focused on something else, conversations with enemies.

What I take from Wesley and Cartright for myself is this.  My role in this is to be one of the people who helps the conversation to happen.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Very, very important corollary. Helping the conversation to happen and being in the conversation are two very different (and sometimes inimical) things. They require separate thought. Then the combination requires its own thought.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yes, I see that.

One of the challenges I think is that in order to be in the position to facilitate the conversation one needs to have been delegated to have the conversation. That I think is the perception of how things are supposed to be.

There is something about the medium being the message here for me.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's how things are 'supposed to be', but I don't think it's the case. Need to think about meaning of facilitate. There are extremely important and helpful factors for which one does not need a mandate, like making sure that there is light in the venue and food available but not a surfeit of coffee or alcohol or sugar. Making sure that introverts get reflection time and material in advance. Stuff like that.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's not, necessarily, the case. These things are cultural I think and one of the things I specifically want to change is the culture that the Reform Movement has leaders and fixed loci.

Also, very much agree that one doesn't need to be the person with permision to hold the marke pen in order to play an important role in making sure the space is open and safe for all to participate.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I suspect a huge amount of this is (a) making sure that conversations happen at all, and (b) damage limitation.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Would you say more about damage limitation?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

People who've drunk too much or not eaten enough or are trying to have a conversation by email that should happen in person, or a conversation without person E that needs person E in order to work, or somewhere where anyone could overhear so they're not saying what they really think, or at the end of a long working day when everyone wants to get home. Et cetera. Trying to get conversations to happen at a point where (a) the right people are in the conversation and (b) they are resourced is a life's work, and it's perhaps the single most useful contribution it's possible to make.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Mmmh, yeah.

The people in my two Johns narrative who doesn’t get a mention, but who I think is the unsung hero of the Methodists are the people, mainly women, who provided the housekeeping service at the New Rooms, making sure everyone got a hot dinner and clean bed and the needle and tread to mend their clothes. There was one stand out character but the New Rooms website doesn’t mention her name (the museum itself talks quite a lot about her).

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Martha.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not being clear. I have no idea whether her name really is Martha.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Martha. I want to say Emily Dickenson but I’m pretty sure that’s not right either.

I’d put up a statue to her tho’.

[helen parker (from livejournal.com)]

It doesn't matter whether or not her name really was Martha, because as soon as you call her that I know exactly who you mean.

[helen parker (from livejournal.com)]

Quite a few thoughts on reading and thinking about all the kinds of conversations that can happen and need to happen. Perhaps first of all enthusiasm about how diverse the possibilities are and gratitude at being around now and having the chance to be involved in any of these ways. Some caution about the volume of channels for communication too - what should I make of that point becoming clear to me from just the sort of conversation we are talking about? Also, memories of conversations that turned out to be significant and/or make sense later none of them directly in the scheme of contemplating God or Reform) and a sense of their randomness (which in some cases might have helped them stand out, given that I understand the average human being forgets some huge percentage of what s/he says and hears every day.) It all underlines the importance of making sure conversations happen at all.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yep, I think conversation is at the heart of all of this.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

As typos go, the Rather of Reform is rather fun.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Fiddlesticks!

Gosh in Tarnation.

Darn.

[rowanryder.livejournal.com]

'one of the people who helps the conversation to happen'... yes indeed
Thanks for this lovely post
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