The Anti-Imperialist Legacy of Richard Cobden

Posted by Pete on 3rd Jun 2021

Born on this day in 1804, Cobden spent much of his life calling out the horrors of the British Empire

You hear a lot of nonsense about British ‘history’ these days.

One of the most common nonsenses is the attempt to justify horrific crimes as a simple inevitability. 

That’s what the slogan ‘they were of their time’ attempts to do. It’s used as an excuse for all sorts of injustices and slaughter.

The blood-soaked enslaver of human beings, Edward Colston, was of his time! The charlatan imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, was of his time!

It’s all nonsense.

The statue to Edward Colston - the English slave-trader - was toppled in Bristol on the 7th of June, 2020.

Click to view our Edward Colston Statue tea towel

If Edward Colston was ‘of his time’ in early-modern England, then how did abolitionists like William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano come to be?

As for Rhodes, while he was crowing about white supremacy and the glorious British Empire, there were plenty among his contemporaries rejecting his bile and denouncing imperial conquest.

One was the radical liberal, Richard Cobden (1804-65).

If you’ve spent much time around Camden, you may have seen his statue outside Mornington Crescent tube station.

Though born in rural Sussex, Richard Cobden was more a product of the political radicalism of 19th century Manchester.

It was in the Northern ‘Cottonopolis’ that the young Cobden made a fortune in calico.

Whatever Elon Musk might claim, ‘industrial magnate’ is hardly the profile of a political rebel anymore. But back in early-19th century England, the bourgeoisie had a little fuel left as a radical force in society.

In the previous century, Olaudah Equiano was another loud anti-imperialist voice in Britain, an ex-slave and abolitionist campaigner. 

Click to view our Olaudah Equiano tea towel

In fact, Cobden cut his teeth and made his name battling the class above him – the landowning aristocracy.

He was a pioneer in the decade-long campaign against the corn laws: import tariffs on wheat designed to protect the income of big landowners against foreign competition, whilst also making food more expensive for working people.

Cobden co-founded the Anti-Corn Law League in Manchester in 1838 and spent years campaigning for the cause.

When the Tory Prime Minister, Robert Peel, finally conceded in 1846, he attributed the repeal of the Corn Law to Cobden’s activism.

But it was through this struggle that Cobden found an even more radical and courageous passion – anti-imperialism.

In fighting against tariffs like the Corn Law, he became a passionate supporter of free trade, not just as an economic device but as a system for world peace.

Free trade would bind the states of the world together and make them rely on one another so much that war would be impossible.

This commitment to international peace set Cobden on a direct collision course with the British Establishment, this time over empire. 

Richard Cobden was elected to parliament in 1841 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The mid- to late-19th century saw the British Empire at its most internationally violent. Few places or peoples were left un-invaded.

And Richard Cobden was denouncing it at every turn:

“In the slave trade we had surpassed in guilt the world, so in foreign wars we have the most aggressive, quarrelsome, warlike and bloody nation under the sun.”

When Britain invaded Myanmar in 1852, Cobden declared:

“I blush for my country, and the very blood in my veins tingled with indignation at the wanton disregard of all justice and decency which our proceedings towards that country exhibited.”

Cobden’s rejection of imperialism got him plenty of flak from the right-wing press in Britain, but he kept at it until his death.

He left a legacy of anti-imperial critique and peace activism, continued and embodied by his children.

A fitting afterword with Father’s Day coming up: Cobden was the father of five daughters who survived to adulthood.

Among these were Jane and Anne Cobden, both of whom pursued versions of their dad’s radicalism.

Jane was a devout anti-imperialist, campaigning against the Boer War and advocating for indigenous rights in colonised territories. She was also a fighter for women's suffrage in Britain.

Anne was also active in the women’s suffrage campaign, which won her a brief stay in a prison cell.

Sometimes, it seems, radicalism runs in the family.

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