Джордж Джулиан Харни: Чартст, журналист және социалист лидері

British political activist, journalist, and Chartist leader

George Julian Harney (17 February 1817 – 9 December 1897) was a British political activist, journalist, and Chartist leader. He was also associated with Marxism, socialism, and universal suffrage.

Harney was now a Socialist and he used the Northern Star to promote this philosophy. O'Connor, the newspaper's owner, disagreed with socialism and he pressurized Harney into resigning as editor. Harney now formed his own newspaper, the Red Republican. With the help of his friend, Ernest Charles Jones, Harney attempted to use his paper to educate his working class readers about socialism and proletarian internationalism. In 1847 Harney stood as the Chartist candidate against Lord Palmerston for the seat of Tiverton, an event described by Engels in an article for La Reforme thus:

"It will be recalled that at the last elections Mr. Harney, editor in chief of the Northern Star, was put forward as the Chartist candidate for Tiverton, a borough which is represented in Parliament by Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary. Mr. Harney, who won on the show of hands, decided to retire when Lord Palmerston demanded a poll." As Aveling pointed out who had spoken with Harney: "Of course these more or less abortive runnings of candidates were chiefly with the intention of making propaganda by speech. For example, the opposition to Lord Morpeth in 1841 gave Harney the opportunity of speaking at such towns as Leeds, Huddersfield, Bradford, Dewsbury, Wakefield. There was never any serious intention of going to the poll." Harney's speech at the Hustings was published in full in the Northern Star and reprinted and distributed widely in Chartist circles. In June 1849, Harney launched his monthly journal Democratic Review of British and Foreign Politics, History and Literature. Articles from Karl Marx' Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1 June 1848 to 19 May 1849) appeared in serialised form in the April, May, and June 1850 issues. In 1850 the Red Republican published the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto with the opening lines: "A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe." The translation was done by Helen Macfarlane, a journalist, socialist and feminist of the time, who wrote for the Red Republican under the pseudonym Howard Morton. The Red Republican was not a financial success it lasted for 24 numbers the final issue being dated 30 November 1850. Harney followed it with the Friend of the People (December 1850 April 1852), Star of Freedom (April 1852 December 1852) and The Vanguard (January 1853 March 1853), the weekly that only ran for seven numbers, coupled to which in the previous month his wife Mary Harney had died on 11 February 1853. After The Vanguard ceased publication Harney moved to Newcastle and worked for Joseph Cowen's newspaper, the Northern Tribune(1854 1855).

Harney travelled to meet French socialists living in exile in Jersey. It is said that he went there to declare his solidarity with the French writer Victor Hugo who, with his family, had been exiled from France by Napoleon III. Harney's second wife, Marie Métivier (née Le Sueur), was the widow of James Metivier, a prosperous shop keeper and temperance leader in Jersey. "She was a woman of intelligence and strong political conviction, Marie had taken piano lessons from Chopin and had been acquainted with George Sand and Chateaubriand. She was close friends with Anita Garibaldi and had served as a nurse in Garibaldi’s army out of sympathy for his cause." Marie and Harney were married on July 25, 1859, and Harney became a stepfather of James (b. 1853). They were very close friends of the Hugo's. Victor Hugo gave a tea service to Marie and an inscribed portrait of himself to Harney, the "eloquent and valiant writer". Victor Hugo also dedicated several volumes of his translation of Shakespeare to Marie Harney. In Jersey Harney became editor of the Jersey Independent (1856–62), transforming it from a twice weekly into a daily newspaper. Harney's support for the North in the American Civil War upset the owner of the Jersey Independent and in November 1862 Harney was forced to resign.

In May 1863 he sailed to Boston where he had connections with the anti slavery movement. During his first years in the United States he visited many northern states and met many politicians, among them President Abraham Lincoln. It was Charles Sumner, the abolitionist U. S. Senator, who had already corresponded with him when he was in Jersey, who helped Harney to settle in America. It was Sumner who had arranged his interview with Lincoln at the White House. "An invitation to become American "correspondent" for the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle was readily accepted and, during his twenty five year sojourn in Boston, Harney wrote countless letters and articles promoting American democracy and appraising the American way of Life." After a brief editorship of the antislavery newspaper The Commonwealth (1862 96), Harney obtained a post in the Massachusetts State House as a clerk in the Document Room. Even in this settled position Harney continued to study and meet American poets such as John Greenleaf Whittier, politicians, and old Chartist friends who had also moved to the United States. Harney continued in his post as clerk for over a decade, making extended trips back to England until 1888 when he finally returned to live at Richmond on Thames. According to Ashton & Hugman, Harney indulged in considerable political camouflage when describing America, providing a "naïve gloss on American politics", such that "he uniquely encouraged and sustained a belief in American democracy, helped to mitigate against anti American sentiment, and promoted Boston as a favorable and hospitable destination for British immigrants." In his letters he sometimes refers to "our Republicanism" and he constantly held up and idealized those aspects of American society and aspects of its political and social life that cast a scathing and damning picture of the conditions back in England. Thus on the question of universal suffrage Harney could write in 1867 "The "bearing" of the above on the great question now agitating England, I need not point out to you. ":
" no other topic can present such features of interest, especially at this moment. Our interest in American politics has been mainly that of a desire to see the disenthralment of an oppressed and cruelly wronged race. That victory for humanity we at length witness. What a revolution in six years! Will the British working man occupy as proud a political position as that now held by the negroes of the States, within six years to come? There is stinging humiliation for us Englishmen in the very question." During the prominent secularist Charles Bradlaugh’s first lecture tour of the USA in 1873, Harney and Wendell Phillips had been his guide showing him around Boston. It is interesting that when he learnt about the intended American journey of agitation by the socialists Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx Aveling and Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1886, Harney expressed to Engels his concern for their safety, writing on 23 August from Newcastle: "I am sorry to know the Avelings are going to America. Pray urge caution upon them. After all the brag and bunkum, England is the true 'land of liberty' [ ] In my judgment Dr and Mrs Aveling had better leave well alone and stay where they are."

A letter of Harney's to the editor of the Weekly Chronicle written from Richmond on Thames on August 3, 1891, defended his friend Holyoake's use of the term "Jingo". On 4 February 1893 Engels wrote to Harney to suggest that instead of his contributions to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, owned by his friend Joseph Cowen, he find an appropriate publisher and write a history of Chartism. He was aware of Graham Wallas's attempts to do something similar: "I have been aware of Wallas's intention for some time. If I were inclined to I could not prevent fulfilment of that intention and as to anticipate him that would be impossible. A year ago, or more, I saw a prospectus I think by Holyoake of a course of lectures on Chartism by Wallas at the South Place Chapel, Finsbury." Harney's reply to Engels, that he considered "a very unsatisfactory letter" provides fascinating details as to his deteriorating health and financial insecurities, and the tone is one of resignation, admiring how Engels' retained his optimism. He lamented the fact that many of his books and pamphlets were still in America, and that he did not have access to all the materials. In a further letter of Engels it appears that he offered him money for a work on the history of Chartism that Harney, politely declined.