This year marks the 250th anniversary of Thomas Spence’s plan. So, who was Thomas Spence and what was his plan?
Thomas Spence was born in 1750 in Newcastle on 21 June, by the banks of the River Tyne. It has been documented that, as we shall see later, his Plan argued for universal suffrage, the rights of infants, the end of landlords, income for those unable to work, and public ownership of land by self-governing democratic parishes. He also aimed to improve education of the poor by publishing a new phonetic dictionary. It has also been noted that Spence began his working life in his father’s netmaking trade from the age of ten, then went on later to be “a teacher at Haydon Bridge Free Grammar School and at St. Ann’s Church in Byker under the City Corporation.”
Thomas Spence was not only a teacher. It has been argued that he had a questioning nature, having been encouraged by his father Jeremiah, a member of Rev. James Murray’s congregation, to read the Bible as a boy; not only read it, but also think hard about what the stories could teach him about society and the world around him.
This led Spence to challenge the way that society was run, including the way that land and property was concentrated in the hands of a tiny proportion of the population. During what became known as the ‘Enclosures,’ rich and powerful men were enclosing more and more of what used to be common land, forcing into poverty ordinary people who could no longer have access for their cattle to graze. Newcastle Corporation, run by and for the powerful and wealthy in the city soon had their eyes on a large area of open space they would like to enclose.
All this would lead Thomas Spence to coming up with his Plan, which he introduced in a lecture in November 1775.
The Plan
Interestingly, although Spence is often seen as someone who foreshadowed socialist writings and ideas of the future, reading the Plan tends to reveal that he was looking back to a better past at least much as regarding a better future.
It has been documented that:
“This plan of Thomas Spence, for restoring to Society the real blessings of the social compact, by parochial partnerships in Land, truly declares, that all persons are by nature born equal, and to exist must partake of the air to breathe, the light and the heat of the sun, and the productions of the earth and water; it is clear, that nature intended these elements equally for the use of all, and that naturally the land or territory of a nation, is the people’s Farm; which they might hold as a joint-stock Company in partnership.”
The Plan goes on to argue that as countries are divided and subdivided into provinces, counties, hundreds, townships, and parishes, so it was that the inhabitants of the smallest companies of proprietors, parishes, should be able to elect or appoint a committee to rent out the estate.
This would mean that the houses, lands, mines, and waters, and so on within the boundary of the estate to receive the rents should pay out of it, by a pound rate, in lieu of all taxes:
“…their share of the expenses of government, and paying all parish charges of building and repairing houses, bridges, roads, etc, to divide the remainder of such rent, equally by poll to every man, woman and child belonging to the parish.”
The plan was said to be founded on immutable and divine justice, and according to the laws of Moses, which direct the land to be possessed by families. Accordingly, it should:
“…not to be parted with otherwise than by mortgage, nor to be sold, given away, or alienated, but to the year of Jubilee [25th Chap. of Leviticus], as no one had other than a life interest therein: Witness – Naboth’s Vineyard [21st Chap.1st Book of Kings].
“And further, the fulfilment of this law in the establishment of the Christian Church, is strikingly apparent: it has been the usage of the Church in all countries and times; from its beginning to the present day, to hold their property, as a joint-stock company, in partnership, their lands, colleges, convents, churches, houses, etc, are the property of the church, and the individuals have but a life interest in therein: their revenues are divided to all the members and though not equally, yet all are thereby kept from misery.
“None can buy, sell, give, devise, or leave to their children, any part of this property, of which all are landlords; no! not so much as a nail or a brick; and this mode of holding property relieves the members of the Church from all expenses of lawsuits, about inheritances, titles and the like; from causes of war, civil or external, the burthen of tax collectors, etc.”
Spence claimed that his Plan, if repeated throughout the world, would put right every evil of which people complain, by “establishing natural and divine Justice, and producing all the happiness expected from the Millennium.”
Spence wanted land to be shared put equally and, as he saw it, fairly. It was a radical plan in 1775 and 250 years later, very much remains so. This would have consequences for Spence both later in life and even after his death.
What happened to Thomas Spence? It has been recorded that Spence continued to advance his views in poems and pamphlets for the rest of his life. Indeed, he was to spend six months in prison in 1784 for publishing a pamphlet, which the authorities didn’t like. In 1792 Spence went to live in London, where he was “active in a number of contemporary reform movements.”
Then in 1801, Spence was sentenced to 12 months in prison for his pamphlet ‘The Restorer of Society to its Natural State,’ which was considered to be seditious libel. While in prison Spence wrote the following short poem:
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.
It has also been noted that Spence:
“…took part in radical agitations, particularly against the war with France. He was arrested several times for selling his own and other seditious books and was imprisoned for six months without trial in 1794, and sentenced to three years for his ‘Restorer of Society to its Natural State’ in 1801. Whilst politicians such as Edmund Burke saw the mass of people as the ‘Swinish Multitude,’ Spence saw creative potential in everybody and broadcast his ideas in the periodical Pigs’ Meat.”
Spence sold books from a stall in London’s Chancery Lane, before establishing a small shop in Holborn called The Hive of Liberty. Despite all his work Spence died in poverty and it was said that he died “leaving nothing to his friends but an injunction to promote his Plan and the remembrance of his inflexible integrity.”
Spence’s legacy
For all the fact that he died in poverty, Spence did have a society named after him called the Spenceans who continued his radical work. In 2015, just over 200 years after his death, there was a conference held in Toulouse, France to consider Spence’s life and writings and there is a society dedicated to his life and work.
Spence was viewed as so dangerous by the establishment in the Country that his notoriety meant that he was not only put in prison, but was also mentioned scathingly in parliament in 1817, fully three years after his death.
A future Tory Prime Minister, George Canning MP, rose in the House of Commons on 29 January 1817 and criticised parliamentary reformers as “visionary and fanciful theorists!” talking metaphorically of storms and whirlwinds and of twilight assassins, using as his evidence for all this mayhem: Spence’s plan.
Spence had died in poverty in 1814, and was never to see his plan come to fruition; but he did help to set the tone for a strong strand of thinking in the North East, that the North East was an egalitarian and radical minded region.
