Edward Carpenter - Later Political Activism

Later Political Activism

The last twenty years of Carpenter's life were filled with a continued political radicalism, marked by his persistent involvement in progressive issues, including environmental protection, animal rights, sexual freedom, the Women's movement and vegetarianism. He wrote on the awfulness of the capitalist system, against the landed aristocracy and for his vision of socialism – a new era of democracy, comradeship, cooperation and sexual freedom. He supported Fred Charles of the Walsall Anarchists in 1892. The following year he became a founder member of the Independent Labour Party with, among others, George Bernard Shaw. A true radical in his own lifetime, many of Carpenter's beliefs were rejected, and even ridiculed, by those on the Left. Carpenter was unperturbed by hostility of this kind. The attitude of many socialist contemporaries can be seen in George Orwell's later The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), an attack on "every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer sex maniac" in the Socialist movement.

He continued to work in the early part of the 20th century composing works on the "Homogenic question". The publication in 1902 of his groundbreaking anthology of poems, Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship, was a huge underground success, leading to a more advanced knowledge of homoerotic culture. In April 1914, Carpenter and his friend Laurence Houseman founded the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. Some of the topics addressed in lecture and publication by the society included: the promotion of the scientific study of sex; a more rational attitude towards sexual conduct and problems and questions connected with sexual psychology (from medical, juridical, and sociological aspects), birth control, abortion, sterilization, venereal diseases, and all aspects of prostitution. At this time, he also lectured to the Independent Labour Party and to the Fellowship of the New Life, from which the Fabian Society later grew.

Carpenter's interests were not confined to what his detractors may have termed fringe political subjects, but included the pressing international issues of the time. His left-wing pacifism led him to become a vocal opponent of the Second Boer War and then World War I. In 1919, he published The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife, where he argued passionately that the source of war and discontent in western society was class-monopoly and social inequality. He termed this social injustice "class-disease", where each class acts only in its own interests. To Carpenter's mind, a radical social and economic restructuring needed to take place in order to end social fragmentation. In his later years, he remarked that:

"I can see only one ultimate way out of the morass in which we are engulfed. The present commercial system will have to go, and there will have to be a return to the much simpler systems of co-operation be-longing to a bygone age . . . To that condition, or something very like it, I am convinced we shall have to return if society is to survive. I say this after a long and close observation of life in many phases. . . This is what the miners, I think, in a dim, subconscious way, have already perceived, for they retain in their minds much of the primitive mentality of pre-civilization days."

Carpenter's later years were characterised not only by continued writings on pacifism, but also activity in the trade-union movement. He was a hero to the first generation of Labour politicians. During the short-lived Labour government in 1924, his 80th birthday was marked by a commemorative greeting signed by every member of the Cabinet.