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The great Marx-Engels rift – where to go on holiday?
KEITH FLETT explores the seaside divide afflicting the founding fathers of communism
Bridlington was a firm favourite on Engels
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MARX and Engels’s love of the Victorian seaside is well known. Their visits to Margate, Ramsgate and Eastbourne as well as Brighton and the Isle of Wight are documented.
However the two had a rare split when it came to location. Marx favoured the sea water and arguably slightly warmer conditions of southern seaside towns. His main concern was his health. He did venture north, not particularly in the summer, to visit spa towns like Harrogate and Buxton. Again the emphasis was on his health.
Engels by contrast spent at least some summers pursuing an interest in geology.
This was the reason for his perambulations around the Isle of Wight from Ryde but it also saw him become a regular visitor to a northern resort: Bridlington.
This is a Yorkshire seaside town known — at least by labour movement veterans — as the location of the 1939 Bridlington Agreement, which aimed to stop trade unions “poaching” members from each other.
Well before that it had become a favoured summer holiday destination for Engels and his partner.
He appears to have first visited in 1868 (although possibly earlier) and he was still visiting in the early 1880s.
He wrote to Louis Kugelmann from York on July 31 1868 that he was on his way to Bridlington with his spouse, Lizzie Burns. He added in brackets: “I bet you couldn’t guess how the name is pronounced.”
By August 6, Engels was back in Manchester, writing that he had been to Bridlington for the weekend and planned to return and take a holiday.
Unfortunately an employee at the Manchester mill where Engels worked had gout and he had to stand in for him.
Engels wrote again to Marx from Manchester on August 12, noting that he had been again in Bridlington from August 7-10 1868 and had made some “quite interesting” geological studies.
He now planned to return for 10 days from August 14, the employee with gout being on the road to recovery.
He gave Marx the address of Mr Burns, 3 Burlington Place, Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire.
In fact the stay was rather longer, as Engels wrote to Marx from Bridlington Quay on August 22 that he planned to return to Manchester on August 26 or 27.
Bridlington was a favourite resort of Engels over the decades and while there on July 29 1881, he wrote to Marx about the excellence of the beer to be found on a little cafe on the pier.
The bitter, he noted, had a head on it like German beer. There is no evidence however that he managed to persuade Marx to make the journey to sample the beer.
It being England, the summer weather was a perpetual concern.
In the summer of 1880, on September 17 Engels was again at Bridlington quay and wrote to Marx who was in Ramsgate: “We shall be returning at the end of the week. Wet weather since the day before yesterday.”
The following summer of 1881, Engels was again at Bridlington quay and on August 17 noted: “The weather pretty well continuously overcast, threatening & cold; since yesterday it has been decidedly wet & in conditions like that Bridlington Quay becomes a downright bore.”
Unlike some of the resorts in the south of England visited by Marx or Engels or both of them in the 1850s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, Bridlington doesn’t appear to have recognised Engels’s visits there.
Perhaps this is the moment for a statue of Engels on Bridlington quay.
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