TWO books take us back to the middle of the 19th century — the poetry of Byron and the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

It was perfect timing. Just as a chain of democratic revolutions against the tyrannies and despotic royal regimes of Europe began, two young Germans, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, penned The Manifesto of the Communist Party. It appeared in print on February 21 1848.

Marx and Engels later recounted: “The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could, of course, be only a secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme for the party.

“Such was the origin of the following manifesto, the manuscript of which travelled to London to be printed a few weeks before the February [French] Revolution [in 1848].”

1848 — the year of revolutions — was marked in London by a massive Chartist manifestation for democracy.

In the country where capital first triumphed over feudalism, the instruments of government remained firmly rooted in this feudal past, while only men of property had a vote.

The procession carrying the signatures to the People’s Charter reached Kennington Common in south London at 11am.

Armed police and military guarded the bridges to Parliament, the palace and the City while thousands of working people gathered on the common.

The Illustrated London News report, detailed but hostile in tone, recounted: “Here had already assembled the Irish confederalists and the various bodies of the trades of London, who had intimated their intention of joining in the demonstration.

“These had taken their position in numerical order on the Common, having arrived from their different rendezvous some time previously.

“Each trade had its emblematic banner, and the Irish confederalists displayed a very splendid green standard emblazoned with the harp of Erin, and the motto ‘Erin go bragh,’” and, “Many of the members and their partisans wore rosettes of red, green, and white, the colours of the Convention” — also, as the News conspicuously failed to note, of the British republic.

The leader of London’s trade unions and trade union representative on the Charter’s national executive was the blacklisted tailor William Cuffay, son of a freed slave from St Kitts and a woman from the Medway Towns.

In the repression that followed, he was tried for conspiring to wage war on Queen Victoria and transported to Australia for 21 years.

His comrades in the London Convention send him on his way with a copy of Byron’s poetry “as a token of their sincere regard and affection for his genuine patriotism and moral worth.”

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This year, on Tuesday February 21, we celebrate Red Books Day following the example set by left-wing Indian publishers who, in 2020, suggested that people throughout the world should mark Red Books Day with readings of the Communist Manifesto in their own languages.

More than 30,000 people from South Korea to Venezuela joined the public reading of the manifesto in their own languages.

The epicentre of Red Books Day was in the four Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, where the bulk of the public readings took place.

In Tamil Nadu, 10,000 participated in a Red Books festival.

Peasant organisations led by the Communist Party of Nepal, and the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil held readings.

In Havana, Lesotho, Argentina and South Africa the idea caught on.

At Studio Safdar in Delhi, the Manifesto was read in many Indian and European languages, a tribute not only to the text itself but to International Mother Language Day, which also falls on February 21.

Accounts have it that many people reported that this was the first time that they opened a book by Marx and that they were enthused to read the captivating prose; this has drawn them to start study circles of Marxist literature.

The success of the initiative has given birth to the idea of an International Union of Left Publishers as a network which will anchor an annual Red Books Day celebration.

Britain’s left-wing publishers Manifesto Press will celebrate Red Books Day with a giveaway of five free e-books from its catalogue.

The exorbitant costs of posting books abroad mean Manifesto Press, for the moment, can only offer our titles to overseas readers as e-books.

The launch of our new website makes the bulk of its backlist available to a global readership in affordable e-book form and introduces new lines of apparel with a progressive message.

To mark the launch, every book in print is offered to the British market with a 10 per cent discount.

Available for free to download are An Economy for the People edited by Jonathan White, which brought together a collective of radical economists and writers to anticipate the 2017 Labour manifesto; Alexandra Kollantai’s essay on International Women’s Day; the first English publication of  The Woman Worker by NK Krupskaya; John Foster’s The Councils of Action 1920 and the British Labour Movement’s Defence of Soviet Russia and US interventions in Latin America by Henry Suarez.

Visit Manifesto Press at www.manifestopress.coop.