6. K. Marx. Note to Hermann Jung About Ernest Jones' Letter to the Central Council Meeting. March 21, 1865
6. K. Marx. Note to Hermann Jung About Ernest Jones' Letter to the Central Council Meeting. March 21, 1865[241]
Ernest Jones writes to Marx (d.d. March 16, Manchester) that he will support the delegation sent to the Manchester Conference.[242]
The middle class had sent to him and Hooson to sign the Circular convening the Manchester Conference. He had not accepted it at the date of the letter. He writes moreover(1):
"We are going to hold district meetings in Manchester to organise the Manhood Suffrage movement in support of the London one."
Give Mr. Cremer (privately) the address of E. Jones: 55, Cross Street, Manchester.
Endnotes
[241] T h i s note is a summary of Ernest Jones' letter to Marx of March 16, 1865 concerning the participation of the International's representatives in an electoral reform conference to be convened in Manchester by the Liberals. Marx, who advocated drawing the broad mass of workers into the campaign for a democratic reform, encouraged all the measures of the Central Council that were directed to this end. H e sought to enlist the support of Ernest Jones, an active participant in the campaign for universal suffrage in Manchester, who exposed the attempts of bourgeois liberals and radicals to lend a moderate character to the reform. At the Central Council meetings of February 14 and 28 Marx read Jones' letters on this campaign (see this volume, pp. 358, 359). Marx could not personally inform the Council of Jones' letter of March 16 because of his forthcoming d e p a r t u r e for Holland. Jung presumably acquainted Cremer with Marx's summary of Jones' letter. O n Cremer's proposal the Central Council carried on March 21 a resolution instructing its deputation to the Manchester conference to demand manhood suffrage. Marx wrote down the summary of Jones' letter on the back of one of the three sheets of his memorandum to Hermann Jung about the conflict in the Paris Section (see Note 238). This document was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1864-1866, Moscow, 1962.
[242] The national Reform Conference, sponsored by the liberal National Reform Union, was held in Manchester on May 15 and 16, 1865. Most of its delegates were representatives of the bourgeoisie. They refused to include the demand for universal manhood suffrage in the conference's resolutions as proposed by the International's Central Council member Cremer, who was supported by Ernest Jones and some delegates of the radical Reform League (see Note 141). Edmond Beales, President of the Reform League, and other radicals adopted an indecisive attitude to the nature of the reform. As a result, the conference carried a moderate resolution to extend the franchise to householders and house tenants who paid poor-rates.