WHEN Engels died in 1895, his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head close to what had been one of his favourite seaside towns, Eastbourne.

Marx, who died in 1883, had been buried in Highgate Cemetery in a modest grave but geographically appropriate for someone who had spent much of their life in north London.

A modest controversy has now arisen over plans to make more space for graves in the area around where Marx is buried.

Space for burials at Highgate Cemetery is very limited and the cost for burying someone there starts at several thousand pounds for a spot to mark a cremation and rises steeply for a gravestone.

The Daily Telegraph reported on January 16 that Highgate Cemetery is looking to profit by selling space for new graves near where Marx is now buried. Their ability to do this was cleared by legislation in 2022, although it’s worth keeping in mind that the cemetery was originally designated specifically as a profitable enterprise.

The report notes that older graves where there are thought to be no living relatives and which are unconsecrated may be cleared to allow for new burials, but that the priority is to develop the space around Marx’s grave.

The current position and structure of Marx’s grave dates only to the mid-1950s when the Communist Party of Great Britain promoted a rather more prominent monument to the co-thinker of Engels than had previously existed.

Since then the grave has been the location of annual commemorations of Marx’s life and thought. To underline that its existence still annoys the political opponents of Marx 140 years after his death, it has been the subject of several attacks by fascists in recent times.

Aside from the annual event, the grave of course attracts visitors to the cemetery, becoming something of a tourist attraction.

Not to be outdone by the Telegraph, the Times, on January 17, ran both a report and an editorial on the issue. As might be expected, this celebrated the idea of making money out of providing new burial space in proximity to Marx’s grave.

As often with Times editorials in the Rupert Murdoch era, it was short of important details and wrong on others. For example, in the pre-Covid era before 2020, the cemetery attracted around 100,000 visitors a year, not a day as the Times thinks. Current visitor levels are recovering again, even allowing for the reality that in a cost-of-living crisis an entry charge is payable.

Highgate Cemetery was opened in 1839 by the London Cemetery Company, specifically as a profit-making venture. Even at that time, it aimed to provide space for burials where existing graveyards were full.

This worked well enough, but by the 1970s the company was in financial trouble and no longer maintaining the cemetery properly. A local group, the Highgate Cemetery Trust, stepped in to run it before the graves and vegetation, which require considerable maintenance, fell into further disrepair.

It is a charitable trust and receives no public funding, although it has received a £100,000 grant from the National Lottery Fund. The plans to exploit the area around Marx’s grave are hence designed not to make a profit but specifically aimed at being not-for-profit.

Needless to say, this point was not the focus of the Times, which was too busy celebrating the idea, wrongly, that Marx’s grave would promote private profit.

In due course, it will be interesting to see what graves do appear close to that of Marx. We can only hope that they will be broadly appropriate to his life and work and not of those who spent their lives trying to undermine it.

Keith Flett is a socialist historian. Follow him on X @kmflett.