I WAS pleased to see that the Morning Star reported on the recent International Engels in Eastbourne conference, quite appropriately and informatively concentrating on the various academic lectures.

Unreported, however, was the input from the Engels in Eastbourne Campaign group (EiE), a local community group that aims to celebrate and make visible Eastbourne’s remarkable radical history.

The University of Brighton, which co-hosted the conference, has been working with the campaign for a number of years.

The conference was held at the View Hotel in commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.

At the welcome address, Carol Mills, from the EiE Campaign, explained why the View was the chosen venue.

Until 2014, this Unite the Union-owned hotel was a workers’ recuperation hotel and education conference centre.

The hotel was opened in 1976 by the great trade unionist Jack Jones, the then general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union.

He had been inspired by a visit to similar provisions on the Black Sea. So one day, while at a Labour Party conference in Brighton, he took a trip along the coast in search of a suitable site.

I’m glad he headed east that day and chanced upon Eastbourne. 

At the end of the Engels conference, four groups of delegates took a shortened version of the EiE Campaign’s radical history tour. They learnt about some of the campaign’s projects:

1. An Engels plaque and/or information boards. After all, Eastbourne was Engels’s favourite English seaside town.

He spent the last 15 years of his life as a frequent visitor, bringing along his social democrat peers and members of Marx’s family.

He most often stayed at Astor House, 4 Cavendish Place (now the Afton Hotel).

Briefly, in 1976, there was a plaque to Engels at this hotel, but the National Front kept damaging it and it now sits in the archives of Manchester People’s Museum, graffitied with red paint.

Engels wrote his last letter from Astor House dated July 23 1895, addressed to Laura Lafargue.

The letter ended: “I do not have the strength to write long letters, so keep well.” 

The next day he returned to London and died on August 5, having added to his will a codicil that his ashes be scattered in the sea off Beachy Head.

And so, on August 27 1895, on a very stormy day, four set off in a boat carrying the urn containing Friedrich Engels’s ashes. The four were Eleanor Marx and her “cad” partner Edward Aveling, Eduard Bernstein and Frederick Lessner.

2. A Paul Robeson Room at the Winter Garden (the Old Man River, world famous, bass baritone performer who sang to sell-out crowds at the Floral Hall in the ’20s and ’30s. Plus, of course, he was the greatest civil rights activist of his time. 

The EiE Campaign has agreement for a Paul Robeson Room at the Winter Garden, which is owned by Eastbourne Borough Council. But the actual opening of this room is always just out of reach for various frustrating reasons. 

3. A George Meek commemoration. Who, you may ask? Well, he is Eastbourne’s very own socialist Bath-chair man — a real-life Frank Owen from the Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists.

Born into poverty, he died in poverty yet wrote an autobiography under the mentorship of HG Wells.

People sometimes romanticise when seeing old photos of Bath-chairs as though quaintly amusing.

Eastbourne’s real-life working-class history should be known, and made visible, and honoured. Life as a Bath-chair man was grim and brutish, as is made so clear by Meek. 

“If you would know the horror of black despair, go out with a Bath-chair day after day, with the chair-owner or landlord worrying you for rent, food needed at home, and get nothing.

“Stare till your eyes ache; pray with aching heart to a God whom you ultimately curse for his deafness. And this not for a few weeks, but year after year.” 

And again: “Among the chair-men I have known since I first began to work at the calling seven have gone mad, many have taken to drink, others have died in the workhouse or are still there.

“The work demoralises everyone in some way. It sets man against man. Some will do the meanest things to get work away from others.

“For instance, men have gone to my customers and told them that I could not see, or that I was a socialist, or that I drink. It is quite a common thing for me to get passengers and then suddenly lose them.”

4. An Eastbourne home for the international workers’ mural that used to be displayed in the reception of the TGWU hotel.

It was removed during the 2014 refurbishments that prepared the hotel for tourism.

The balcony where this wonderful 89-foot-long mural hung was replaced by a new mezzanine level.

So, the mural is currently sitting in boxes in Birmingham. But the EiE Campaign is working on holding a mural exhibition in the town. Believe me, you’ll love this mural. A permanent home for it back in Eastbourne is the ultimate goal.

The 100 distinguished guests of the international conference were completely on board with the aims of the Engels in Eastbourne Campaign.

Of course. Why wouldn’t they want Eastbourne to celebrate and make visible its fantastic radical history?

They posed with posters to help the campaign send a message to Eastbourne Borough Council to finish the work they have started with the campaign and to get some of its projects across the finishing line. Proudly visible for both visitors and residents alike.

There are tourists holidaying in Eastbourne especially due to the town’s connection with Engels. One family visiting from Germany chanced upon the conference but were bewildered that there was no publicly available celebration of Engels in the town.

“Where is the Engels information in the town? We couldn’t find it.” “Good question,” I responded, “We are working on it!”

The radical history tour is available online as a self-guided walk at bit.ly/EastbourneTour.

For more information on Eastbourne’s radical history go to bit.ly/RadicalEastbourne.