In Our Time - Annie Besant

Episode Date: June 21, 2012

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of the prominent 19th-century social reformer Annie Besant. Born in 1847, Annie Besant espoused a range of causes including secularism, women's rights, Socialism, Irish Home Rule, birth control and better conditions for workers. Described by Beatrice Webb as having "the voice of a beautiful soul", Besant became an eloquent public speaker as well as writing numerous campaigning articles and pamphlets. She is perhaps most famous for the key role she played in the successful strike by female workers at the Bryant and May match factory in East London in 1888, which brought the appalling working conditions of many factory workers to greater public attention. Later in life she became a follower of theosophy, a belief system bringing together elements of Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions. She moved to India, its main base, and took on a leading role in the Indian self-rule movement, being appointed the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917. With: Lawrence Goldman Fellow in Modern History at St Peter's College, University of OxfordDavid Stack Reader in History at the University of Reading Yasmin Khan Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Producer: Victoria Brignell.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in the summer of 1873, a vicar in Lincolnshire, the Reverend Frank Besant, issued an ultimatum to his wife. She must either take Holy Communion regularly at his church or leave him. His wife, who would be gone to doubt her Christian faith, later wrote, Hypocrisy or Expulsion, I chose the letter. woman's name was Anibescent, and she went on to become one of the most prominent social reformers of the late 19th century. The causes she fought for included not only secularism and women's rights, but also freedom of speech, socialism, Irish home rule, and better conditions for workers.

She spearheaded the celebrated strike by match goals at the Bryant & May factory in Boe, East London in 1888, and was put on trial for obscenity for daring to publish a pamphlet on birth control. About midway through life, she became a theosophist, and moved to India, establishing herself as a leading figure in the nationalist movement there and being appointed the first woman president of the Indian National Congress in 1917. With me to discuss the life and work of Annie Bessent are Lawrence Goldman, fellow in modern history at St. Peter's College University of Oxford, David Stack, reader in history at the University of Reading,

and Yasmin Khan, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Royal Holloway University of London. Lawrence Goldman, Annie Bessence, who born Annie Wood, 1847 in London. Can you give us some idea of her family? Yes. Her parents, in fact, were Irish. Her father was William Wood. Her mother was Ellen Morris. They'd met in Dublin and married there. They came over in 1845 to London at the time of the famine. And her father, in fact, was an underwriter working in the city of London. Wood, William Wood was actually from a very notable family. And Annie had very notable

relations. One of her Wood relations had been the Lord Mayor of London, an MP, a successful merchant. Another of her relations, William Pagewood became Lord Chancellor in Gladstone's first administration, as Baron Hathley, a notable liberal reforming Lord Chancellor. She even had another Wood relation. Kitty, Catherine Wood, who was very notable as the second wife of Charles Stuart Parnell, the Irish nationalist. and the cause of some scandal when there were divorce proceedings from her first husband. So she came from a talented family background. Many of the woods had reached positions of note in British society,

and I think that showed really in the way she formed her own life. But then her father died of TB when she was five, and her mother decided instead of taking charity to take over a boarding house up in Harrow at the Harrow School. and this was deemed unsuitable for Annie, so she was, as it were, farmed out to this woman, Ellen Marriott, in Dorset, sister of the famous writer, a wealthy woman who herself educated Annie until the age of 16. Absolutely. Farmed out sounds a bit tough, actually,

but in fact, I mean, it was probably the best thing that happened to Annie. Ellen Marriott was a spinster, as you say, she was the sister of a famous boy's author. Captain Marriott had been a Royal Naval officer in the Napoleonic Wars and then wrote some children's literature, very famous children's literature in the Victorian period. His sister was a notable woman herself, well-educated, and she took in young girls, like Annie and others,

to educate them from respectable families. So Annie went down to Charmouth in Dorset, leaving Harrow, and for the next six or seven years down there, she was a pupil of Ellen Marriott, and she had a very fine education, Latin, modern languages, history, geography, and she was taught, as it were, to research for herself. She was taught to be curious. She became a fine stylist in English, of course. Her languages were perfected through trips to Germany and to Paris. And by 16, Ellen Marriott had to report that there was nothing more that she could actually teach this young labour. and she came back to Harrow at that point. There was another example that this lady offered her,

which was of philanthropy and helping people. Oh, absolutely. Ms. Marriott was a strict evangelical. There wasn't much reading of novels and plays for divertism in her academy, as it were. But she had a very strong social conscience and she taught her girls to care for the poor locally in the area and so forth.

and this was another of those themes that you find early on in Annie's life. It's extraordinary how well-educated she was by 16 after only seven years there. But David Stack, can you talk a bit about her Ani Bessence's religion, which, Annie Wooder she was at that stage, but she'll, let's call her an infestine as a lot easier. And because it was a big factor throughout her life, four against indifference. What was her religion when she left Miss Marriott's school?

I think the first thing to say is when she leaves Miss Marriott's school at the age of 16 and a half, given what kind of. afterwards, the important thing to note is that she is completely unaware of the world of politics, and she is, as you say, deeply religious. And until the Easter of 1866, really, when she meets her husband, Frank Bessent, she... Can I just talk, can you tell us what relief? There are so many... No, I was coming to that, yeah. Right, fine, okay. I mean, her life is one of pleasant contentment. The religion she imbibes from Marriott is an evangelical devotion to truth and duty, which becomes the defined features of a... life throughout. What she doesn't take from Mariette is that she becomes interested in

aspects of Catholicism, particularly during a trip to Paris with Marriott. She is, as she puts it herself, made of the very stuff that fanatics are made off at this stage. She is imbibed this evangelical notion. She put it herself in her autobiography. In her autobiography, yes, later on in her life. But by 1866, 1867, two things are happening in Besson's life. Firstly, she has the first notions of doubt come upon her. In the Easter of 1866, she is following the Gospels through the Easter period, and this leads her to do something which is quite characteristic of Victorians interested in religious matters, which is to sit down and compare and contrast for Gospels. Now, at this point, she finds inconsistencies that she's reconciled to them,

but a seed of religious doubt has been sown quite early on. The second thing which happens, in this period is in 1867 when she's staying with William Roberts, who's a family friend in Manchester. And this dear old man, as she calls him, is her first tutor in radicalism. She's staying with Roberts in 1867 at the time of the famous smashing of the van incident, in which two Fenian prisoners are taken out of a prison van and a police constable killed. And then five members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood are put on trial and three of them are hanged outside of Salford jail.

And this has a deep effect, on Bessent, who's background is Irish, and although her own upbringing is very English, identifies herself with the Irish cause. And nevertheless, having had that taste of radicalism, which obviously tastes is much to her taste, she marries a strict clergyman, one assumes on the advice of a mother,

someone she met in Clapham, and she's only 20, he's about 25, 26, something. And... I think he's seven years old. Something like that. So what happens there? Well, they meet at Easter 1866 at this time when she's having the first doubts. They meet, as you say, in the Clapper Mission Church,

where Frank Bessent, the son of a wine merchant, just down from Cambridge, is the new deacon, and Annie and an aunt go to arrange flowers. They then spend some time together when a group from the church go on a holiday. And having spent time together, she's startled to find that Frank proposes to her. And she's slightly offended by this as well

because if she thinks it implies that she's been flirting. And then they drift as she puts it into an engagement, or she drifts into engagement of a man that she makes no pretence to love. And they marry nevertheless. They marry, yes. Let's cut to the chase here because I've got a lot to talk about how that. They marry and they have two children.

She seems to be disillusioned with him from very early on. And then there's this case of principle brings up, if he goes to Lincolnshire, if she's going to stay with him, she has to take Holy Communion and she refuses. That must have been quite a thing. Well, a case of principle, except a year later she does take Holy Communion with her mother when her mother's on her deathbeds. But not for him.

But not for him, no. What Annie says about the marriage is that they were unsuitable from the start. She says they were ill-matched pair and should never have been married for a number of reasons. One, that he is very much of the master in his own house, in theory, and she has this sense of independence.

which she's learned from Marriott. He also treats her harshly, possibly violently, and she's never been treated harshly either by Miss Marriott or by her mother. And so she responds, initially with incredulity and then with defiance. She also marries, it must be said, in perfect innocence, as she puts it, of the marriage relation. She says she knows no more about the marriage relation than if she'd been aged four rather than age 20. And the other factor, as you say, building on this, is this loss of faith, which she experiences. Part of the reason that she ends up

marrying Frank Bessent is because of her deep religiosity, which leads her to identify her devotion, her sense of romance, her subliminated sexuality perhaps, is all concentrated on the figure of Christ.

And as a later associate of hers puts it, and she was unable to be bride of heaven, so she ended up being the bride of Frank Bessent and he was far from now. adequate substitute. But she's already worried about Christ because she's met this chap Voise, who has said that Christ is not divine, there are no miracles, he is a spiritual man, and she takes that on board almost completely and writes her own pamphlet about it, saying these things.

She does. I mean, there's a, she does, in 1872 she writes a pamphlet or questioning the divinity of Christ, but there's also a personal incident involved in this as well. I mean, partly there's a breakdown of relations with Frank, but there's also the illness of her daughter Mabel in 1871, who suffers a severe bout of whooping cough, and it looks like as she's on the point of death for a long time. And Annie comes out of this, really questioning her religious commitment, questioning the notion of how you can reconcile evil in the universe with a good and loving God, and questioning notions of eternal damnation, atonement, revelation, fundamental building blocks of Christianity. Another Yasmin Khan, she's met William Roberts,

radical and being influenced by him. She's encountered Boise and she's influenced by him. The next person, after she's left her husband, she comes to London, and with one of the children, the other, he keeps the boy, she takes the girl. She meets Charles Bradlaugh, president of the National Secular Society.

And can you tell us a bit about him and why and how he influenced her? Charles Bradlaugh is enormously important to Annie Besson. He's perhaps the most, important relationship that she has in her life. He's a mentor, a friend, an ally over the next 20 years until his death. She comes to London and she's in really rather a precarious situation now. She's left to her husband. She's maintaining a household. Her mother is sick and dying. And she's taking shelter in the British Museum reading room. And one day on a bus on the way to

Victoria, she picks up a copy of a newspaper, the National Reformer, which is Charles Bradlaugh's newspaper which promotes atheism. And she is struck by the newspaper, by what she reads. And she arranges a meeting with Bradlaugh. She goes and sees him. And he instantly recognizes her talents as a speaker, as a publicist. And is the most influential person in turning Annie Besson away perhaps from this skepticism about religion to fully fledged atheism and free thought, which at the time is very, very scandalous. He is feared throughout Britain to some extent. And he's already famous for being the most prominent atheist in British society at that time. So by

linking together with Bradlow, she has a whole new platform for disseminating ideas. We must tell listeners that he was elected MP for North Hampton four times, but not allowed to take his seat because he refused to swear the oath. Of Northampton people stuck to him and he refused to swear the earth, he wanted to affirm it. And they wouldn't let him. He refused to swear the earth. He wanted to affirm it. And they wouldn't, he would, him a phone, that didn't come in until 20 years later. So that itself was a huge scandal. He's a remarkable person

because he's self-educated almost from the age of 12. He grew up in the east end of London, the son of a clerk at a dock workers, and he is so committed to his cause that even though he would love to take his seat as an MP, he sticks to this position.

And that actually generates a lot of popularity for him among working class population of Northampton. who sicked him over those years, and he does eventually take his seat as an MP. So he took her under his wing, and there were rumours about this, that and the other, but let's just talk about the way he mentored her as a public speaker

and as a writer, for instance. She became an extremely effective public speaker. Yes, one of the telling anecdotes in Anne Avesant's autobiography is she says, back when she was in the parish in Sipsy and Lincolnshire and still married, she took to the pulpit of the church when it was empty and practiced public speaking. And she mentions how she was,

struck by the power and delight of her voice. And I think this says a lot about her because really she builds a following through her abilities in public speaking. And of course at this time, there's no radio, there's no other media that can work as effectively as the lecture hall. And lectures get notices, they get reviews. So she becomes a famous public speaker. Bitris Webb says, for instance, that she has the voice of a beautiful soul. and she's able to convey her cause very effectively, and Bradlow mentors her in that as well.

What is she speaking about? Well, she's speaking about the fact that the Christian church is power in the state, the fact that she doesn't believe that God exists, and that other religions are all spurious state created. So she's basically putting the National Secularist Society. She's putting the National Secular Society's case, but the National Secular Society is also connected to a whole network of other radical movements who are interested in other issues.

And there's a scene in London which she's part of. So they link up with other criticisms of policies around the world, including Irish interests and Home Rule for Ireland, of course, becomes a big cause, including criticism of imperial actions by British. and overseas. So it's a world where for her, atheism is central, but these other causes are connected to it. It could be said that in one way, her Irishness, which she was very proud of, and her interest in convictions about Irish politics, was part of the making of her as well. Absolutely. She's very proud of being Irish. She says her blood is three-quarters Irish,

but her heart is 100% Irish. And she has almost a romantic vision of Ireland. and she didn't actually go there until later in life, but she sees it as a place where real justice can occur and a cause that she's obliged to fight for within Britain. And of course, much later on, when she gets involved in Indian politics, there's a lot of parallels between Irish home rule and the Indian home rule that she begins to demand. She could interchange the phrase issues between Ireland and India.

Ron Scoban, he has been referred to, although she's in the National Secular Society, there are a lot of these organizations interconnect with their cousinships and brotherhoods, as it were, with other societies. Can you give us some idea of the way this reforming movements were going in the last third of the 19th century? Yes, well, in the 1870s, when she comes to London and makes contact with secularists and atheists, one needs to note that these are not yet socialists. She will become later on in the 1880s a socialist herself and a socialist. with socialists. But these tend to be radical individualists, often radical liberals in their

politics, concerned about matters of church and state, often rather more than they're concerned about social equity, class struggle and so forth. That's to be, if you like, a later phase in her career. To understand secularism, you have to understand a kind of spectrum, really. There are people who are just beginning to doubt Christian revelation. They're beginning to doubt aspects of Christian orthodoxy, like, for example, the Reverend Charles Voise, who's one of her first contacts in London, who's been deprived of his parish

because he simply doesn't believe in any longer in central Christian doctrine. But there's also at the other end of the spectrum, people like Bradlaugh and even more militant figures who are militant atheists and materialists who reject the whole idea of a deity and a spiritual world. And she, as it were, comes to rest at several different points. She knows many of the key figures in London. But it's not...

Well, for example, she meets Moncour Daniel Conway, a notable American who comes to Britain during the Civil War. He's a minister in Virginia. He comes to London. He becomes the voice, really, of the South Place, Chapel and the founder of the South Place ethical societies. And ethical societies spring up over London and in other places as well, where people who we might call vaguely humanist come together.

And what they're doing, if you like, is transferring their allegiance from God to man. Often these are people very interested in social reform. And as Beatrice Webb once put it, I mean, what characterises this age is the transference of the kind of relationship that people hitherto had with. the deity to their relationship with their fellow men and women. David Stack, she came to even more prominence that it's quite interesting to

see this woman coming out of this little school in Dorset, almost a sort of development of a dame school really, and then suddenly being in secular pulpits all around the country, we just have to take, obviously for granted, because obviously she gained enormous reputation, but it takes some thinking about it.

But she and Bradlaugh, and Yasmin's explained how close they were together for how long, became involved in a public debate about birth control, which got them into a lot of trouble with the state. Can you tell us something about that? In a sense, it's a public debate about freedom of information and liberty as much as it is about birth control, because it comes about because of the prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act of two publishers for publishing a leaflet, a pamphlet Charles Nolten's for fruits of philosophy promoting the birth control calls. Birth control propaganda had continued more or less unchallenged

for around 50 years up until the mid-1870s. The first attempts at birth control propaganda in Britain occurred in the 1820s. When you say birth control propaganda, you mean propaganda for birth control? Propaganda for birth control, yes. The whole debate about population changes its nature at the end of the 18th century when Thomas Robert Malfa writes his essay on the principle of population. And from that moment on, the notion that there might be a need to restrain, population growth takes off. Malthus himself stops at the notion of moral restraint the idea that

people marry late and are strictly moral up until a point to which they marry, but others are not so shy. And so in the 1820s, a number of radicals, such as France is placed, a radical tailor of Charing Cross, and more pertinly for us, I think Richard Carlisle, begin to put out pamphlets arguing the case for birth control. And Carlisle is particularly interesting because his pamphlet, What is Love, which he published is in 1826, makes a radical. case for birth control, which also embraces elements of notions of free love, female sexual pleasure, and an attack on the church. And there's a direct connection here with Bradlaugh and Bessent, because as a young man, Bradlaugh lodges with Carlisle's widow, Eliza Sharples, and also falls

in love with Carlisle's eldest daughter, Hypatia. And Braddlaw is interested in birth control whereafter. In 1861, he attempts to found a Malfusian League, but it's very difficult to draw up any interest. Can we go back to Braddlaw and Vesarton? What they did? So what happens is in the winter of 1876, 1877, two publishers, firstly Henry Cook in Bristol and Wren, the publisher of most of Braddalaugh's publications in London, are charged under the Obscene Publications Act with publishing Charles Nolton's Fruits of Philosophy, another one of these pamphlets advocating birth control. And this is the first time that the state have used the law to try to limit the spread of knowledge about birth control.

And so where do Bradlaugh and Besson come into it? Well, at this point, when Charles Watts, their publisher pleads guilty, Cook has been sentenced to two years hard labour. So when their publisher pleads guilty, they think at this point where they want this kind of information to circulate and that this is really an attack on the secular movement. So what Bradlore and Bessent do is they form the free-fault publishing company, print another copy of Charles Nolten's pamphlet,

march down to the chief clerk at the Guilat. Hall, put it in front of him, and say, this is what we're going to publish, please arrest us. And? They're arrested, and they're charged with publishing a certain, lewd, baldy and obscene publication in March 1877. And then the... Can you just take us to, they're arrested, then they're tried? They're tried in June 1877. And one thing that's worth saying is that in the interim, sales of Charles Nolton's fruits of philosophy take off. It's estimated by one historian, and figures are very difficult, of course, to estimate,

but it's estimated by one historian but 125,000 copies of this. So what happens after they're arrested and tried? Then what? They're arrested, they're tried. The trial itself, which lasts four days, is a major public event. It throws up problems with propriety. The Times reports this as the Queen versus Bradlaugh and another, because they don't want to put Besant's name in as a woman. Besant and Braddlaw defend themselves.

Braddlaw's case is based around the notion. of liberty and freedom of information. Bessent's case is based around poverty and the need to end poverty through restricting the number of births. As I understand it, the court fines against them, but they don't go to prison. The verdict which the jury brings in is not simply a guilty or not guilty.

They find that the publication is indecent and obscene under the terms of the act, but they say that Bradleau and Bessent have no impure motives. The judge interprets this as a guilty verdict. Can I go to you then, Yasmin, what effect did this have on Ani Besson in her life and in her views, given that this was, as David said, this was a real push to the forefront of the news, the national news.

She was the national news for a while, with Bradlaugh, of course. Personally, at first, there's a sense of elation because they have managed to put this on the front page of the newspapers. They haven't gone to prison, of their friends warned. She was warned off this by many, many people who were otherwise sympathetic to her because they said, look, you're going to put your name in such disrepute.

You're going to be a woman, as marked woman, but she manages to pull it off. She defends herself extremely well in the court case and articulates all her reasons for being in favour of birth control. So all those ways, it's a success. However, personally for her

afterwards, there's a tragedy because up until this point, her young daughter, Mabel, has been living with her. Child custody arrangements in the case of separation had been altered slightly by this time and a woman could take custody of a young child. But Frank Sibcci, sitting up in, Frank, her husband, Besant, sitting up in Sipsy, the parish in Lincolnshire, is not pleased to have his name being brought into disrepute in this way and Danny Bessent all over the newspapers. And he sees this as his time to take some revenge for the shame that she's brought upon him. And she

He goes about trying to take back custody of Mabel, the young daughter who's only seven years old. And he's successful in that. He wins his case on the grounds that Annie Bessent has been removing Mabel from religious education at school. And on the grounds that she's giving the young girl atheistic treatment. And after that, she's removed. And Annie Bessent doesn't live with her child again until she's 17 years old. and in the interim, Mabel is sent to a boarding school and back to the parish

and has a rather miserable childhood. So personally, that sends Besson into what could now be described as a nervous breakdown. She's thoroughly depressed. And so it's a very mixed outcome from the Nolton trial. But one thing, Lawrence Goldman, is that she moves into, increasingly drawn into socialism, which at that time was not in certain areas

all that far removed from religion. I mean, a little later, Keir Haidde said, I learned more from Jesus of Nazareth and from any socialist writings and so. So she's still holding on to that because it's important when we come to the philosophy. She's not learning, but he's moving into socialism and Darwinism has come in.

Sorry to throw all this at you, but there you go. And can you just take us into that? I'm trying to head for Bloody Sunday. Right, okay. Well, I mean, I think we can capture this in a phrase that historians use, the religion of early socialism. And for many people who turn to

socialism in what's known as the socialist revival in the 1880s, the foundations of the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation in London, which is the first Marxist organisation, and a range of other organisations from the early 1880s. For many people who come into socialism, actually it is a kind of surrogate for religion. Many are non-conformists, many are moving away from their churches, many are looking for a new kind of brotherhood to take the place of religious fervor and religious belief. And in many ways, what happens after the trial in regard to birth control is a natural movement into socialism.

This is where many of those kind of secularists are moving in the 1880s. And she follows that path. But you don't only follow it. Yet again, as with birth control, she goes to the front of it. I mean, she is one of leading with George Bernard Shaw, one of the four columns, marching on Trafalgar Square. A lot of radicals are going to meet there. state, the country says no and won't let them in. And there's a violent clash. Three people

are killed. Bloody Sunday, she's there. They won't arrest her, although she wants to be arrested. She wants to be arrested. That's right. I mean, Bloody Sunday is the sort of great set piece of the 1880s. It's the great set piece in the capital between socialists and radicals and the forces of establishment and order. And it links together so many of the issues that Besant has held as her own. Ostensibly, it's about coercion in Ireland. Government policies, uh, reduced using civil liberties in Ireland, and of course, as we've said, that's one of the crucial things in her makeup. It's also about economic deprivation and class conflict in the capital, which has grown across the 1880s. Poverty has been, if you like, rediscovered in the capital,

and there have been riots in 1886 in clubland and the West End of the unemployed, and Bloody Sunday becomes also a crucial moment over public space, over Trafalgar Square and the right to demonstrate. Many of these radical and socialist groups want to have the right to go to Trafalgar Square and make their pitch. And in a way that's very contemporary, because our own society has this problem today as well,

law and order dictates a rather different kind of approach and this great concern that the radicalism might get out of control. Can we go from that to the Bryant and May, the match goals strike in 1888, They match girls, about 1,400 of them in Bo in a factory run, sadly, as it turns out, by Quakers, sadly because we get, I mean, they're such, anyway, they run Brian May. These girls, by the age of 15, they're getting fossey jaw, which are terrible, incurable disease, their wages are dreadful. And there's a strike. They go, they decide to strike, and they call her in to help them.

And she becomes associated with our sort of rush, but we've got a lot to get through. What was its significance and what was her significance in the strike? Her significance was to link it to the wider public realm because she has journalist friends. W.T. Steed, for instance, can put it on the front page of the Palmaal Gazette and she's able to publicise the strike. And that brings pressure to bear on the Bryant & May factory who concede some of the demands of the girls in particular,

not docking their pay for small misdemeanors or small petty issues like arriving a few seconds late for work. So in that sense, Annie Bessent is able to publicise the strike she's able to give it a public face and she writes about it white slavery she describes it as white slavery and it's the first unorganised

workers strike that comes to prominence that is successful so in that sense it has a defining moment in the history of workers' rights and that's the outcome of Besson's lobbying and also the network

of people that she's able to mobilize around the strike. I think for the girls themselves, it can be overestimated. I mean, their phosphorus wasn't taken out of use until the early 20th century. So the posse jaw remains, and their wages didn't actually increase. So it was, in terms of the actual concessions that were made, they were minimal, but the point was that unorganized labour could collectively act. and they were young women, they were just able to win that cause. Arguably one of the solid things she did was when she was elected to the London School Board

and did a lot in that because she's right in the thick of things now, isn't she in London? She's a big figure, she's active, she's working, she's got allies all over the place. But David Stack, in the end of the 1880s, her most radical changes it became very interested in theosophy. And she seems to make an about turn, on most other things because of this attraction to Theosophy. Can you tell us what it was and why she embraced it so firmly? Well, in Besson's own terms, she doesn't make an about term,

and she sees it as a culmination of her life and her various other stages. Well, she doesn't know if I may say something, she repudiates the birth control. She says because Theosophy says that you can't have reincarnation and birth control, so that's one of the big things. She withdraws with the pamphlets, the law of population in 1991, the recommendation of Madame Blattaviski.

But her whole autobiography published two, years later is an attempt to show how her life has been a journey towards philosophy and how each of the beliefs she's held before that have represented staging posts in that movement. Theosophy itself is derived from the two Greek words phos and sophia and means divine wisdom. The philosophical society that Besson joins has been formed in 1875 in New York by Madame Blatavasky and Colonel Olcott. But its roots, I suppose, or its spirit in every sense is Eastern religion. that Theosophy is the belief that there is a brotherhood

known as the White Lodge or the hierarchy of adepts which watch over the evolution of humanity and that these adepts have evolved to a higher level and achieved power over nature so that they can appear as apparitions they can make writing appear on pieces of paper locked in the study drawers of Victorian men and women that is all wrapped up in elements of Buddhism

with notions of karma, reincarnation and the idea that the universe exists on multiple planes, physical, mental, astral and nvanic. And so it's a marrying of Western esoteric tradition with various elements of Eastern religion. But she embraced it very fiercely, Yasmin Khan, and she moved to India, which was its sort of what you call it, so epitherto, was in India in 18903, about halfway through her life and was more associated with India from then on. Absolutely. I still can't quite see why having been, why she, she didn't move out of the country, maybe she didn't turn her back on things, but she did move out the country, why she was so entranced by it. I think it's consistent with Annie Besant's constant questing towards a universal answer to the condition of human life and her need to find a transcendent way of understanding human suffering.

and I think that that is actually consistent with her searches in Christianity and then in atheism. And I think theology for her answers some of the bigger problems, the root causes of human suffering and does it in a way that doesn't mean that she has to exclude any other group. And all people can be part of theology, all different religions are equal within theology. So in that sense, I think it has a very strong appeal to her. India also has an appeal because it's the place that she can build a new base by 1891, Bradlow has passed away. Madden Blavatsky, her mentor in the Theosophical Movement, has died.

And Annie Besant is a logical next step for her to go to India. She's already been interested in India, and the theosophist in London had already been connected to Indian students. For instance, Gandhi as a young student, had already met Besant and had been on the fringes of the Theosophical Society in London. So there were connections between London and India established already. and she goes in 1893 and she doesn't really come back, although she does visit and come back for the hot summers sensibly.

She stays in India and builds her base there in Banaras, in the Holy Hindu city of Banaras. And initially works in educational movements and in cultural movements and doesn't really step into front-line politics again until the First World War. But in that educational movements, she's concerned with doing is revitalising Hinduism and in championing cultural causes. So she sets up a school in Benares, which is about reviving Sanskrit education. She learned Sanskrit and she carries out translations.

It's involved in cultural and educational activities. In that sense, of course, Davies-Tac was right, and I was wrong to go too far in that, that she was doing with that school in Benares, what she'd been doing in London with the London School Board, was to get children into school. And she was doing in India what she'd done from near the beginning of her life. She saw India as another island

and worked for Indian independence and even in the First World War, you know, she was, England's need is India's opportunity, go against them and was imprisoned, interred for a while. So she took her political views to India. Can you just tell us a bit more about India, Lawrence?

Well, there, you know, there are a group of theosophists who come together. She's not alone in any way. And they've come from different places, Australia, America. They form a kind of a base, an estate that they take at Adja, outside Madras. And that becomes the theosophists kind of a kind of heartland there. And they're engaged not only in their own self-questing for spiritual. sustenance, but of course in good works as well locally in India. And then comes a sort of crucial moment in Besson's life when a young boy is, as it were,

located and is, it's decided almost by the movement that this boy, who's nine years old when he's first kind of discovered and found, this boy whose name is Jidu Krishna, Murti, he will be the world teacher. He will spread the message of the theosophists. He will go out almost profit-like and be one of the great figures, as it were, to link together all the cultures in peace and harmony. And Krishna Merti becomes central to her.

She becomes his legal guardian. She becomes the legal guardian to him and his brother. She comes back to England with him and she tries to educate him in a Western way. He goes to Paris, he learns French. He's, as it were, set up to be the great profit of the movement. But apart from that, and that doesn't end well, because he declines to be the great problem.

David Sack, she gets involved in politics. She goes around as Einstein making great speeches, and she ends up as the first woman, present of the Indian National Congress. So she's out there in the field, working away there. Can you give us some colouring to that? I think probably Lawrence is, isn't it? Well, I'm going to turn to Yasin, the Indian history.

As long as you don't keep pushing it around the table. As long as the parcel doesn't reach me, that's fine. I think Annie Besson, it's fair to say, during the First World War, becomes one of the most prominent Indian independence leaders, or Indian Home Rule leaders. And for a time is at the forefront of campaigns, for Home Rule from Imperial Control in India.

She sets up Home Rule leagues. And what's interesting, she uses lots of the techniques that she's used in Victorian London and applies them in India. So you have these speaker tours, the lecture tours, the Planned Fleteering, the journalism, and the reading groups. And she mobilises a lot of educated, young,

often Brahmin, men, boys, to come into this Home Rule movement, which takes to the government somewhat by surprise. The government in India is in a vulnerable position in the First World War. They're sending soldiers across to Gallipoli and into the Western Front.

And this mass movement is peaceful and they don't quite know what to do there because it's constitutional. And so she is very cleverly positioning herself as a mass political leader in India and takes up that mantle and is elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1917,

which is a, that's a very important, high point in her Indian political career and really opens the door for Gandhi to come along a couple of years later and take forward that movement. So she's a pivotal person in the transformation of the Indian National Congress from a gentleman's club to a mass movement that involves ordinary Indians on the street, if you like. Riskly, I'm afraid, in her interview, how would you place her? What influence did you have, there is she wasn't a particularly original intellectual in her writings she was dutiful committed and fanatical about the various causes she embraced she's also i think we need to remember

ineffably victorian particularly in her religiosity and i'd include in her religiosity her atheism it's very tempting to go for psychological explanations of bessent to say that there was this martyrdom complex this desire to follow charismatic leaders usually may or who she met over time. But I think we ought to understand her within the context of Victorian society. In her autobiography, she talks about her life being an average one, which on one level is absurd. But equally, the causes she becomes involved with, secularism, the crisis of faith, birth control,

socialism and spiritualism. These are some of the defining intellectual movements of the late 19th century. And so we can use her as a means to understand that period, I think. And then there's India. Thank you very much. David Stack, Blon Skolman and Yasmin Khan. Next week, we're talking about Al-Kindy in 9th century Baghdad, known as the philosopher of the Arabs. Thanks for listening.

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