Highgate Cemetery #9: Karl Marx and comrades

'JENNY VON WESTPHALEN.
THE BELOVED WIFE OF
KARL MARX.
BORN 12TH FEBRUARY 1814.
DIED [2]ND DECEMBER 1881.

AND KARL MARX.
BORN MAY 5TH 1818, DIED MARCH 14TH 1883.

AND HARRY LONGUET.
THEIR GRANDSON
BORN JULY 4TH 1878, DIED MARCH 20TH 1883.

AND HELENA DEMUTH.
BORN JANUARY 1ST 1823. DIED NOVEMBER 1890

AND ELEANOR MARX, DAUGHTER OF KARL MARX
BORN JANUARY 16TH 1856. DIED MARCH 31ST 1898.'

 

Helena Demuth was the family housekeeper and almost certainly had a child by Marx whom Engels (diplomatically) claimed to be his own.

A similar image to this is used on the front page of the new leaflet 'East map' of Highgate Cemetery. Karl Marx's grave is the most popular in the cemetery: in many ways the great man is very much alive.

 

In a far more obscure part of the cemetery is the site where Marx's grave originally lay. The stone reads:

'THEIR REMAINS WERE
REMOVED AND RE-INTERRED
ON 23rd NOVEMBER 1954 AT
THE PLACE NEARBY WHERE
A MONUMENT WAS ERECTED
ON 14th MARCH 1956'

 

Near Marx's grave are those of several people who shared his views of the capitalist world:

 

'CLAUDIA VERA JONES

BORN TRINIDAD 1915.
DIED LONDON 25.12.1964.

 

VALIANT FIGHTER AGAINST RACISM AND
IMPERIALISM WHO DEDICATED HER LIFE
TO THE PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM AND THE
LIBERATION OF HER OWN BLACK PEOPLE.'

 

 'CHRIS HARMAN

 

Revolutionary, Thinker, Activist
1942–2009

 

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.'

 

'PAUL FOOT

 

1937 – 2004

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you

Ye are many – they are few.'

 

The above battle cry is of course the final verse of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'The Mask of Anarchy', written in response to the Peterloo massacre in Manchester, 1819, in which drunken cavalry slaughtered 15 reformers and injured hundreds more.

 

'DR YUSEF
MOHAMED DADOO
1909–1983

 

CHAIRMAN OF THE
SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY

 

HE DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO THE CAUSE
OF NATIONAL LIBERATION, SOCIALISM
AND WORLD PEACE.'

 

'Eric Hobsbawm

 

Historian

 

1917  – 2012'

 

Some referred to Eric Hobsbawm as 'Neil Kinnock's favourite Marxist', and although Hobsbawm supported Kinnock's reforms of the Labour Party he thought differently about Tony Blair: 'Thatcher in trousers'.