Working-class Voices from the late Nineteenth century: 'Propaganda Pence' in a Socialist Paper in Ghent

Abstract

Crooked Charles is completely bonkers, 0.10. Instead of a seat in the town council he's got a seat reserved in the nut-house, 0.10.' 'Friends, what do you say? Should we give that blue smotherer who sends his children to the brethren schools a concert with tin pipes, 0.10.' 'I am glad to have received [the journal] Het Zweepken [The Little Whip], 0.16 I read it in the gents', 0.10 And then I sent it to its proper destination 0.10.' 1 These are the wry, humorous words of workers from the Belgian textile city of Ghent, levelled more than 100 years ago against the establishment and their ideological opponents. Their messages accompanied small donations and were published in the socialist party daily, Vooruit ('Forward').

How to gauge banal nationalism and national indifference in the past: proletarian tweets in Belgium's belle époque

“…Moreover, the (very attentive) readers of the pence were quick to denounce censorship (and Vooruit 's editors let them): ‘I protest against the shortening or suppressing of statements, 0.10’ . For a more thorough elaboration of this unique source, I refer to a previous publication (De Sutter and Van Ginderachter, ). Suffice it to say here that the ‘tweets’ represented a working‐class discourse from below.…”