Walt Whitman and the Bolton Socialist Club

Bolton’s main thoroughfare through the town is Bradshawgate and off this there is a side street which is closed to traffic, This is Wood Street, the home of solicitors offices, an upmarket Pizza restaurant and the Bolton Socialist Club. The club moved to these premises, the birthplace of Lord Leverhulme, in 1905 and today is probably one of the oldest surviving socialist clubs in the country. I joined the club soon after coming to Bolton to take up a ministry in the town centre.
Over the recent years, the club has revived many of its former activities and overcome its reputation as a licentious afternoon drinking club. It has become home to groups who help the unemployed and those who campaign for refugee families in Bolton who have had benefits stopped and are threatened with deportation; ‘Bolton Against Racism’ was founded by club members who campaign and leaflet against incursions by far right political parties. The Clarion Cycle Club has ben revived, there are walking groups, play reading groups, a choir, a debating group, a cinema club and ‘The Whitmanites’.
About the same time as the club was founded, a young man called JJ Wallace had a group of friends who met to read poetry at his home in Eagle Street, Bolton. Wallace claimed to have had a spiritual experience influenced by his reading of Walt Whitman’s poetry. He became a kind of guru to his friends and their gatherings to read Whitman’s poetry became known as the Eagle Street College. They corresponded with Whitman and for two years delegations went to America to meet Whitman. Whitman in turn sent them signed copies of his books and other mementoes - including a stuffed canary and a ‘loving cup’. On the closest weekend to his birthday, the Eagle Street College used to walk up Winter Hill which dominates the town, pausing frequently to read from the great man’s poems and to pass round the loving cup.
The Whitmanites are still going strong and are mostly members of the Socialist Club on Wood Street. There are plaques on buildings around Bolton that were associated with the Eagle Street College and these include two Unitarian chapels - Bank Street and Rivington. This year 30 followers gathered with sprigs of lilac in their lapels to remember the poets birthday in the traditional way and to pass round the loving cup - now a replica since the Bolton Museum no longer allows us to borrow the original.
The poetry of Whitman expresses the comradeship that should exist between all people, the glory of nature and the spirituality of life which is beyond all religious labels. It goes well with the ethos of the Bolton Socialist Club.
tony mcneile