There’s a small corner of Clerkenwell where the communist dream never died. The Marx Memorial Library has been in its big, classical 1738 building — originally a school for children of Welsh artisans living in poverty — for 83 years. The library was set up in 1933, the 50th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death.
British Marxism and communism have faded, but the library still has a brigade of staunch supporters. Jeremy Corbyn, whose constituency is just up the road in Islington, is a regular visitor. To tour the library is to return to the 1930s when communism was at its height — when Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt were full of gleaming-eyed optimism about the wonders of Soviet Russia. The library (annual membership £20) specialises in Marxism, the working-class movement, anti-fascism and the Spanish Civil War. It owns a full run of the Daily Worker and the Morning Star.
One wall of the library is decorated with a 1934 mural by the Earl of Huntingdon — the ‘Red Earl’ — a pupil of Diego Rivera.
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