Editorial: Every day is a school day!

This week marked the 250th anniversary of a very significant Cork figure.

William Thompson was born on 30 June 1775 in Cork. Don’t know who he was?

Well don’t feel bad as I didn’t know him either and I studied history in college and remain interested in history and particularly Cork history! A release by President Michael D. Higgins alerted me to him. It was James Connolly who described Thompson as “the first Irish socialist” and the Corkman was a very prominent thinker and social reformer. President Higgins said he was “a man whose ideas were not only ahead of their time, but whose vision retains a profound resonance for our contemporary world. His early advocacy of feminism set him among the most finely grounded philosophers of all time”.

Thompson was born into the wealthy Anglo-Ascendancy of landowners and merchant princes in Cork but his life was radically different to his peers.

His father, John Thompson was a wealthy merchant and landowner, as well as being high sheriff of the county. In 1794, he was elected mayor of Cork city. John Thompson died in 1814, leaving William a fleet of trading vessels, and a 1,400 acre estate at Carhoogarriff, overlooking Glandore harbour. His most well-known work, ‘An Inquiry into the Distribution of Wealth’ (1824) focussed on the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people rather than personal wealth. This work was acknowledged by Karl Marx as something he had studied in great detail. In 1829, he drew up plans for a model co-operative community at Carhoogarriff. He attempted attempt to will his estate to the cooperative movement after his death.

Higgins wrote Thompson was a “significant theoretician of early socialism, a towering intellect whose thought would come to influence generations of reformers. He was a foundational voice in the cooperative movement across these islands, from which so much of the socialist ideal found its earliest and most hopeful expression.”

He also acknowledged Thompson’s advocacy for the full emancipation of women at a time when women had very few rights. Thompson truly was a man ahead of his time.

And Cork has another link with Karl Marx.

“My brother knows Karl Marx / He met him eating mushrooms in the People’s Park.” The Sultans of Ping’ debut classic ‘Where’s Me Jumper’ opened with these memorable lyrics.

Lyricist Niall O'Flaherty is now Senior Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought at King’s College London. His research focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth-century social, religious and scientific thought in Britain with particular reference to Thomas Robert Malthus and Charles Darwin. And Thompson was a contemporary and critic of some of Malthus’ theories.

Dr O’Flaherty surely teaches students about the pioneering work of his fellow Corkman!