What About the Workers? Part One: Pioneers

Now that the Esperanto movement has spread to over a hundred different countries, it is difficult to make generalisations about the nature of its supporters. It's unlikely, for example that members of the Esperanto groups in Cuba have much in common with those in England, at least when considered in terms of their social background.

However, it is a fair assumption to make even now that many active Esperantists are middle class, in so far as that term still has any meaning. Perhaps I should use the phrase that George Orwell used to describe himself and call them "lower upper middle class."

(A brand new Web site has just been launched dealing with George Orwell: it's at http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/mai... Not much there at the time of writing but it might be worth keeping an eye on.)

Recent presidents of the Australian Esperanto Association have included a High Court Judge and an Ambassador; recent presidents of the Universala Esperanto Asocio have included a Professor from London University and a the head of an American College. And certainly, the early history of the Esperanto is studded with names of people who, in the late nineteenth century, would most definitely have regarded themselves as middle class. For example, in previous articles I have already introduced Grabowski, an engineer; Kabe, an ophthalmologist; and Tolstoy, a Russian Count. From England, Zamenhof received generous moral and financial support from Colonel Pullen and (until his death on the Titanic) W. Stead, a wealthy publisher. The movement has consistently sought the support of "eminentuloj" - prominent people such as politicians, mayors, diplomats, and the like. For over forty years there have been very close ties between the UEA and UNESCO.

The very format of the Annual Conferences is stuffy and ultra-conservative, characterized by formalities, protocols and ending with enormously long and fairly pointless resolutions. And, of course, these "Kongesoj" are expensive affairs. Few young Africans, Cubans or Indians would have been able to get to Budapest or Beijing or Warsaw or Adelaide and pay a week's accommodation costs plus conference fees without being heavily subsidised.

Nevertheless, despite the predominance of middle-class supporters and activists, about fifteen years after Zamenhof published what has come to be known as La Unua Libro, "The First Book," in 1887, small groups of working men also began to take an interest in Esperanto. In every case, (I think), that interest developed out of a prior commitment to socialist ideas. Esperanto was seen as a means of providing a better means of communication among those members of the working class committed to the struggle between Labour and Capital.

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