Bonar Thompson, Hyde Park Orator

Abstract

Bonar Thompson (1888–1963) was born at Carnearney in County Antrim, the illegitimate child of a poor Presbyterian girl. He was raised by an elderly aunt until the age of 13, when he moved to Manchester to live with his mother and step-father. While working for the Great Central Railway he decided to become a public orator, seeing it as a satisfactory means of ‘getting a living without working’. Soon ‘the boy orator’ was advocating revolutionary socialism from public platforms throughout Britain and supplementing his income by begging. His agitatory speeches sometimes led to his being fined for breaches of the peace and, when unable or unwilling to pay such fines, to short spells in prison. In 1916 he was arrested for evading military service and spent the rest of the First World War in a variety of work-camps. Thompson resumed his soapbox socialism in 1922 but by the late twenties had adopted an ‘independent nonparty attitude’, having ‘grown to look upon all movements as intolerably frowsy and silly’. He edited and produced a review entitled The Black Hat between 1930 and 1932.

With a preface by Sean O’Casey (London: Jarrolds, 1934). viii, 287pp.; pp. 77–9; 111–17.