Striving for a world transformed by love: a timeline

This is a continuation of my TL William Gladstone: a struggle for personal and political liberation -a TL from 1827: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=168295 . I have stopped that TL because its title is misleading. This TL will chart Gladstone's political career in the United States, but he will be a relatively minor character.

It is a sunny afternoon in early March 2011. At the University of Durham in the province of Northumbria in the Federal Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (commonly called the FK), Professor Maddy Prior (1) is giving a lecture on The relationship between the fantasy works of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien and the Commonweal Party. (2)

There are about fifty-five students in the lecture hall. The women are wearing long multi-coloured ankle length skirts or loose trousers topped with a tunic and often with a jumper worn over it. A fair number of the men are also dressed in skirts. The wearing of jewellery is common among both genders as are coloured strands and highlights in their hair, which is mostly worn long. Many of the students look androgynous.

Professor Prior starts with the formation of the Commonweal Party in June 1847 from the Young England group of Conservative MPs. She then describes how its anti-capitalist and medieval nostalgia belief system developed in the following decades into a mixture of libertarian socialism and traditionalism with sympathies towards anarchism, and how it became a major force in the politics of the FK. She covers the prominent part played by William Morris in the Commonweal Party and his influence in the politics and fantasy works of Tolkien, who was a member of the Commonweal Party. The bulk of her lecture is an exposition of how Commonweal Party ideas of decentralisation and the preservation of traditions against the forces of modernity influenced Tolkien in his stories of Middle Earth. While Tolkien's works were very popular with Commonweal Party members and supporters and influenced Commonweal thinking.

At the end of her lecture she asks for questions. A young beautiful woman with long black hair raises her hand. Professor Prior looks in her direction. She gives her name - Morwen. (3) She asks: "to what extent did the range of different peoples in Middle-Earth - Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents etc contribute to the Commonweal party being welcoming to Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons." Prior replied that it was an influence in encouraging an acceptance and welcoming of difference, but it must not be exaggerated. The libertarian philosophy of the Commonweal Party was a greater influence.

In reply to a question by a skirt-wearing androynous-looking young man called Finarfin, Prior said that the strong environmental themes of Lord of the Rings, in particular the Ents as guardians of the forests, had a significant influence on the development of Commonweal environmental policies.

In the next entry I will return to the late 1840s.

(1) Based on the folk singer Maddy Prior in OTL.

(2) I am not a butterfly purist and I am not going to butterfly away Tolkien and his fantasy works.

(3) In this TL it was common for fans of Tolkien's fantasies to have as their first names the first names of Tolkien's characters. There was an extensive overlap between Tolkien fandom and support for the Commonweal Party.
 
Top