 In 1999, the BBC get an opinion poll which asked its viewers who did they consider the greatest mind of the last millennium. To their surprise, the great revolutionary Karl Marx came out on top, followed by Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. It has often been said that Marx's ideas are more relevant today than at any other time in the past. Clearly with the capitalist crisis, that's certainly the case. Marxism has three sources and component parts. Firstly, it is a German philosophy based on Hegelian philosophy. Then of French socialism and the class struggle. And last but not least of English bourgeois economics. It was the last item that Marx got enormous resources from his visit to Britain, particularly London, but not only London. His first visit to England was in 1845 with Frederick Engels. Engels father owned a factory in Manchester and Manchester at that time was the biggest industrial city in the world. And he was from that knowledge that Engels was able to write his famous book The Conditions of the English Working Class in 1844. When they were in Manchester, they visited the Chatham Library where Marx and Engels were able to read at first hand the main books and literature of the classical bourgeois economists. In London, however, he was from the British Museum in the British Library that Marx got his main volumes of work that he could develop into these theories later on. During the 1848 Revolution in Europe, Marx was forced to flee from one country to another, from Belgium, Germany, France. Eventually he would end up in London in late 1849. When Marx was in Germany, he helped found and edited a newspaper, the Neuer Rheinischer Zeitung, which was a democratic newspaper, the left wing of the democratic movement and put forth the independent point of view of the working class. The German authorities were alarmed by its content and agitation and therefore moved to close it down in June 1848. Marx was forced to flee. As a protest, the last issue of the newspaper was printed totally in red. He was expelled from Germany and fled to Paris, but it wasn't long before he entered a conflict with the authorities and he had to flee to London. The previous visit to London was very short. This time, you suspend all his life there. Marx arrived in London in late August 1849. First of all, he went to live in Lodgins in Camberwell in South London, but from there he began to look for property most suitable to his family. Here he chose No. 4 Anderson Street. Marx and Jenny Marx, his wife, moved to this house in September 1849, after being driven from one country to another, forced out into exile. Jenny, when she arrived, was heavily pregnant. She was seven months pregnant. When she came from Paris, she had to bring with her three young children, the youngest being two, the eldest being five, together with baggage, travelling alone. She arrived in London on the 17th of September, met Marx, and they came to live in this particular home. The rent for this house at that time was £6 a month, which seems very little by modern standards, but at that time it was quite a lot of money. Unfortunately, Marx had no job, there was no income coming into the family, and they had to rely upon savings. These savings had dwindled somewhat after going from one country to another, where they had to buy and leave behind possessions, and when they arrived at this location, they had to buy bed, linen, and other basic utensils in order to live. Jenny was seven months pregnant, and in November, November the 5th, to be exact, she gave birth to a baby boy. The baby boy was called Henry, Henry Guy, and his nickname, as they give to all members and all the children in the family, was Guido, after Guy Fawkes. They lived quite comfortably for a certain period, although the bills mounted up, and then in the afternoon of April, early April, there was a sharp knock at the door with the landlady, together with two large bailiffs, demanded back rent that Marx owed over that period. They didn't have the money, so the bailiffs entered together with the landlady and started to seize different items of property, including the bed, linen, but the children's cot and also their toys. Amongst this commotion outside, they gathered here a crowd of about 200 people who were assembled with children yelling, shouting, looking at the interest, looking at the spectacle of this particular eviction. Because he was getting late in the day, they weren't allowed to sell these particular items that day, so they were taken back into the property. So Marx and his family were able to stay here another night in order before the eviction would take place the following day. Thereupon, he had to look for a new place to live, which is more towards the centre of London. When the Marx family were evicted from Anderson Street, they ended up here at the German Hotel, as it was called. The reason why it's called the German Hotel is it really catered for immigrants and refugees from the continent. The Marx family were paying £5.10 a week, and therefore, given the fact they didn't have much savings, this was clearly going to run out very quickly. Within the next six weeks, they couldn't afford to pay the rent. And one fine morning, when they went down for breakfast, they were told quite politely in the words of Jenny, please pack your bags and leave. The next port to call was Dean Street. The number 64 Dean Street was a two bedroom apartment. They hired it from a Jewish lace maker. They didn't have a very good time there. In fact, Jenny thought it was a horrid summer together with the children, and Marx thought the landlady was a bit of a witch, and therefore they decided to move to number 28 Dean Street. Just before Marx left Paris for London, he wrote a letter to Engels asking him to join him in London to participate in the joint work and the struggle for communism. Engels replies and says he will do this and arrives in London in the middle of November 1849 and takes up residency here at 6 Magnisfield Street. Engels stays at this particular location for just over a year, and in November 1850 he moves to Manchester where he takes up employment at his father's textile factory for a sum of £200 per year. This he uses to help finance Marx and his family. We're outside number 28 Dean Street where, as you can see, there's a blue plaque on the wall. It's a GLC commemorative plaque to show that Marx lived here. It's the only blue plaque in London despite the fact that Marx lived here for 34 years. Despite being the only one, unfortunately they get the dates wrong. It's not 1851 he moved in yet, it's 1850. We're at the rear of 28 Dean Street where the Marx family moved towards the end of 1850. There entered two rooms on the second floor. The accommodation was very cramped and conditions were very bad for the family. They lived in squalor and poverty for the next five or six years. Durheria was depressed and was subject to outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and various other diseases. The conditions of poverty in which the family of Marx lived in Dean Street can be illustrated by a few letters. The first one from Marx to Engels on the 27th of February 1852. A week ago I reached the pleasant point where I'm unable to go out for want of coats I have in Porn and can no longer eat meat for want of credit. Piffling, it all may be, but I'm afraid that one day it might blow up into a scandal. There is a police report from the Prussian police who had an agent in London who looked after various exiles. He visited Marx and gave a description of the quite atrocious conditions he lived under. The place was rather cramped. The furniture was sparse. There was one chair which had only three legs. The whole place was full of tobacco smoke, as Marx smoked a lot. The whole place was very chaotic to say the least. And yet out of this squalor and poverty, Marx was able to abuse these ideas of genius of transforming the world. This is what remains of the Whitfield Tabernacle Church graveyard. This is where three children of Marx are buried. That is Francesca, Henry and Edgar. This is due to the poverty and squalor that they lived under. Marx in particular was so distraught at the time of Edgar's funeral. He died when he was eight years of age. He had to be physically restrained for him throwing himself on top of the coffin. This is one of the saddest episodes of Marx's life. When Marx arrived in London, the British Library was the greatest library in the world. It was a treasure trove. And with this material, with these resources, Marx was able to develop his ideas to the full. That is why he came every day here, apart from Sundays, from Dean Street, his lodgins, not far away from here. As soon as he arrived, he would gather the materials together, the books, the magazines, particularly of the classical bourgeois economists. He would read them, study them and criticise them. And after a day's labour, he would return to Dean Street. And sometimes he would even work throughout the night in Dean Street in order to rework these ideas as a basis for his ideas of Marx's economics, which became, in essence, the basis of capital. In June 1851, Marx obtained his reading ticket for the British Museum. This allowed him to access the colossal amount of literature that was stored here. Ever since the Act of 1842, 600,000 volumes were stored in the British Library. In the first five years, he studied here in the old library, where he was able to access the material for various articles starting with the address of the Central Committee of the Communist League, which ended with the famous quote that our battle cry is the permanent revolution. Other articles, such as the revolution and counter-revolution in Germany, the classicals in France and the 18th premiere of Louis Bonaparte. The new reading room in the British Library was opened in 1857. It was here that Marx studied the great classical bourgeois economists, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Malthus, John Stuart Mill and many others. It was in this building that Marx explored the laws of motion of capitalism, the secret of surplus value arising from the unpaid labour of the working class, the crucial difference between labour and labour power, the abilities and efforts of workers and what they actually received in wages. It was in this great treasure house of ideas that Marx was able to develop his theories of scientific socialism. While the bourgeois classical economists regarded the capitalist mode of production as eternal, Marx only saw it as a necessary step in the development of society. Marx understood that it was the contradictions and the crises of capitalism that would propel the working class to overthrow the system and replace it with a harmonious planned economy on a world scale. Cymru'r pynnigol o Marx's economic thought came with the production of Capiton. But the previous 20 years he developed these ideas, beginning as early as the summer of 1845 in Manchester when he visited the Chatham Library, which made available to him the most advanced economic ideas of the time of Ricardo Smith and others. The following year he went to Paris and had discussions with a friend socialist Proudhon. Clearly these discussions when they took place revealed a divergence of thought and Marx himself went into writing to criticise Proudhon in the poverty of philosophy where he defended the labour theory of value and the basic concepts of Ricardian economics. He was in that year also that he came to London in November of 1847 and visited this particular venue. It was in this venue that Marx gave a whole series of lectures. One of them was called What is Bourgeois Property? And it was the notes on this particular lecture that Marx wrote up in a very famous pamphlet called Wage Labour and Capital. This location was the venue of the Congress of the Communist League in which Marx and Engels participated in November, December 1847. They argued of course for the ideas of scientific socialism. In practice they dominated the conference and as a consequence they were asked to write the programmatic document of the Communist League, which began with the famous words, a spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into an unholy alliance to exercise this spectre and ends with the famous phrase, workers of the world unite. This document went down in history as the communist manifesto. We are here at the beautiful surroundings of Hampstead Heath where those who wanted to escape the terrible conditions of central London would come on weekends. That included the Marx family and whenever they had visitors in particular every Sunday they would walk one and a half hours from Dean Street to here where with the children present they would be playing games, singing songs, quoting poetry, particularly Shakespeare, having a whale of a time. After that they would take refreshments at Jack Stor's Castle, a public house. It was a great alternative to the squalor of Dean Street. In 1856, because of inheritances, the Marxists were able to move away from Dean Street and move here, Grafton Terrace number 46. It was here that Marx wrote different writings on economics, the critique of political economy which was published in 1859 and also where he elaborated more his ideas on capital. Marx was still in certain financial difficulties, although he did receive money from Engels from time to time. Things became so bad after 1861 when the New York Tribune refused to take any more articles from him that he tried to get another job in the great Western Railway Company but he was turned down because of bad handwriting. These were years also of declining health, I would say, which also affected other members of the family. For instance, Jenny, his wife, contracted smallpox and as a result the children had to go and live with Wilhelm Liedneck for a period and they would come here occasionally and from the balcony Jenny would speak to them. In 1863 Marx's mother passed away and therefore he had a certain inheritance and was able to use this to escape his financial difficulties here and allow them to move down the road a few minutes away to Maitland Park Road. In March 1864 Marx moved into a cottage on this particular site. He was the same year as the founding of the first international and as a result he held meetings of the committee of the international here and at this place he actually drew up the rules and the address, the famous address of the first international. The other significant fact of this place is that is where he finished volume one of Capital in 1867. It's worth appreciating Marx's efforts in writing Capital passed by quoting from a letter from Marx to Friedrich Mayer on the 30th of April 1867 apologising for his failure to reply to his letter. He says, I was the whole time at death's door. I thus had to make use of every moment when I was capable of work to complete my book to which I have sacrificed my health, happiness and family. I hope this explanation suffices. When Marx finished volume one of Capital he immediately wrote to Frederick Engels at two o'clock in the morning on the 16th of August 1867. This is what he says. So this volume is finished. I owe it to you alone that this is possible. Without your self-sacrifice for me I could not possibly have managed the immense labour demanded by three volumes. I embrace you, full of thanks, Marx. On this site was a building called St Martin's Hall and the significance of this building was on the 28th of September 1864 there was a mass meeting called here to protest against the oppression of the Polish people by the Russian autocracy. And in this meeting was Karl Marx and a resolution was presented at the meeting to found an organisation called the International Work in Men's Association which was later called the First International. We're outside number 18 Greek Street. This venue was the headquarters of the general council of the First International. Marx and the other council members met here every Tuesday evening from 8 o'clock till 10 o'clock to discuss the business of the International. Incidentally they paid £12 rent per year for this venue. The biggest force in the International was clearly Marx. His authority, his political awareness, he was able to bind together the different trends and opinions within the International ranging from the reformist trade union leaders in Britain, the French prudinists and also the Russian anarchists. The International built up its position in these years with affiliation from different trade union branches in Britain and elsewhere until it became quite a force and a threat to the European bourgeoisie. The activities of the International were however compromised by the activities of the anarchists in Bakunin whose followers were eventually expelled from the International at the Hague Congress in 1872. However the biggest challenge to the International came in France in 1871 where the workers of Paris rose up in a revolution and seized power. This became known as the Paris Commune. Marx said that they had stormed heaven such as the courage of these workers and needed the support of the International working class. Marx analysed these events in a famous pamphlet called the Civil War in France in which he defended the Commune and drew the lessons. Of course this terrified the British trade union leaders who decided to distance themselves from the International. The International bourgeoisie could not tolerate a revolution in government in France and therefore decided to crush it and drown it in blood. The defeat of the Commune together with the intrigues of the anarchists created enormous difficulties for the building of the International. As a consequence Marx and Engels decided to move the headquarters of the International from London to New York in 1872 and in 1876 he decided to dissolve the International for better times. It was in 1890 that a new International, the second International was formed this time not of small organisations but of mass organisations founded on the basis of Marx's ideas and the seeds for this International was born here in the work of the first International. In March 1875 Marx had moved from number one Maitland Park Road to this house or at least the foundations of the house this year. It was pulled down a bomb during the war of 41 Maitland Park Road. Marx spent his last years here. He wrote various pieces like the critique of the Gota programme and also did extensive writings or research on the last volumes of capital. But slowly ill health took its toll after years of a bad diet, bad conditions he became worse. However the greatest blow for Marx came with the death of his wife Jenny after a long illness in December 1881. He had been together for 50 years. Her maiden name was Jenny von Westphalen and she came from an aristocratic background with links even to the Scottish nobility. Her brother was a member of the Prussian government in the 1850s but Jenny turned her back on this and supported Marx, her family and above all the cause of communism. There was also a further blow to Marx with the death of his elder daughter also called Jenny in December 1883. Then finally on the 14th of March 1883 when Engels came to see him, Engels used to come and visit him every day Engels came here at quarter to three in the afternoon and he went upstairs with a house maid Helen de Muth and they found Marx in his favourite armchair gone to sleep forever passed away peacefully. Marx died on the 14th of March 1883 the three days later his body was buried at this particular location in Highgate cemetery along with his wife Jenny who died in December 1881 and also Jenny, his oldest daughter who died in January 1883. As you can see it's a very small, a very simple grave and that's how the Marx family wanted it they weren't interested in monuments of stone and monuments of marble the ideas of Marx were not enough of a monument and the same went for Engels that is why he refused to have a burial in the ground he wanted his ashes spread into the sea at Bici Head on that day when Marx was buried there were about 20 other individuals 20 other mourners who came on the occasion one was Wilhelm Liebnecht who gave a speech in German there were telegrams read out from different parts of the world including Russia also Charles Langech was present from France, his grandson we end here where we started at the grave of Karl Marx and on the plinth is the famous quote philosophers have interpreted the world the point however is to change it Engels emphasised this point at the oration he gave at Marx's grave where he said that Marx above all else was a revolutionist and his life's work was the overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of the working class