Karl Marx: A Biography

LONDON *4 7

in the Great Windmill Street Association, seceded and set up a new
Association with statutes drawn up by Marx. Its leader was Gottlieb
Stechan, a tablemaker who had been one of the leaders of the Communist
League in Hanover. Marx wrote to Weydemeyer:

You can announce that a new Workers' Association has been formed

in London under the presidency of Stechan that will steer clear of the

'emigres', the 'agitators' and Great Windmill and pursue serious aims.

You understand ... that this Association belongs to us, although we are

only sending our young people there; I am only speaking of our 'edu-

cated people', not of our workers who all go.^85

This Association contained about sixty members and the organising com-
mittee was in the hands of the members of the 'Marx Society'. It met
twice weekly in the Bull's Head Tavern, New Oxford Street, to discuss
such questions as the influence of pauperism on revolution, whether a
general war was in the interests of revolution, the advisability of co-
operating with other revolutionary parties, and whether poverty could be
abolished after the revolution. Pieper and Liebknecht took a leading part
in the discussions, though their didactic views were occasionally chal-
lenged by some of the workers. The Association also provided English
lessons and in June the political discussions were replaced by a course on
medieval literature given by Wilhelm Wolff. The Association came to an
end, however, in the late summer of 1852 when some of the workers,
including Stechan himself, returned to the Great Windmill Street
Association.^86

During 1852 Marx was also occupied in writing a diatribe against his
fellow exiles. Its history illustrates the bizarreness of refugee politics at
this time. In February 1852 Marx was approached by a Hungarian colonel
named Bangya whose acquaintance he had made two years previously
when the Communist League was trying to enter into alliance with other
revolutionary bodies. Bangya came from a minor aristocratic family, had
become an Austrian spy in 1850 and then went to Paris where he became
vice-president of a committee uniting Hungarian, Austrian and German
political exiles - a committee of which five out of the seven members
were professional spies! Bangya's contacts with Kinkel, Willich and Maz-
zini enabled him to keep Vienna very well informed and he was instru-
mental in the arrest of the Cologne communists. He was also involved in
the arrest of Willich's Paris friends in the autumn of 1851 , was later
arrested himself and contrived an 'escape' to London. At his meeting
with Marx there in February, Bangya avoided party politics and promised
Hungarian help for Weydemeyer's paper. Marx was impressed and agreed
to Bangya's request for some short biographical sketches of the German