A Tribute To John Wilkes

“It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times” – these are the words Dickens employed to describe the French Revolution. Such times are indeed great in the manner in which oppressive regimes are overthrown, but they are often horrible as well. The French people have had many revolutions and installed many republics – and they are still unfree. India too fought for the goal of “freedom” from British rule. And this revolution too did not succeed.

In such difficult times, what I would like to offer my reader is a glimpse of history, for they say “history is a guide.” And history offers us an excellent example of an English politician, a phenomenal libertarian: John Wilkes (1725-1797). It is because of Wilkes that the press is now free. They should erect his statue on Fleet Street. Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg should be renamed after John Wilkes. People indeed named their children after him, as in the case of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin. The libertarian publishers Fox & Wilkes keep his name alive.

What needs to be emphasized about John Wilkes is his great love for Freedom. He was a man who lived life to the hilt. He was a known “rake,” having fathered half-a-dozen illegitimate children. The club he founded was the Hellfire Club – and their headquarters were in a monastery, of all places. This was on the banks of the Thames, and finds mention in Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. This wonderful book also contains an excellent description of the signing of the Magna Carta – a peaceful revolution. But we were discussing John Wilkes.

As a politician, John Wilkes was primarily a journalist. It is his journalism, which included some pornography, that won him the support of the people; in particular, the London mob. In those happy days, there were no policemen in London. And Wilkes had the mob on his side. The King hated him, referring to him always as “that devil Wilkes.” Even the House of Commons hated him, and expelled him many times. It is only because of John Wilkes that the proceedings of parliament are now reported to the people. Till then, they were kept secret. It is indeed noteworthy that John Wilkes crowned his political career by becoming Lord Mayor of London, second only to The King, and therefore far, far above parliament.

John Wilkes also did not do it for the money. It is recorded that his great political battles ruined him financially. It is also recorded that he happily spent whatever he had living up to the standards befitting London’s Lord Mayor, which has never been an “office of profit.” I strongly suspect that Wilkes did all he did merely for the fuck of it; for fun. Politics, to English people then, was the great game. And he played this great game extremely well.

It should also be noted that John Wilkes enjoyed mob support in a City. Posters saying "Wilkes & Liberty" were put up all over London. History says that when he was elected Lord Mayor, jubiliant crowds unhitched the horses from his grand carriage and dragged it through the City streets.

Why did I suddenly think of John Wilkes? B’coz this meaningless Indian “democracy” does not offer us a single real “politician.” I am writing this from South Delhi, where Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi lost the election. In India, what we call “politics” is not the great civilizing activity that the great philosophers of ancient Greece wrote about. This particular word, “politics,” born in ancient Greece, is floating around the world completely devoid of its original meaning. There is another word that has suffered a similar fate: the word “villain,” which originally meant a simple farmhand, an agricultural worker, a serf, one who lived in a “vill,” a villager. As in the case of “politics,” so too in the case of “villain,” words have acquired sinister meanings on their own.

John Wilkes was no villain. He was a great hero of his times. And he was a City Politician. Think about that…