Before the formation of the seafront, the beach directly east of the pier was the loading point of the early coal barges. A little further along is where the fishermen beached their vessels. Gradually, some of the vessels were turned to use for tourism. It is likely that the boat that took Engels’s ashes out to sea was hired from east of the pier.
And so, on 27th August 1895, on a very stormy day, four set off in a boat carrying the urn containing Friedrich Engels’ ashes. The four were Eleanor (the youngest daughter of Karl Marx) and her ‘cad’ partner Edward Aveling, Eduard Bernstein and Frederick Lessner. According to the wording on the 1976 plaque, they dropped the ashes into the sea 5 miles off Beachy Head.
However, this is unlikely to be correct, as in indicated in an article by Frederick Lessner. A moot point, you may think, but before coming across this article it had long baffled many of us as to how anyone could endure 5 miles in a small boat on a very stormy day – whereas hugging the coast for 2 miles up to Beachy Head and back would have been do-able?
Back to Eleanor Marx, to whom we simply must dedicate a few words. She was the youngest daughter of Karl Marx; she and her sisters Helen and Laura were often invited to join Engels in Eastbourne.
Marx once said of his daughters, “Laura is like me, Eleanor IS me”. This tribute from Marx was well deserved. She was a determined political agitator, organiser and writer who threw herself into the struggles of her time against imperialism, racism, and sexism. She was a champion of the oppressed. She had a resolute recognition of the importance of workers’ unity.
Whilst Eleanor supported the women’s movement’s call for reforms (e.g. women’s suffrage, higher education for women and so on) she was a revolutionary socialist. She contributed to a Marxist understanding of woman’s oppression with class being central to women’s liberation. She believed that working women’s struggles had more to do with working men than the middle-class leaders of the woman’s rights movement.
I would just love to find a local artist who would become inspired by this story, enough to create a painting of Eleanor and her comrades, being bashed around in that small boat, on that stormy day….there to carry out Engels final wishes.