Following the success of Thetfordʼs 2009 Paine Bi-Centenary Celebrations, the organising
committee was reconstituted with a Legacy brief, to maintain the profile of Thetford’s
radical thinker in the town. At the heart of its programme is an annual Autumn Lecture
series – the Common Sense Club.
Find the Legacy site here
The story so far:
Declaration of Intent
Thetfordʼs Common Sense Club launched in October 2010, established by the Tom Paine
200 Legacy Committee to maintain the spirit of its bi-centenarian beyond the
commemorations of 2009.
Recapturing the intellectual debate and enquiry of Paineʼs weekly meetings in eighteenth
century Lewes, and of our own Lecture series last Autumn, the intentions are to explore
aspects of Paineʼs life and experience and open up topics of current interest that would
undoubtedly have engaged the controversialist if he had been alive today.
While the usual medium of enquiry will be the lecture and q&a session, there is room for
formal debate and free discussion in the plans to deliver a five year programme with the
Club in session each October.
October 2010 offers what will be a characteristic feature of programming, a balance
between historical and contemporary themes. A deliberate sense of continuity is built in
with the inclusion of a speaker featured in 2009 among our guests.
Report of the Autumn 2010 series
The three lectures of the 2010 series were hosted by Thetford Grammar School in the Old
School on Bridge Street.
First up on Friday 15th October, Dr Alan Cardew, Director of American (US) Studies at the
University of Essex, spoke on Tom Paine, Common Sense and America. After tracing
the Enlightenmentʼs growing confidence in common sense, rather than that of the expert
individual, Dr Cardew provided a wide-ranging – and expert – survey of Paineʼs impact on
America. We travelled agreeably from the eighteenth century – when to assert oneʼs rights
as a freeborn Englishman it was necessary to become an American! – to the enthusiasms
and prejudices of the present day – from Paine to Palin.
October 22nd saw the return of colourful local historian Brian Way who did not disappoint
as his study of two powerful figures Mr Burke and Mr Paine, first friends then enemies at
daggers drawn, cleverly brought into focus the French Revolution, Rights of Man and the
politics of a confrontational age.
Our final session on the 29th initially brought into focus the fragility of the provincial rail
system. The keenly awaited visit of Pam Giddy, London-based Director of the Power
Inquiry, was delayed by trouble onʼt line and further curtailed by the need to return via
Diss. An experienced speaker, lobbyist and vox populist, Ms Giddy rose to the occasion,
trenchantly outlining the case for electoral reform and, like all our speakers, flourishing in
the freer atmosphere of the Q&A forum.
Report of the Autumn 2011 series
Feedback from our first audiences, de facto members of the Common Sense Club,
informed our second yearʼs planning. Our three meetings were spread more widely across
autumn 2011 and featured an alternative to the lecture in the form of a Question Time
session with guest politicians.
The first of three meetings held on Friday 30th September – Paine, Wollstonecraft,
Condorcet: from Rights of Man to Rights of Woman – afforded a feminist critique of
Paine from Sheffield academic Linda Kirk. Did the great man practise what he
preached? Dr Kirk sought to set Thomas Paine’s indifference to female subordination
against the use by others of his own political arguments to endorse their support for
women’s emancipation. After a careful review of the evidence, Dr Kirk concluded that,
through friendships and political association, Paine had every opportunity to go much
further in pursuit of womenʼs rights than he actually did. She awarded the palm to the
Marquis de Condorcet. ( “They order these things better in France”).
On Friday 14 October. Dr Alan Cardew of Essex University returned to shed light on the
age of Paine and beyond with Kit-Kats, Jacobins and Drones: clubs and politics from
1688 to the present. Characteristically witty and informed, a man entirely at home in his
material, Dr Cardew in the event focused on the first two of his subjects. He reminded us
that it was not just radical debate in taverns that set the 18th century political pulse racing:
bewigged aristocrats in coffee-houses met to plot and plan the advancement of their
causes. Across the channel, the club dynamic of private meetings and debate was at the
heart of the French Revolution in the paranoid and murderous history of the Jacobin Club.
All in all, the notion of club politics was a far stronger one than might be imagined by those
of us whose associations with the club were formed by the sandwich, the mixer, Wooster
and the Drones.
And on Friday 4th November the Common Sense Club enjoyed an all-party Question
Time. Panel members bridged governments of the past, present and maybe future,
speaking eloquently from all points of the political compass on topics ranging from human
rights to the response of the church to the protestors camping outside St Paul’s.
The spirit of Tom Paine manifested itself most obviously through outbreaks of heated
audience participation and the socialist warmth and independence of Dr Ian Gibson. Yet
Paine would surely have appreciated equally the fervent scientific rigour of the Liberal
Democrat member for Cambridge Julian Huppert, the combative vigour of former
conservative MP Michael Cartiss and the broad sensitivity to a range of issues shown by
the Deputy Leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay.
If ʻwellbeingʼ, Dr Huppert’s tool for measuring the health of a nation, includes intellectual
stimulation and respect for the commitment and integrity of others, this was an evening
which contributed significantly to “the sum of human happiness”.
2012
The Common Sense Club returns in the Autumn for the third session in a five year
programme, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Full details of the programme will be available on our website tompainelegacy.org.uk
which also carries reports and recordings of past lectures and will be updated with material
from 2011 in the new year.
