Tomb of Karl Marx

Listen for a moment. Gravel shifts under your shoes, and somewhere above you a wood pigeon calls through the trees. Ivy climbs over leaning headstones on both sides of the path. Then the path opens a little, and a great bearded head in dark bronze looks out over the graves. It is larger than life and almost impossible to miss. You are standing in the East Cemetery at Highgate, in north London, in front of the tomb of Karl Marx.

Highgate Cemetery itself opened in 1839. It was one of a ring of large private burial grounds built around London in the Victorian era, when churchyards in the city centre were dangerously overcrowded. Wealthy families bought plots here for the fresh air, the hillside views and the romantic, garden-like setting. The eastern section, where you are now, opened later in the nineteenth century, across the narrow road called Swain's Lane. Over time the planting grew wild, and much of the cemetery now feels closer to a woodland than a formal garden.

The man under this monument was born in Germany in 1818. He was a philosopher, an economist and a journalist, and he was expelled from several European countries for his radical writing. He came to London in 1849 as a political refugee. He expected a short stay. Instead, he lived in this city for more than thirty years, until the end of his life. London gave him a safe place to work, although it also gave him years of hard poverty.

Those early London years were very difficult. The family lived in cramped rooms on Dean Street in Soho, and several of the Marx children died young. Later the family moved north to Kentish Town, not far from where you stand. Most days, Marx walked to the British Museum. In its Reading Room he studied for long hours and wrote the work that became Capital, his long analysis of how capitalism works. Much of the most famous critique of industrial capitalism was written at a desk in the capital of the industrial world.

Marx died at his home in north London in March 1883. His wife, Jenny von Westphalen, had died about fifteen months earlier and was already buried in Highgate. Here is the first surprise. His funeral was tiny. Accounts usually mention only about eleven mourners. His lifelong friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, spoke at the graveside. He predicted that Marx's name and work would last through the ages. At the time, very few people outside radical circles would have believed him.

And the original grave was nothing like what you see today. It was a modest, flat stone in a less prominent part of the cemetery, and it was easy to walk past. For more than seventy years, visitors had to search for it. As Marx's ideas spread across the world in the twentieth century, admirers began to feel that the simple grave did not match his influence. So, in the 1950s, the remains were moved to this more visible spot beside the main path.

The monument in front of you was unveiled in 1956. It was paid for by the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the sculptor was Laurence Bradshaw. Look at the style. The bust is heavy and blocky, with a strong jaw and a mass of hair and beard. It has a lot in common with the monumental public sculpture of that period. The whole tomb rises to more than twice the height of a person, so you look up at Marx, not down at a grave.

Now read the words cut into the stone. At the top, in gold letters, is the famous call from the Communist Manifesto: "Workers of all lands unite." Near the bottom is a line from his early notes on the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it." These two short phrases give the core of his message. One is a political slogan. The other is a statement about the purpose of thinking.

Here is the second surprise. Set into the front of the plinth is a smaller, older marble plaque. That plaque came from the original family grave. It lists the people buried here with Marx. They include his wife Jenny, and his young grandson Harry Longuet. They also include Helene Demuth, the family's housekeeper for many decades, and his daughter Eleanor Marx, a campaigner and translator in her own right. So this is a family grave, not a tomb for one man.

A monument this political has always drawn strong reactions. Over the decades the tomb has been damaged several times. In the 1970s there was an attempt to blow it up. In 2019 someone attacked the old marble plaque with a hammer, and later someone daubed the stone with red paint and angry slogans. Each time it was repaired. The marks of these attacks are part of its story now. Even today, people cannot agree about the man buried here.

Notice also who lies around Marx. Many of the newer graves close by belong to socialists, trade unionists and activists from many countries. Several of them chose to be buried near him. Just beside the tomb is the grave of Claudia Jones, a Trinidad-born activist and journalist. She helped to start the Caribbean carnival events in London that led to the Notting Hill Carnival. In a way, this corner has become a small neighbourhood of radicals from across the world.

The rest of the East Cemetery has many other well-known residents. The novelist George Eliot is buried here. So is the writer Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Fans sometimes leave pens at his grave. Visitors often come for Marx and then spend an hour among the other stones, reading names and inscriptions. Many of the graves belong to ordinary Victorian Londoners, with weathered angels and urns slowly sinking into the ivy.

Look at the base of the tomb before you leave. You will often see fresh flowers, small notes, coins or red carnations. Visitors from China, Latin America, Eastern Europe and elsewhere still stop here to take photographs. Some come with admiration. Some come with curiosity. Some come with a deep sense of disagreement. Many of them walk past George Eliot and the other graves without noticing them, because they came to see this one bronze head.

So take a last look. The bronze face looks out over the graves, and beneath it the old marble plaque carries the names of a family that once struggled to pay the rent in Soho. As you walk back along the gravel, listen to the pigeons again, and notice how quickly the trees close in. In a few steps the great head is hidden behind leaves, and the cemetery is quiet once more.