NOW CONSTRAINED FROM WRITING socialist polemic, Graham had to find other less politically partisan themes. Two subjects that were not overtly socialist, but were analogous with his views on the conditions of the working poor, were his views on empire and colonialism. As we have seen, Graham had expressed imperial scepticism on the hustings and in parliament, but his early socialist journalism made little reference to imperialism. Now, between 1896 and early 1899, obviously driven by deep anger, he wrote four extraordinary explicit articles with an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist message.

Graham’s new literary career was contemporaneous with the approach of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897), when a fevered imperial jingoism was nearing its height. As previously acknowledged, he drew no distinction between capitalism and imperialism; indeed, as Bernard Porter observed in the wider context, there were ‘signs towards the end of the century that the nation’s policy was being shaped by capitalists to an extent unknown before, and with little concern for the interests of anyone but themselves’. He added, ‘emotional accretions to the name of the Empire became thicker and more beguiling as the last thirty years of the century wore on’. Thus, for Graham, the forthcoming hubristic celebrations provided a perfect excuse to attack capitalism and the powerful elites both directly and obliquely.

A key event that excited national passions, but also exacerbated moral qualms among certain sections of society, as well as international condemnation, was the botched Jameson Raid of 1895 to 1896, sponsored by Cecil Rhodes, which had been aimed at provoking conflict with the Boers. Porter agreed that the raid ‘pointed a clear and unmistakable connection between empire and finance’, and it was an excellent opportunity for Graham to voice his anger. Surprisingly, after publishing only two pieces in the Saturday Review, it was this conservative journal that published his first major anti-imperialist tirade, since it was also a direct attack on Rhodes (whom elsewhere he had called the ‘Bulawayo Burglar’), a man whom Harris knew and admired. It was also an attack on British intrigues in southern Africa as a means of gaining access to the goldfields and diamond mines, published in two parts under the title ‘Fraudesia Magna’.