John Smith Clarke

John Smith Clarke (4 February 1885 – 30 January 1959) was a British lion tamer, politician, poet, newspaper editor and art expert.

John Smith Clarke was born in Jarrow, the 13th of 14 children, whose father was a ticket and poster writer, living in Heaton Park Road South. Clarke had a great interest in a local circus, and by the age of seventeen would visit the lion tamer and enter the lion's cage, a practice he continued for the rest of his life. While mostly a writer, he also became a sailor, and was able to travel the world, being involved in gun running to 1905 revolutionaries in Russia, and once attempting to hitchhike home to Jarrow from Durban.

Clarke also became a socialist, and joined the Socialist Labour Party. He edited the party newspaper, The Socialist, from 1913 to 1914, and again for a period during World War I, while also contributing to journals such as Forward and Plebs.

Clarke opposed World War I, and wrote articles and poems decrying it. With the imposition in 1916 of conscription, to which he was legally liable, he became a de facto conscientious objector, going on the run, variously in Edinburgh, Derbyshire and Glasgow, rather than attempting a formal application to a Military Service Tribunal for exemption; as a socialist prepared to fight in defence of his class but not the state, he would almost certainly have been refused.

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