On Sundays the pilgrims still march through the crushed gravel of Highgate Cemetery, seeking the giant statue of Karl Marx that covers his grave and proclaims in gold letters: "Workers of All Lands Unite."
Jean Pateman, chairman of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, said some of the pilgrims are like the Polish army captain who sought out the gravesite recently "to cock his head" in contempt, while others come to see Marx's burial place out of curiosity or to pay homage.There are 166,700 people buried at Highgate, including writers like George Eliot (under the headstone noting her real name, Mary Ann Cross), philosopher Herbert Spencer, actor Ralph Richardson and scientist Michael Faraday.
But Marx outdraws them all.
"It's their curiosity, their political bias, their genuine interest, or the events in Eastern Europe that brings them," said Pateman.
Among those who regularly pay homage is Paul Merson, 22, an unemployed squatter and self-styled anarchist from Dublin. Merson believes that in spite of what's happening in Eastern Europe, Marx was still a great man who left a revolutionary message for people like himself who want to see England erupt into class war and revolution.
Merson is a member of Class War, a leftist British anarchist group composed largely of jobless youths that publishes tirades against Tories and has declared open war on the Establishment and London's bobbies. Class War claims responsibility for sparking last month's bloody anti-poll tax rioting in Whitehall, and Merson forecasts more bitter confrontations this summer.
Merson said his ardor for Marx hasn't been dampened at all by events in Eastern Europe, where bankrupt countries with unproductive economies are scrambling to scrap communism and move to Western-style market economies.
What the communist governments established in the East wasn't true Marxism, Merson insists. "People are looking at the name and calling it Marxism, but it wasn't true Marxism, it was state fascism. It was just the people in power using power for themselves," he said.
Jane Malone, 19, Merson's girlfriend and fellow jobless squatter, nodded in agreement. She hasn't had time to read much Marx yet, she said, but she draws inspiration as an anarchist from visiting his grave.
The revolutions in the east and the Soviet abandonment of true Marxism has sent Western European communists scrambling to come up with a new explanation for Marxism.
The Morning Star, London's Communist Party mouthpiece and the only Western newspaper circulating widely in Eastern Europe, has published several tortuously argued articles contending that Marx would have advocated the switch to market economies in communist countries because he was a realist, not a dogmatist.
A Russian with the Soviet delegation in London, who was visiting the grave with his daughter one recent Sunday, agreed with that argument.
"You must read `Das Kapital,' " said the man, who wouldn't give his name. "`Das Kapital' is a hope for everybody, it is how to understand the world. It was a book on how to make business."
Told that Westerners would be hard-pressed to see business views in Marx's works, he responded: "You must read it, but read it carefully."
Gravedigger Lev Samuel said he's watched visitors come to Marx's grave every week for the past decade, some carrying flowers and others just wandering through to take a picture.
It's been difficult, he added, to keep vandals from defacing the giant marble plinth, which has a huge statue of Marx's head on top. It was once covered with red paint that the cemetery workers had to scrape off with wire brushes and turpentine.
The bearded Samuel holds a gravedigger's view of Marx's position here, noting that the revolutionary philosopher is buried in the same graveyard with millionaire businessmen, booksellers, philosophers, firemen who fought Hitler's incendiary bombs in World War II, famous writers and well-known journalists.
Marx may have a bigger headstone than the others, but "a plinth is a plinth," he said as he pulled weeds from around old gravestones.
Marx's grave is just one of those he takes care of, but he likes the gold inscription etched into the marble, which says: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it."
Samuel said he thinks Marx would have understood the changes being made in the system he advocated.
"Each generation makes its reinterpretations of history," he said, "and each generation will have a different interpretation of Marx and Marx's connection with their day."