ResoluteReader

Sunday, December 03, 2023

Frantz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth

Reading Frantz Fanon at anytime is a heady experience. His writing is angry, revolutionary and liberating as well as being beautifully lyrical. His commitment to the fight against colonialism, and the liberation of ordinary people through their collective struggle shines through, but so does his care for individuals and their pain and suffering. But reading Fanon at a time when the Palestinian people are desperately fighting against their systematic destruction by the Israeli State is eye opening.

The Wretched of the Earth is Fanon's clearest discussion of national liberation movements. It was written in haste, following his diagnosis with leukemia, his friends wrote it down as he paced back and forth dictating. The text bears the imprint of this urgency, which seeps through into his passionate demand for self-liberation.

In Wrteched it is Fanon's discussion and defence of the oppressed use of violence that is most often discussed. Violence for Fanon, is not only a requirement to overthrow the colonial powers, but it is also necessary to cleanse and shape those fighting for liberation: "For [the native] knows that he is not an animal; and it is precisely at the moment he realises his humanity that he beings to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure its victory". Later he continues:

During the struggle for freedom, a marked alienation from these practices is observed. The native's back is to the wall, the knife is at his throat (or, more precisely, the electrode at his genitals): he will no more call for his fancies. After centuries of unreality, after having wallowed in the most outlandish phantoms, at long last the native, gun in hand, stands face to face with the only forces which contend for his life - the forces of colonialism. And the youth of a colonized country, growing up in an atmosphere of shot and fire, amy well make a mock of, and does not hesitate to pour scorn upon the zombies of his ancetors, the horses with two heads, the dead who rise again, and the dijnns who rush into your body whie you yawn. The native discovers reality and transforms it into the pattern of his customs, into the practice of violence and into his plan for freedom.

Here Fanon echoes Marx's argument that the revolution will cleanse the worker of the "muck of ages", removing the old ideas of racism, oppression and subservience. Fanon however is not a Marxist, though Marx is important to him. You get the impression that Fanon has imbibed Marx's writings but not taken them to heart: "Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem." This is perhaps most true of Fanon's writing on class, particualrly those parts of Wretched where he discusses the role of workers in the Global North (the colonial powers) and the role of workers in the colonised countries.

In fact, Fanon goes so far as to argue that workers' in the colonial countries are bought off by the system and can play a limited role in liberation movements:

It cannot be too strongly stressed that in the colonial territories the proletariat is the nucleus of the colonized population which has been most pampered by the colonial regime... In capitalist countries, the working class has nothing to lose; it is they who in the long run have evrything to gain. In the colonial countries the working class has everythign to lose.

But in South Africa and in India, it was working class movements that proved most crucial to overthrowing colonial rule and apartheid. Think of the strikers by black workers, or the mass movements and strikes by workers that made it impossible for the British to control India. In fact Fanon himself is ambiguous on the question of workers. Some pages after the above quote he can declare that "during the colonial phase, the nationalist trade-union organisations constitute and impressive striking power. In the towns, the trade unionist can bring to a standstill... the colonialist economy". But then go on to argue that the "unions become candidates for governmental power" after colonialism has been uprooted. What Fanon does is to identify trade unionists with their leader - obscuring the potential power for self-emancipation that is represented by the collective organisation of workers.

Partly I think Fanon makes this mistake because he is trying to warn and understand the way that revoluitonary struggles against colonialism risk constructing new chains for ordinary people.

The militant who faces the colonialist war machine with the bare minimum of arms realises that while he is breaking down colonial oppresion he is building up automatically yet another system of exploiation... The clear, unreal, idyllic light of the beginning is followed by a semi-darkness that bewilers the senses. The people find out that the iniquitous fact of expoitation can wear a black face, or an Arab one; and they raise the cry of 'Treason!' But the cry is mistaken; and the mistake must be corrected. The treason is not national, it is social. The people must be taught to cry 'Stop thief!'.

He points out that the "national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie of the West". The national bourgeoisie then must be resolutely opposed, and a new vision of development fought for that doesn't try to copy the Western states. But I think it's fair to say that Fanon doesn't really answer what this might look like. Though he offers some interesting hints, they tend to be general and focus on culture, rather than wider economic and social institutions.

The struggle for freedom does not give back to the national culture its former value and shapes; this struggle which aims at a fundamentally different set of relations between men cannot leave intact either the form or the content of the people's culture. After the conflict there is not only the disappearance of colonialism but also the disappearance of the colonised man.

This is why, of course, the workers movement against colonialism is so important - but must be tied to a theory of workers' emancipation that goes beyond opposing colonialism and then fighting for social and economic equality. It is why the writings of revolutionaries like Lenin remain so important, and the Marxst tradition so crucial, for national liberation movements today. But against this project, Fanon essential sets a different system of struggle - violence.

Violence alone, violence committeed by the people, violence organised and educated by its leaders, makes it possible fotr the masses to understand social truths and gives the key to them. Without that struggle, without that knowledge of the practice of action, there's nothing byt a fancy-dress parade and the blare of trumpeets.. a few reforms at the top... and down there at the bottom an undivided mass, still living in the Middle Ages, endlessly marking time.

This of course, poses a question of what Fanon means by "violence". Quotes like the above are often used to paint him as a bloodthirsty revolutionary. And, to be sure, Fanon refuses on principle, to condemn the violence of the oppressed against the oppressor. Indeed many of the leftists and pacifists who currently bemoan the "violence on both sides" in the Middle East, ought to read Fanon whose robust defence of the right to resist arises directly from his involvement in the struggle for liberation of Algeria, and brokers no cowardly refusal to take sides.

But I think that Fanon's "violence" is less about the actual violence itself, but more a substitute for the process of the overthrow of oppressive relations and institutions, which Fanon understands won't happen peacefully. This is, of course, far more revolutionary than many in liberation movements would like, and his repeated denunciation of those who would simply place themselves into new "national" positions of power emphasises this. So Fanon's work remains crucial, directly relevant, and inspiring. But it cannot be read on its own, as his focus on the peasantry instead of the working class, will not lead to the sort of liberation he wants and that oppressed people need. Nonetheless, his vision for change is, at times, intoxicating:

We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships of the time before life began. Let us waste not time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.

Wretched of the Earth was first published in 1961 and Frantz Fanon died the same year. One can only wonder what he would have learnt from, and thought of, the mass movements that exploded in France a few years later, which had an insurgent working class at their heart.

Friday, December 01, 2023

Willard Price - Whale Adventure

When I was young in the early 1980s I was obsessed with Willard Price's Adventure series. These books followed the unlikely adventures of Hal and Roger Hunt, whose father collected specimins for zoos. He gave them a year out to go on expeditions to capture (but not kill) animals for zoos, and I had South Sea Adventure, Amazon Adventure and Arctic Adventure. Somewhere I still have Arctic, it's cover is battered from repeated reading, and I dreamed of the others.

A chance find on a charity stall of a battered copy of Whale Adventure recently bought it all back. This was first published in 1960, but my copy is the 1973 edition. Rereading it has reminded me of the importance of those early books, and my enjoyment of them. But it's also shown me some pitfalls of youthfull reading!

But Whale Adventure is very different to the ones I devoured. In Whale, Roger and Hal kill animals. They are on board the Killer, one of the last three masted whale hunting sailing ships. The ship is captained by the cruel Grindle who enjoys violence and torture of his crew. His consequent shortage of crew forces him to take the two boys (19 and 12) onboard, but he treats them with disdain for their "gent" like ways.

Willard Price liked, as many young peoples' books do, using his writing to educate as well as entertain. So there's plenty here about life and work on a whaleship - the sights, smells and violence. Both Hal and Roger get to kill whales, and there's a lot about how the animals are butchered in the old way, and later on the factory ships. Price also introduces a host of other animals, Killer Whales, sharks of various types and seabirds. The reader enjoys it, and learns. But what do they learn?

Leaving aside the implausibility of the story line, which features boys proving their value to experienced sailors, cruel captains, shipwreck and mutiny, the problem is with the information about the animals themselves. It is true that in the last 60 years since the books were written our knowledge of these animals has vastly grown. In Whale Adventure Price quotes a few recent studies to show that whales communicate - something that was clearly considered novel at the time. But the hunt itself is certainly not criticised, and his depictions of the animals, in particular the Killer Whales, is often widely inaccurate. For instance, whale spouts - the air they breath out - are repeatedly depicted as dangerously acidic. That's not true. Checking some of Price's assertions led me to this fascinating piece on how inaccurate young people's books (including non-fiction) actually are. Particularly pertinent to this story are the comments in this about Killer Whales, "In the span of a human lifetime, we’ve gone from fearing killer whales to seeing them as cuddly entertainers and then as intelligent animals that deserve our respect and protection."

Do these inaccuracies matter? Well I certainly know that Price's Adventure stories impacted on how I understood the world and animals in it. They were informative and encouraged me enjoy animals and want to preserve the "natural" world. But I still retain, likely inaccurate, knowledge from those books. As the article linked above points out:

In a 2016 article called, tellingly, “Cetacean Frustration,” four British scientists surveyed picture books that feature whales and other cetaceans. Of 116 books, 74 had errors. The rate was higher in fiction, but almost half of the nonfiction books also contained errors.

The problem is that children accept uncritically the information they read. Not least because:

So good information matters, especially for kids. In a 2002 article in the journal the Reading Teacher, science educator Diana C. Rice wrote it’s a mistake to assume that science misconceptions from early childhood will be corrected later. Rather, “research in science education suggests just the opposite, that we cannot assume that children’s ideas in science will become more sophisticated.” She cited a 1999 survey of American adults in which about half of the respondents believed that early humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, an idea, she wrote, derived from children’s books, movies, television, and—in some cases—religion.

In re-reading Willard Price, I've discovered that these books are actually not that great at developing children's understanding of the world - though most of them (where they don't kill) are actually desgined to foster a love of nature, animals and the world around us. Does this matter? Well all Price's Adventure books are currently available, with modern flashy covers. There are also, other, problems. For instance in the whole of Whale Adventure there are no female characters - not even in the background of the scene setting pages. I dread to think what Price's Cannibal Adventure might be like. Much as I loved them, perhaps these books should be left on the nostalgia shelves?

Saturday, November 25, 2023

Lyn MacDonald - Somme

Lyn MacDonald's Somme was the third of her books on World War One, drawing on her huge and detailed collection of reminisances and memoires of former soldiers. Like the first, They Called It Passchendaele, which told the story of the Third Battle of Ypres, it is an unflinching account of the brutality of trench warfare. Somme however, deals with the most famous of the bloodbaths of the Western Front. MacDonald starts with the meticulous, detailed and finely tuned battle plan that would see millions of shells fired at the German trenches, followed by coordinated attacks timed to the second. British troops would carry mirrors and flags so that their generals could track their victorious march. The reality was a blood bath. The detailed instructions gave no room for flexibility on the ground. As the Germans took out the first over the top, following troops had no idea what to do, as their objectives were not even close. As Sergeant Jim Myer's of the Machine Gun Corps recalled:

The biggest mistake that was made on manoeuvres and training was that we were never told what to do in case of failure. All this time we'd gone backwards and forwards, training, doing it over and over again like clockwork and then when we had to advance, when it came to the bit, we didn't know what to do! Nothing seemed to be arranged in case of failure.

Thousands, upon thousands, died. MacDonald's interviewees tell the stories of individual tragedy, and bravery. Of the groups of "Pals", from the same village, factory, industry, even sports teams, who died together. The survivors left shocked and demoralised by what they had seen. Corporal Harry Shaw, of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, summed up that first attack:

Whatever was gained, it wasn't worth the price that the men had paid to gain that advantage. It was no advantage to anybody. It was just sheer bloody murder. That's the only words you can use for it.

Most of the accounts MacDonald draws on are of front line troops. But a great strength of the book is that it gives a sense of the scale of the undertaking. She includes the voices and accounts of people who drove the ambulances, salvaged broken equipment for recycling into more shells and guns, and the people who laid roads, cooked food and reported for the press. But it is the horror of the front, the chaos of battle and the sheer bloody uselessness of the high command that will stay with the reader. The Battle for High Wood will stick with me, as troops captured and area, only to see it slip from the grasp as their Generals ordered in cavalry that took a whole day to arrive. The thousands who died in the follow up should never have died there.

Somme is not a detailed history of the battle. At times its hard to follow events, or even grasp the scale of particular attacks. The pictures are also unclear to me. But this is not a book to be read for detailed accounts. This is the human story of the slaughter of Kitchener's Army, "shipping clerks, errand-boys, stevedores, railway porters, grocers' assistants, postmen".

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Kate Wilhelm - Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is an unusual end of the world novel. It begins with the incredibly wealthy Sumner family who seeing all the signs that civilisation is collapsing - failed crops, disease and sterility - decide to set up a hidden research hospital where they can create human clones to repopulate the Earth after humanity has died. The first few chapters are rather plodding, exploring the collapse and the frantic search for scientific solutions to genetic problems. But once the clones become viable and are part of the story itself, the novel rapidly takes off - with echoes of Earth Abides, The Midwich Cuckoos, Stepford Wives and perhaps, I Am Legend.

The clones are human, but not. They cannot function as individuals, in fact individuality has no meaning for them. On an exploration trip some of the brothers and sisters cannot function properly, and one of them, Molly, becomes isolated and develops traits of individuality. Isolated from the other clones because of this, and for fear of infecting them, she gets pregnant and gives birth to a child who grows up to be free of the psychological limitations that affect the cloned children. This child, Mark, then becomes a foil for the clones - useful to them because he can go where others cannot, and becomes confident and at peace with the natural world. But he also threatens to undermine the whole clone "group think", because of his individuality - never mind his interest in the arts, culture and the world around them. Its a novel that makes the reader uneasy, with no morally upstanding figures for you to identify with.

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang is a surprising novel for the 1970s. It deals, as many did, with the failure of human society, and the limitations of science in solving those issues. But it is also a fine rumination on the role of the individual and the limits of collective thinking. I wonder, to what extent, it was fueled by crude (right-wing) critiques of socialism which supposedly would destroy the individual. But it is as much anti-authoritarian as well as a critique of such ideas and consequently, today, the novel probably is read differently - there's quite a bit of focus on the natural world and its destruction, and resurgence after humanities' demise and at least one reference to the newish idea of global warming. Recommended.

Sunday, November 19, 2023

Stephen King - Fairy Tale

Written during Covid-19 Stephen King's Fairy Tale bears all the markings of a literal escapist fantasy, and that's why I found it perfect to read when I did. It beings with the troubled early life of Charlie Reade who is 17 when the novel is set, though the first 100 pages concern his childhood - the death of his mother and the consequent alcoholism of Charlie's father. Charlie's dad eventually escapes the cycle of alcoholism, and puts himself back on the straight and narrow, but the fear of a relapse haunts Charlie, whose efforts in the schoolroom and on the athletic field seem to be attempts to atone for his father's behaviour and some unsavoury childhood rebellion of his own.

But it is when Charlie meets Howard Bowditch, and elderly, reclusive and very rude neighbour that things enter the fantastical. It turns out that Bowditch, who becomes Charlie's friend and mentor, is the guardian of a gateway to a fairy tale world, but its a world attacked by evil, while has begun to disintegrate. As it's a fairy tale land the former royal family are actually rather nice people, rather than those at the top of a system of oppression and exploitation. Charlie sets out to restore the throne, and save the life of Bowditch's beloved dog.

It is actually a fairly classic fairy tale, though Charlie spends a lot of it in prison, forced to compete in violent gladiatorial combat with other prisoners. There is a satisfactory ending, and reconciliation with his father, and the dog lives.

As with much of King's writings, Fairy Tale is at its best when describing the mundane parts of his character's lives. The first third, focusing on Charlie and the relationship with the two adults - his father and Bowditch is the best. The reader is carried along on a sort of soap opera. By the time we get to the fairy tale, it feels a little like King has spent his imagination a little and the the rest of the story is cobbled together. It feels more like a computer game brought to the page, than a fully rounded novel. That said, there's plenty of vintage King here, some blood and guts, lots of excitement and a host of weird and wonderful fantasy characters.

Sunday, November 12, 2023

Beverley McCombs - The Ascott Martyrs

The 1870s saw an explosion of trade unionism across rural England as workers', sick of low pay, appalling conditions and the cost of living, joined new trade unions in their thousands. Many of them quickly went on strike and often one excellent pay rises from the farmers. The epicentre of this trade unionism were the Midland counties of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, partly because of their proximity to the Warwickshire village of Barford where one of the leading figures of the new unionism, Joseph Arch, lived.

At a recent event in Barford to celebrate the life and struggles of Arch, I was reminded of a often forgotten episode of this struggle that took place nearby in the village of Ascott, near Chipping Norton. I had written about this in my own account of rural struggles, Kill all the Gentlemen, highlighting its importance because it is one of the few occasions where the workers' strikes explicitly involved a group of women. Despite the agricultural unions limiting membership to men, women were actually often agricultural labourers, or workers' in allied trades and certainly were workers. The Ascott Martyrs, as they became known, were a group of sixteen women who were sent to prison for trying to prevent scab labour breaking a strike. Beverley McCombs book on their lives and struggle is a fitting and important tribute to events.

Today the area near Ascott is a relatively affluent part of the Cotswolds, near to the wealthy market town of Chipping Norton. In the early 1870s, while there were pockets of great wealth concentrated in the hands of the landowners and farmers, workers experienced a hard life. Seven of the women who were imprisoned were farm workers, eight gloveresses and one a servant. Assembling gloves was a hard, repetative task often done in the family home or by groups of women visiting each other. As McCombs explains, they "sewed the pieces together by hand, earning between fourpence and fivepence a pair. A good gloveress could make up to three pairs in a day".

This pay did not allow luxury. As one contemporary report quoted by McCombs describes, some of the housing conditiond were appalling:

Imagine a narrow place, like a coal cellar, down which you go two or three steps, no flooring except broken stones, no celiing, no grate, rough walls, a bare ladder leading to the one narrow bedroom about six feet wide, containing two double bedsteads for a man his wife and three young children.

It is no surprise that within a couple of months of forming a union, local workers went on strike. By May 1873, the men had been on strike for four months and the strike was causing significant problems for the landowner. This led to him trying to employ two scab workers. The women decided to act and a newspaper reported:

On Sunday 11th of May [the women] were informed that two strange boys were working on Hambridge's farm, from which the Union men had retired. They discussed the matter and consulted together (the greater part of them being related to a family named Moss), and determined to wait upon the boys to represent to them the manner in which they were injuring their own order.

What happened next depends on which side you were on. As McCombs explains:

The two youths... made statements under oath to prove that they were threatened, molested and obscrtucted from entering their work place. The women, also under aoth, denied these claims, though they did say they had spoken to the youths and asked them not to go to work.

Whatever actually took place, and it seems likely that the scabs were encouraged to exagerate events by the landowner, the women were tried and seven women considered leaders were give ten days with hard labour, the remainder seven days with hard labour. Considering that two of the women had babies in arms, this was vicious and cruel sentancing by the two clergy acting as magistrates. They were ignorant of the law and in fact the outrage at the sentences and the riot that took place afterwards caused a brief national scandal, and McCombs suggests, an eventual reform of the law.

The riot was significant and demonstrated the outrage, some 1000 people protested outside the Chipping Norton police station were the women were awaiting transfer to prison. As McCombs says, "The crowd shouted, 'Fetch the women!', 'Stick to the union!', 'Cheers for the women!' and 'Cheers for the union!', along with further threats that they would pull down the police station unless the women were freed." Sadly this latter did not take place and the women were hauled off to hard labour.

McCombs details conditions - which were awful - and the longer time impact of the sentences on the women. Their release, by contrast, was marked by two celebratory events, parades and rallies as the two groups of women came home. In his autobiography Joseph Arch says that the women were given a silk dress in union colours, and £5 each. He also notes that £80 was raised for their support, £5 of which came in pennies - indicating that many poor people gave. McCombs discusses a long standing belief that Queen Victoria herself gave a dress to the women, though it seems unlikely to be true.

McCombs book has its roots in her own investigations of family history, and the book finishes with detailed individual accounts of each women, their family relations (many were related to each other as the newspaper suggested) and what happened to them. Many of the women, like many other agricultural workers in the union movement, emigrated to North America or New Zealand. Some of them had lives cut short by the conditions they had experienced, including in prison. Others seemed to live long and happier lives. Some of them lived into relatively modern times being young when the strike took place. Reading McCombs summary of their subsequent lives, I was struck again by how the experience of struggle is often transformative and life changing. Fanny Honeybone, who was sixteen when she tried to stop the scabs breaking the strike, and was sent to prison for 10 days with hard labour, lived until 1939. She had fourteen children, five of whom died very young and lived her whole life in the local area. In 1928 she remembered the strike very fondly, and her quote stands testament to the struggle and the role of women in these strikes, which is all too often ignored and forgotten:

During the strike... the farmer, had sent for two men to finish his pea hoeing, and the women, including myself, went up the Ascott-under-Wychwood road to stop them. There was something of the idea of fun in what we did - certainly no intention to harm them. I got ten days, second division, in Oxford Gaol. I remember the coaches which met us and the demonstration afterwards in the Town Hall at Chipping Noron. Those were stirring times and it gives me a thrill of pleasure to remember them.

Beverley McCombs short book is a fitting and detailed tribute to these women. It also raises the question about whether there were other such events involving women workers, that have been neglected by the union movement. As she points out, Arch himself believed "Wives must be at home" and there ought to be a family wage paid to their husbands. His union thought that women workers' would drive down men's wages. Luckily this attitude is long gone from the British labour movement, but it was a significant issue in the 1870s and likely undermined the strength of the strikes. Did other women agricultural labourers come out with their men?

The book will be an important source for family historians (I myself found at least one family connection!) and those interested in the history of women's struggle and radicalism in the countryside. You can order it from the Ascott Martyrs' website.

Monday, November 06, 2023

Eleanor Parker - Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon year

This, remarkably original, book is a fascinating study of how Anglo-Saxon people understood and talked about the seasons. Readers will find a very different understanding of the years, the seasons themselves were different, and the language and expectations of the different times of the year reflected a very different society. The nearerst equivalent to autumn was not known for falling leaves and misty mornings, rather it was called "harvest". As Eleanor Parker remarks, this reflected the different nature of an agricultural society, where

a good harvest was essential for sustaining life through the winter months, and bringing in the heavest required a huge amount of hard work, communal labour necessary for everyone's survival... August wasn't holiday time, but the season when many people were doing their harest work of the year.

Thus around harvest/autumn there were a series of important festivals and religious events that were tied to the hope for a good harvest and prayers for bountiful fruits. This was also a special, perhaps magical, time and as Parker says, "poests writing about this season often reflect on what might be the ultimate source of nature's bounty, the invisible power that makes the crops grow."

The reference to poets highlights another important aspect to this book - its focus on literature and poetry, two key sets of sources that give us an understanding of how the Anglo-Saxon people understood their world and its nature. It was as time of transition, when Christianity was replacing older, traditional beliefs, festivals and practices. The Christians understood the importance of tying in their festivals to older activities, few of which we know in detail. But the songs and poetry often retain their links to the earlier beliefs. Here is an old rune poem that Parker quotes, where Gear (which became our "year") refers actually to the "season of growth and harvest".

Gear is a joy to men, when God,
holy King of heaven, causes the earth
to give bright fruits for nobles and the needy.

It is not difficult to read in this Christian poem, allusion and patterns that are much older.

Eleanor Parker's exploration of the Anglo-Sazon era is far more than a series of accounts of how they understood the changing year. It is a discussion of how people understood time and their place in a world that constantly changed, but also cycled. It is rather a lovely book.

Related Reviews

Pryor - Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons
Lacey & Danziger - The Year 1000
Duby - The Age of the Cathedrals: Art & Society 980-1420
Faith - The Moral Economy of the Countryside: Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman England