Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Brave Little Sternums by Matt Broomfield
Fly on the Wall Press £10.99 + p&p
Difficult and defiant are two words that come to mind on thinking about this new book of poems from Matt Broomfield. Recently published by Fly on the Wall Press, the collection deserves to be widely read and promoted. For those familiar with what has happened and is happening in Rojava, these poems will undoubtedly deepen their appreciation of what has been achieved there – and at what cost. For those less aware, this work is a stepping-stone to further engagement.
Resistance and rebellion arise all the time, but its enemies are more ruthless than ever. Take the Arab Spring and the huge hope it was born of and inspired. Think of the aftermath of Syrian uprising – about the vicious war directed against the rebels. Or of those who had the temerity to rise up in Egypt, or Libya or Bahrain. In each case the retribution was fierce.
Perhaps this is why Rojava is so important. Who would have given those who live there a chance against NATO’s second biggest army, Turkey. Against ISIS and its brutal mutations, or against Syria’s cruel Assad regime. Not to mention Russia and the United States waiting in the wings. If it’s true that you are known by your enemies then that must say something highly significant about what Rojava stands for.
Feminism, anarchism, democracy …
To give you a sense of what this is aobut I include here the Wikipedia entry for Rojava:
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in north-eastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War. While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state except for the Catalan Parliament. The AANES has widespread support for its universal democratic, sustainable, autonomous pluralist, equal, and feminist policies in dialogues with other parties and organizations. North-eastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians Circassians and Yazidis. Supporters of the region’s administration, state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence …
Rojava is a living example that another world is possible. Ethnic strife is not inevitable, dictatorship is not inevitable, patriarchy is not evitable. There are other ways to live and all credit to the people and political forces in Rojava who have carved out a different way to living based around the practices of real (participatory) democracy.
It is into this world that Matt Broomfield arrived in 2018. Rojava had held back ISIS and then played a key part in eliminating its presence in the north Syria region. But Turkey was only waiting to strike, invading in 2018 and again in 2019. All the time, while fighting these wars of self-preservation against its many enemies, Rojava continued to build a new type of society. The price has been high and if Brave Little Sternums speaks of anything then it is of these losses and the gains that were made. Matt Broomfield summarises the situation at one point:
“The revolution is living, ugly, beautiful, writhing, self-contradictory, hopelessly compromised, and utterly worth fighting for.”
Matt Bloomfield was interviewed by MedyaNews about Brave Little Sternums. Towards the end of the interview he reads and discusses a number of poems from the book.
ghazal: 80km from Shengak City [is at 15 minutes in the MedyaNews podcast.] Using the word heval – Kurdish for comrade – the sweep of this rhythmic poem is broken repeatedly by its jarring declarations. Coffins are carried down the Tel Kocker road/ no matter how heavy, heval/ mothers will reach and wail for the coffins/ no matter how empty, heval.
for Hevrin Khalef [at 20 minutes] I recall reading about the brutal roadside slaying of Hevrin Khalef in 2019. A Kurdish journalist and activist, her car was ambushed by a Turkish army backed paramilitary group. She was dragged from the vehicle and beaten before being murdered. This bleak poem which opens with powerful lines – The temptation is to elide/ normalise or over-indulge/ and not to inhabit – succeeds in personalising this activist’s death, extracting it from those accounts that have appeared online and testifying to her bravery. The truth is not the sum of abrasion but the abrasions attest to the truth.
For Anna Campbell (Helin Qerechox) [at 29.30 minutes] is another powerful poem managing to capture the impossibility of not acting in certain circumstances. Moral courage is everything and of course Anna Campbell had this. She travelled to Rojava and fought with the YPG, losing her life in a missile attack by Turkey in 2019. Her family have fought a long battle to have her body brought home but have (at the time of writing) not been successful. The poem conjures a difficult angst, each section building up to, but never quite reaching its point. As in Above all, we would also/ in our thousands we would also/ believe us, heval/ at any cost we would also
Containing over forty poems, background material on Rojava, some photos and and observations by the author we are indebted to Fly On The Wall Press for publishing this collection. Do cconsidering buying this book – as both the author and the publisher need support in today’s difficult bookmarket. And of course Rojava needs as much attention at it can get. Despite all that’s been achieved it survives on a knife edge today.
Buy the book directly from Fly on the Wall Press here £10.99 + p&p
More Links
Brave Little Sternums, poems from Rojava by Matt Broomfield – Medya News
Journalist Banned From 26 European Countries
Rojava – Revolution Between a Rock and a Hard Place (WSM, Ireland)
Review of Living Anarchism – José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement
Living Anarchism – José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement by Chris Ealham [AK Press] Available here.
This review first published in Ideas and Action (Oct 2017).
On the cover of Living Anarchism, the publishers, AK Press, point out that the anarchist movement in Spain in the lead up to the revolution in 1936-37 was the ‘the largest anti-authoritarian movement’ ever created in the world. It numbered in the hundreds of thousands and resulted from a conscious and deliberate intervention by anarchists in the everyday world of work and community. Anarchists sought to build a new world in the shell of the old and they were surprisingly successful in significant ways. Living Anarchism is testimony to this. Not a history of Spanish anarchism as such, it is nonetheless a window into the life of that movement seen through the life of one its key activist, José Peirats.
So who was José Peirats? The son of labourers from Valencia province, he moved to Barcelona at a young age with his family in search of work and a future. Suffering illness and numerous privations, Peirats eventually found a home in one of the city’s vibrant rationalist schools. However his education was short-lived and at a young age he entered the workforce proper as a brick-maker. Gravitating to the anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), he became a key activist in the L’Hospitalet area of Barcelona. Peirats lived through it all: at the young age of 28 he was in Barcelona as the Spanish Revolution got underway. He witnessed the enormous achievements and hope that the revolution generated and he witnessed, in time, its demise and defeat. In exile at the age of 31 he spent a great deal of the remainder of life documenting the rise of Spain’s anarchist movement, going on the produce The CNT in the Spanish Revolution – an extensive, three volume history of the largest workers’ union in Spain at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In the last period of his life he said,
“I’ve done almost everything in the CNT: I’ve organised strikes, organised workers, spoken in assemblies, meetings, and given conferences, written articles, attended congresses, used pistols, and, some- times, explosives; I’ve been in jail and collected lawsuits, mainly for libelous press articles. I know what it means to be naked and take a beating in a police station. I was the only secretary of the CNT in exile to enter Spain clandestinely when they were still shooting people!”
Living Anarchism is broken into ten sections (if one includes the excellent summation) which can broadly be divided into two parts – the period leading up to the revolution and period after the revolution’s defeat. If the first section of the book is then a celebration of what anarchism was capable of building when its activists put their minds to it, then the second section is, in contrast, the tragedy of defeat at the hands of fascism and what that came to mean.
Exile
Exiled to South America and later France, Peirats struggled like many of his comrades to make sense of the defeat that had befallen the anarchist movement in Spain. Defeat is never easy and the tragedy was compounded by exile and isolation. A movement of Spanish anarchists abroad came into being but it was riven with division and acrimony. Peirats, more than most, understood the dilemma: the past could not be ignored and yet the movement, if it was to survive and rebuild, needed to move on too. It was a delicate and difficult line to walk along.
Peirats was clearly a product of the university of the class struggle and his early years and reputation as a resolute union activist in the cauldron of Barcelona was something that he never departed from. However, another side to the activist was his strong interest in the practice and spirit of anti-authoritarianism. A significant part of his life – perhaps deriving from his own early exposure to the rationalist/ free school movement in Barcelona – involved a commitment to the ‘athenaeum’: essentially self-organised community centres envisaged as ‘a focal point of social ferment’ for the locality around it. These centres hosted a library, debates, music recitals, evening classes and threatre productions. Before and during the revolution, as well as afterwards in exile, it was this activity surrounding the ‘athenaeum’ that Peirats returned to and was involved with again and again.
Although the person who emerges from his book appears exceptional in many respects, Peirats would have been the first to dispute this, it seems. Describing himself at one point as a ‘worker ant’ he believed himself to be very much a part and a product of the CNT. Clearly he was a talented activist, writer and organiser, but there emerges from this biography a man whose dedication to revolutionary change was absolute. By no means without faults – and this is explored in Living Anarchism – Peirats nevertheless had an abiding grasp of the importance and value of anarchist ideas. Given that he had witnessed the highest point of achievement and an avalanche of low points in its aftermath, he remained largely upbeat, understating near the end, ‘I did what I could despite many obstacles’.
Durruti
In terms of Spanish anarchism we hear a great deal about people like Durruti but activists like Jose Peirats, it seems to me, were a lot closer to the soul of Spanish anarchism. For Peirats anarchism was about democracy, education and the class struggle. In contrast Durruti was far more liable to be off taking a pot shot at some bishop or other – a headline grabbing activity but not necessarily as productive as it sounds or looks.
In 2010, the historian Chris Ealham produced what is undoubtedly one of the best social and political histories of anarchism, namely Anarchism and the City – the story of the rise of anarchism in the Catalonia port city of Barcelona. Now with this account of Peirat’s life he had done us a further service. He admits at the outset that ‘there are many aspects of Peirats life that he finds admirable’ and while this must certainly colour this work, it does not distract from what is a clear and concise account of an anarchist activist’s lived life in revolution and defeat.
Matters have moved on hugely since the revolution in Spain in 1936-37 and Peirats as much as anyone saw this in full measure by the time his life came to an end in 1989. However there is a great deal to learn from this book. The Spanish anarchists combined a practice of militant class struggle with a broad visionary belief in human desire and emancipation. Whatever about claims, dreams and aspirations, in the end it takes people to make politics happen: Peirats was clearly one of those who excelled at this task.
A book to read and treasure.
Review: Mentioning The War by Kevin Higgins
Kevin Higgins is a poet from Galway and a long-standing contributor to the independent left publication Red Banner Magazine. A former member of the Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party), he has played no small part in making the world of writing a more accessible and pleasant place to be in this country – not least for those …
This review first published November 2012 in The Irish Anarchist Review 6 (Ireland). Full version here and also on Kevin Doyle Blog here
Book details: Mentioning the War: Essays & Reviews 1999-2011 by Kevin Higgins
(ISBN: 978-1-908836-12-0) Published by Salmon Poetry (April, 2012).
Cover Artwork: © Lisavan | Dreamstime.com
Review: No Global by Robert Allen
No Global is based on Robert Allen and Tara Jones’s Guests Of The Nation (1990). Essentially it is an account of the various environmental clashes that have taken place in Ireland since the mid-70s when the Irish Government’s policy of attracting multinational corporation into Ireland – in particular in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals sector – moved into full swing. In terms of being a record of these many struggles, No Global is a very useful compendium with a lot of first hand information as well as useful analysis. The author was involved in some of the events he addresses and this adds a particular validity to the account.
This review was published in Red and Black Revolution 8 (Ireland, 2008). The full version maybe read here:
Book details: No Global: The People Of Ireland Versus The Multinationals by By Robert Allen. [ISBN: 0-7453-2210-7] Pluto Press, 2004
Review: Constructive Anarchism The Debate On The Platform
“The debate is important still, and lest we forget why, consider, on this the anniversary of 1937 – the year of defeat for the Spanish Revolution – the conclusion of Jose Periats, the anarchist historian aligned with the CNT. In Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution he says: “Anarchism is largely responsible for its own bad reputation in the world. It did not consider the thorny problem of means and ends. In their writing, many anarchists conceived of a miraculous solution to the problems of revolution. We fell easily into this trap in Spain. We believed that once the dog is dead, the rabies is over. We proclaimed a full-blown revolution without worrying about the many complex problems that revolution brings with it”
Published in: Red And Black Revolution 3 (WSM, Ireland)
Review of Ailliliú Fionnuala (Camden Palace, Cork)
Donal O’Kelly after his performance in Ailliliú Fionnuala at Camden Palace, Cork.
I first saw Donal Kelly perform the one-man show Catalpa in the mid-90s. Catalpa is the epic story of six Irish Fenians rescued from prison in Fremantle Prison in Western Australia in the 19th century. Given that the Catalpa rescue involved transportation across continents, Fenianism, Australia, a sea voyage and a prison break, it hardly seemed possible that it could be encapsulated in a one man show. Yet Donal O’Kelly managed all of that. It is no surprise that Catalpa has won many awards and has been performed to acclaim worldwide.
Bat the Father Rabbit The Son was another of O’Kelly’s plays and a character from this – Ambrose Keogh – has now returned as the main figure in Ailliliú Fionnuala. In the years since Bat The Father… Keogh has prospered and is now working as a PR consultant for Shell Oil. Employed in Erris (Co Mayo) he is privy to the underhand activities that Shell is engaging in in its efforts to smother resistance to its grand-scale theft of Ireland’s natural gas resources – located off the Mayo coast. But unfortunately for Ambrose things start to go wrong. As Benbo Productions’ synopsis of the plot explains:
When the Tunnel Boring Machine he named Fionnuala sinks into the bog in Erris Co. Mayo, he is magically confronted by Fionnuala of the Children of Lir. Fionnuala puts a geas on him – he’s bound to tell the truth about Shell’s operations, such as the attack on Willie Corduff in the Shell site at Glengad. During his ordeal, Ambrose meets his primary school classmate, Malachy Downes, an anti-pipeline activist, and echoes from the past resound.
Keogh is forced to confess the details of the sordid and underhand work that is taking place at Erris. The truth comes out but there is also the element of justice (finally!) being meted out to Keogh and (possibly) Shell Oil. The repression of the locals and connivance of the Irish State with what is going on in Mayo is explored. You and I are being robbed and the Irish establishment is in on the deal – sound familiar?
As a work of theatre Ailliliú Fionnuala is powerful and direct. In part this is due to the personalised nature of the one-man show. Donal O’Kelly has honed this form well and appears to be quite at home with the multiple characters and streams of dialogue. His facial expressions, accents and delivery are excellent and we are very easily drawn into this inventive and strange story of Ambrose Keogh’s reckoning with mythical Fionnuala.
Ailliliú Fionnuala is also a dark story about Ireland and where it is at even now. Someone on the night I was present mentioned that this play should get the award for the best political play of the year. Surely it must. Mind, would there be a lot of competition?
Running at about an hour in length, Ailliliú Fionnuala can only do so much. There is plenty more no doubt that could and will be said in time about Shell and its activities in Mayo. Personally I was left wondering again how something like what is happening in Erris can so easily go on under our noses. The heavy handed police work is one side of this but the other is the enourmous giveaway deal that has been cut for Shell’s enjoyment at all our expenses.
An important and poignant aspect (of this connundrum) that is broached in Ailliliú Fionnuala is quiescence in Irish society. Keogh’s confrontation with his old school mate turned anti-Shell activist, Malachy Downes, is the occasion for this. In the years that have passed since they last met Downes has travelled along a different route to Keogh. He was sent to Letterfract for rebellious behavior at school. At Letterfract Industrial School he was abused. Through Downes, Donal O’Kelly acknowledges the mentality prevalent in Irish society that was and is all about ‘letting things be’ or ‘shur isn’t that’s the way things are’. To hear Downe’s story is to be disturbed and reminded of what Ireland was like not so long ago at all. Ailliliú Fionnuala asks if the same sort of societal mentality is sill hard at work today, once again foiling our interests in favour of the powerful and wealthy?
This show performed at the Camden Place on Friday, May 24th.
Related Links
Next performance: Thurs 6th June, Pavilion, Dún Laoghaire (with the film The Pipe and a post-show talk.)
Listen to Donal O Kelly talk on RTE arts show Arena about his show Ailliliú Fionnuala
Doctors for Choice: But What Will Change?
With inquest into the death of Savita Halappanavar concluded and the Irish government on the brink of bringing forth new legislation – a position, recall, forced on it by a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights – it seems timely to remind ourselves of what will NOT change here in Ireland despite all that has happened.
In the video below, Dr Mary Favier, (Doctors for Choice) sets out the following key points about the current situation here in Ireland and what the government legislation proposes NOT to address. [The video was record at the March for Choice held in Cork in March, 2013].
She states:
1) The new proposed legislation will affect no more than 5 to 10 Irish women every year. This is a miniscule number compared to the actual number of women in Ireland who consider the option of a termination in any one year.
2) The new proposed legislation would not have helped Savita and Praveen Halappanavar to overcome the legal obstacles placed in their way and which, in effect, led directly to Savita’s death when she was refused an abortion in Galway last year – see article link below.
3) The proposed legislation will not help any woman who has an unwanted pregnancy as a result of a criminal act such as rape or incest. Such a women will still have to travel outside the Irish state to obtain a termination.
4) The proposed legislation will not help any of the estimated 4000-5000 women who travel out of Ireland each year to have an abortion.
Related Articles
- Laws, not doctors, to blame for Savita Halappanavar death, says expert witness (irishtimes.com)
- Savita Inquest Verdict (Irish Times)
- The midwife who told the truth in the Savita Halappanavar abortion case | Emer O’Toole (guardian.co.uk)
- Legislation by summer (Irish Times.)
See Also
Review of “Mentioning The War: Essays … ” by Kevin Higgins
Mentioning The War: Essays and Reviews (1999-2011) by Kevin Higgins. (published by Salmon Poetry).
[This review first published in the Irish Anarchist Review No. 6 (Oct 2012).]
Kevin Higgins is a poet from Galway and a long-standing contributor to the independent left publication Red Banner Magazine. A former member of the Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party), he has played no small part in making the world of writing a more accessible and pleasant place to be in this country – not least for those who don’t normally find themselves welcome in the hallowed, middle class halls of Literativille. His approach is no accident. Higgins knows that good writing can be found anywhere and is not the preserve of the privileged or the best educated. But importantly too in terms of writing (and poetry in particular) he is committed to high standards. ‘Political poetry’ with little poetry in it, and as well as doggerel in general are two of his bêtes noires.
His poetry should be treasured on the left (but it isn’t of course) in particular because we have so few poets who cherish the streets we wander along. Dave Lordan or Diarmuid O Dalaigh in Cork might appear to fit that role too, but their concerns in the main are with the world outside the left. Higgins in contrast often looks in at where we are and there is much that is valuable and sobering in what he sees.
His poetry I recommend highly but his essays, collected here by Salmon Poetry, are much more of a mixed bag. One problem to be pointed out at the outset is that a fair number of his reviews (mostly attributed to The Galway Advertiser) are simply too short to be of much value. I am all for brevity but with many of these, interesting points are raised only to be left hanging in their entirety at conclusion of said review. A case in point being that of Lorna Siggins’ Once Upon A Time In The West which is strangely equivocal. As I said, it would be interesting to know more about Kevin Higgins thinks about the significant yet tragically defeated protest centred on the Corrib gas fields.
When Kevin does have space to elaborate, he is invariably interesting and informative. He is good at explaining and is always interesting and clear when writing about literature and poetry. This is a real asset and rarer than you might imagine. Not surprisingly his way with words is one of his strongest suits. Generally he is even handed (see his review of Michael D’s last collection of poems) but he can be ruthless too as with his hilarious review of Ruairí Quinn’s Straight Left – A Journey Into Politics. Such an opus was bound to provoke Kevin Higgin’s ire and it sure does. Among many fitting observations about the Labour Party’s ultimate clown is the comment that Quinn “as a writer is dull beyond belief”.
Since this collection has been review elsewhere by general left commentators I will focus for the remainder on what anarchists and libertarian socialists might find interesting. On the positive side Kevin is one of the few socialists who is prepared to face up to the authoritarianism (some call it the Leninist or Stalinist mindset) that is, even now, a significant feature of the serious left, both here and abroad. This is a big plus for me. The disaster that befell us all when the idea of socialism became inextricably linked to censorship, the Gulags, show trials, self-criticism sessions and so on and so forth (stand up Lenin, Trotsky and the others), is too easily glossed over by many within the marxist left. Some don’t see the huge problem even now or imagine it to be some past aberration or some plot by the CIA to denigrate our ultimate goal. Not Kevin Higgins, I feel. He knows, as many of us do to our cost (I came across it myself only recently in the Anti-Household Tax Campaign) that the toxic world of authoritarian left politics is still very real and debilitating.
One the negative side, Kevin is just a bit too prone to lampooning the left, in contexts that are often not clear. Some of this, I am guessing, is scar tissue from his Militant Tendency days, but often the swipes are too easy and undiscerning. They are to be found here and there in this collection but an example is his observation about a speaker at a left meeting who was ‘earnest but dead-in-the-mouth’. Of course this could well be true (and who hasn’t been at such meetings?) but the problem is that there’s loads of mundanity in trying to organise even the smallest of protests. Our resources are almost pitiful when compared against those ranged against us, and I just wonder, in places, where the empathy is for the countless individuals who have been the foot-soldiers of important (and un-newsworthy) protests – against deportations, against the household tax, for choice around pregnancy termination?
Anarchists will find much of interest in this collection but there will be dissatisfaction too. Like many from within the Marxist tradition, Kevin Higgins shows much insight into the problems of the authoritarian left. But more searching scrutiny is not developed here.
Review of “The Guards: A Year Behind the Scenes with the Men and Women of An Garda Síochána”
No pictures of beaten prisoners
No pictures of Rossport dust-up
No pictures of Shannon Warport
No pictures of Dublin Lock-down
‘Misfit’, a new play about Captain Jack White
Review of ‘Misfit’, a new play about the life of Captain Jack White. Written and performed by Myles Horgan. At the Cork Arts Theatre, 16th -18th June 2010
I’ve had an interest in Captain Jack White since reading an article about him by Alan McSimoin in Workers Solidarity many years ago. Alan’s article pointed out how White had been ‘left out’ of the official narrative of Irish history despite his role as co-founder of the Irish Citizen Army. Later on White gravitated towards anarchism – an allegiance that also appears to have done him no favours. (In official circles that is.)
In this context, Myles Horgan’s new one man show about White entitled ‘Misfit’ was a must see, although I almost missed it but for a late tip-off from a comrade over in Solidarity Books. Still I got to the Cork Arts Theatre last Friday just in time for the final lunch time show. It was well worth seeing. At €10 entry price though – pricey.
‘Misfit’ is a short one act, one man show – a biopic that for the most part is faithful to the account that White gives about his life in his autobiography of the same name. It begins with White telling of his arrival in Barcelona in late 1936. From there the action moves back in time with White retelling the story of his life. The material used here is well written, well presented and well acted. We hear of White’s experiences in the Boer War, about his troubled relationship with Mercedes Moseley, and then of his involvement in the fight for Home Rule. From his political baptism of fire in Antrim, White went to Dublin where he became involved in the 1913 Lockout and, from then on, with the Irish radical left. We hear about White’s role in the Irish Citizen Army and then about White’s arrest and incarceration in Pentonville prison just at the time that Casement was hanged. The play finally returns to Spain and to White’s brief but interesting comments about the situation there. It ends with a declaration by White that any true revolution must involve the inner transformation of the human person above all else.
Myles Horgan makes a fine hand of playing White. Dressed in a light grey suit and wearing the signature wide-brimmed hat that White was photographed in, he cuts the sort of swaggering figure that White may well have been. He also makes a good hand of White’s upper crust accent and this alone is enough to make one wonder what his contemporaries made of him. In a conversation with White’s son, Derek, a number of years back, it was pointed out to me that Jack White had a pampered and spoiled upbringing and that this facet was an aspect of this life until the day he died. Whether this is true or not, there is no denying that White was of privileged stock and in the movement of the day this undoubtedly raised more than a few eyebrows and hackles. Indeed if memory serves me right Larkin fell out with White about such matters since Larkin was not reticent in giving his opinions about White privileged background.
However while very welcomed, this play has shortcomings too, not least its focus on White as an the individualist and as an eccentric. It is true that this is how White’s portrayed himself in Misfit , which was published in early 1920. However Misfit only accounts for a part of White’s life. It was also written in the context of White trying to explain himself to the Anglo-Irish and British establishment that he had rejected. In other words those parts of White’s life that are most noteworthy now: his prominent role in opposing Loyalism and British imperialism; his work to help the Spanish Revolution and his important opposition to Stalinism don’t really figure in this biopic. This is a real pity as White’s views on the need to get rid of capitalism and replace it with a society more befitting human needs have real contemporary resonance and relevance.
That said this play is to be welcomed. It was also enjoyable and interesting to see. Hopefully it will see further on stage exposure and make a return visit at some stage.
Kevin Doyle Blog 