that serve oppression of one type or another. Saul Newman defines anarchism as ‘fundamentally an unmasking of power’.4 This is similar to Lyotard’s definition of post-structuralism as an ‘incredulity directed against all grand narratives’ and arises from the belief that these are the constructs, or Foucauldian ‘discursive formations’, that allow, among other manifestations of power, the various dominant parties to buttress their position in a state, institution, or other collective of some sort.
In other words, received wisdom – ‘-isms’ like nationalism, communism, or even Catholicism, as well as general beliefs purveyed as icons of truth – are all to be interrogated. A classic example is the phrase ‘Health and Safety’. Two inarguably acceptable conditions but in this phrase they are often employed to enforce what at times are the most asinine of regulations. Anarchists see them as seducing and misleading humankind to acquiesce in inequities and oppression. They are the ingredients of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony; they can be the delusions encouraged, or allowed to persist, that lead to the outrages of history.
Jack White displayed an inherent disposition that corresponded with this kind of mindset. His instincts were those of an anarchist and his actions and judgments were consistent with those ideas long before he identified himself as such. At an early age he adopted Tolstoyan beliefs, and, although he committed many apostasies during his lifetime, he remained basically a man who lived by spiritual principles, as he saw them, to the end. It should also be noted that Tolstoy was himself an anarchist in all but name; such was the reputation of nonsensical bloodshed associated with fin-de-siècle anarchism that even eminent figures such as he were reluctant to be associated with their principles.
From the very beginning of his life, White related incidents of rejecting any form of authority whether it was received wisdom, tradition, or some edict handed down by his elders. This rebelliousness indicated something more than just incorrigibility; there was a consistency and a rationale to his continual questioning. The aptness of the title Misfit for his autobiography (1930) did not arise from this radicalism alone; it also indicated a consciousness of, and maybe a sensitivity to, his own perceived rejection by society. He began with a stance that precociously suggests the postmodern:
I have undertaken to write this book in ‘a perfectly straightforward manner’. I take this to mean to suit the taste of people who believe that the past governs the future but fail to see that the future, much more drastically, governs the past.5
Having declared his willingness to conform, he goes on to blithely ignore this stricture for the remainder of the work. The book is permeated with a bravado that might indicate a traumatic hurt that most adults either come to terms with or develop into a kind of tiresome braggadocio. White was too aware to indulge in the latter and yet reveals an immaturity that bedevilled his relationships, whether with his two wives or the many acquaintances that never seemed to develop into full-blown friendships. For all that, he was a man who stuck to his ideals; not grimly as the cliché would have it, but with a lightness of touch and indeed a humour that very often tempered the radical edges of the policies he pursued. In different circumstances with different opportunities he may have made a far greater mark. Certainly much lesser men than White have occupied much higher echelons in history’s chronicles.
Chapter 1
Beginnings
An Act of Defiance
Doornkop (‘Thorn Hill’), today a suburb of Soweto, was on 28 May 1900 the scene of what became known as the Battle of Johannesburg during the Second South African War, the Boer War. It was one of a series of ridges held by the Boers, and the British generals decided that it should be taken, not by cavalry but by the ‘grunts’, the original cannon fodder, officially known as the infantry. Fourteen rows of these unfortunates, spread across four miles, steadily made their way up the hill under a withering hail of bullets from the Boers. Comparisons have been made with Balaclava and the set-piece battles of that time.
Among the seven battalions were the Gordon Highlanders, and in the midst of these was a young subaltern, James Robert (Jack) White. Although fresh out of Sandhurst, White could clearly see that the Boer had a ready escape route behind the row of ridges they occupied, and while they had targets sufficiently far away to allow escape, they continued to fire. Eighteen of the Highlanders were killed and anything up to 100 wounded – there were at most about 600 of the enemy. Jack and his platoon were in the tenth row, and by the time they got to the top, most of the Boers had cleared off. Having been under fire, possibly for the first time in his career, he still managed with two of his men to be about fifty yards ahead of his line.
As he reached the dugouts that had been occupied by the Boer he spotted a rifle protruding from behind a rock and, quickly grabbing it, apprehended a very frightened youth. As the rest of his men caught up they were all for bayoneting this obviously shell-shocked fifteen-year-old; they believed he had been directly responsible for the death of a number of their comrades. The commanding officer arrived on horseback and immediately ordered him to be shot. White, as he said himself, was overcome with a ‘wave of disgust’ that ‘swamped his discipline’. He turned, pointing his carbine at the officer, and said, ‘If you shoot him, I’ll shoot you.’
If proper procedure had been carried out at that time for this extraordinary act of defiance, Jack White would have been summarily executed. But a combination of good fortune, his forceful personality, and the fact that his father was a field marshal in the same war must have saved him; there is no account of even a reprimand. It does, however, give some insight into the kind of man Jack White was – a consistent supporter of the disadvantaged regardless of the unpopularity or danger to himself.
Origins
The grave of Jack White is to be found in the village of Broughshane, just outside Ballymena. He lies within a few miles of the foot of Slemish, a corruption of Sliabh Mis, the legendary Irish mountain, on whose slopes St Patrick tended sheep and swine. That his final resting place is there is one of those synchronicities of history that hints at grander schemes.
Although only just over 1,400ft and described unflatteringly by geologists as a volcanic plug, it dominates the landscape for miles around. Looking a little like the remnants of a volcano, its steep barren upper reaches contrast dramatically with the well-husbanded farmlands surrounding it. It is a suitable backdrop to finding God, as the founder of Christianity in this island did more than 1,500 years ago. Modern historians do not connect St Patrick with this place; the nearest acknowledgment is that the territory of Miliucc, the petty king who enslaved Patrick, extended to its slopes.
Mythology, however, does not defer to the discipline of history and has a young man escaping bondage from there and subsequently introducing an island to the ‘one true faith’. Or maybe in more mundane terms, delivering Ireland, as it was later called, from the unconscious of prehistory to the modern world. Christianity either coincided with, or was the principal facilitator of, the introduction of writing to the island; the only evidence of the island’s existence up to then, in the outlook of Graeco-Roman consciousness, lay in the glancing references of commentators like Strabo.
Lack of writing is not evidence of primitiveness (in fact a case could be made that this was a conscious abnegation), rather it is an indication of a culture and outlook that contrasted quite substantially with the familiar Euro-centric approach that has established itself over the past couple of millennia. It is fitting, however, that Jack White should be associated with this iconic, and seminal, figure of mythology on the Irish landscape. He was also a representative of alternative perspectives, as Patrick would have been albeit substantially different. He was a sceptic of the status quo who displayed through his actions and writings an empathy with the outsiders and the disadvantaged. This led along the way to charges of incorrigibility and even downright perversity. On the other hand, his conclusion, towards the end of his life, that he was an anarchist corresponds with a philosophy that would not have
