Hunting the Wren

The Wren  is considered a "most sacred bird" and called the 'King of the Birds'  and Drui-en or Druid bird in Irish Gaelic. In Welsh the word Dryw means both druid and wren In Celtic lore she symbolised the year that was past. She is known to sing throughout winter, and is thus a symbol of hope and rebirth. It was said that capturing the bird alive would herald in a new and prosperous year. As the king of the birds the wren occupied a prominent position in the druidic pagan religion. Sailors and fishermen believed that those who possessed a wren feather would never be shipwrecked.

A Manx folk-tale recounts how it is the wren became king. All of the birds had gathered together to decide, once and for all, who would be first among them.  In turn, each bird came forward to state what gifts they had which set them above all of the rest.  Although the wren had proven her cleverness to the approval of the gathering, the eagle suggested that the bird who could fly the highest should be the one to rule over them all. The gathered birds agreed, and the eagle flew up as high as he could, far surpassing all of the rest. He called out to the assembly, “’I am King of the Birds, King of the Birds!” – but he didn’t realize that the wren had hidden herself among his feathers, and as he made his proclamation, she jumped up to the top of his head and cried out, “’Not so, not so, I’m above him, I’m above him!” And thus, through her cleverness, the wren became king of the birds.

Another story tells us that St Stephen was hiding in a bush from his enemies, only for his hiding to be revealed by the chattering of a wren. Another maintains that in the 700s during the Viking troubles, when Irish warriors crept up on the Danes to attack, a little wren beat out a warning by picking crumbs from the drum held by a sleeping Viking. And lastly, there was a fairy woman called Cliona was in the habit of luring local men to a watery grave. She had the power to turn herself into, you’ve guessed it, a wren.

The feast of St. Stephen, who was the first Christian martyr, is celebrated on December 26th. Connecting the Wren Boys ritual (Lá an Dreoilín) as the day when the traitor wren by simply chirping away betrayed St. Stephen is a good example of how Ireland’s pagan traditions were merged with Christianity.

The Wren.and what it symbolised therefore became a target by Christian believers as part of their purge of 'pagan' traditions. During Yule, the bird was hunted and killed in it's thousands until finally being banned in 1830. The wren’s connection with royalty is important when considering some of the theories surrounding the purpose of the Wren Hunt. In his classic work, The Golden Bough, Frazer talks about the hunting of the wren along with several examples of similar ritual behavior from other cultures around the world. He writes:

The worshipful animal is killed with special solemnity once a year; and before or immediately after death he is promenaded from door to door, that each of his worshipers may receive a portion of the divine virtues that are supposed to emanate from the dead or dying god. Religious processings of this sort must have had a great place in the ritual of European peoples in prehistoric times, if we may judge from the numerous traces of them which have survived in folk custom.

It may be that the wren stood as proxy for an ancient tradition where the annual king would be sacrificed at year’s end to ensure the abundance of the crops and animals in the year to come.

In Wales, the custom of ‘Hunting the Wren’ usually took place between the 6th and 12th of January. It all sounded  rather cruel, where basically the tiny bird is captured, killed and tied to a pole. Local musicians and dancers would then dress in garish disguises and go house to house collecting money, food and drink for a party. Woe betide the house that did not donate to the cause – the wren could be buried outside their door which would bring 12 months of bad luck!

In Pembrokeshire, it was called ‘Twelfth-tide’ and the wren's cage was in the form of a wooden cage adorned with ribbons.

What is interesting about the wren hunt is that it is an example of a ritual which countermands the usual order of things. Wrens, if not considered a sacred bird, from medieval times onward were at the very least an honored and protected species. It was considered bad luck to harm a wren or disturb its nest, and this notion is attested to in folk sayings such as:

Y neb a dorro nyth y dryw

Ni chaiff iechayd yn ei fyw

Whoever robs the wren’s nest shall

Never have wealth in his life

This protected status may further bolster the idea of the wren as a sacrifice, and the exchange of its life during the dark time of the year was a powerful offering indeed to whatever forces decided how lucky or abundant the new year would be. In  these colder nights. the Wren. king of birds gets bolder more visible as  the undergrowth where it likes to forage loses it's foliage Listen out for it's  melodic song. and celebrate it's beauty.Wherever they may be, allow them to spread cheer and hope.

 

"He who shall hurt the little wren

  Shall never be belov'd by men." - William Blake Auguries of Innocence

The ancient tradition of Wassailing

 

The ancient tradition of wassailing is a custom that has its roots in the eighth century and the celebrations generally take place on the Twelfth Night, 5th January, however the more traditional still insist in celebrating it on ‘Old Twelvey’, or the 17th January, the correct date; that is before the introduction of the Gregorian calender messed things up in 1752.

Wassailing harks back to pre-Christian times when rural communities had no knowledge of weather systems, climate patterns or fruit biennialism. Instead, their approach to ensuring a bountiful harvest in the forthcoming autumn was to appeal to the apple gods and goddesses, ward evil spirits from the orchards and attract benevolent insects and birds to the trees.

There are two distinct variations of wassailing. One involves groups of merrymakers going from one house to another, wassail bowl in hand, singing traditional songs and generally spreading fun and good wishes to their neightbors. The other form of wassailing is generally practiced in the countryside, particularly in fruit growing regions, where it is the trees that are blessed.

The celebrations vary from region to region, but generally involves the assembled group of revellers, comprising the farmers, farm workers and general villagers, in a noisy procession descending on orchards to sing to the trees. This was to 'wake them up' so they would bear well in the coming year.There is also an English folklore spirit called the Apple Tree Man who is honored during the Wassailing. The Apple Tree Man is the name for the oldest tree in the orchard and it is believed that the fertility of the orchard as a whole derives from this tree spirit. Extra attention is given to the eldest tree in the orchard and people may honor the spirit by pouring cider into the roots. Also the wassail queen, king or local benefactor places a slice of toast soaked in cider in the fork of a branch of the tree to attract good spirits.

It’s not just good spirits that are the focus of wassailers. As well as inviting good spirits in, bad spirits must be driven out. People drive the evil spirits out by banging pots and pans, or possibly morris dancing. After removing evil spirits from the tree, the tree is given a drink of mulled cider. If the tree isn’t too thirsty, then the remaining cider is drunk by the wassailers. If the cider is good enough, more dancing happens. As part of this celebration, they also poured wine and cider on the ground to encourage fertility in the crops.

As with all modern folklore traditions we may never know their true origins, but I think it’s pretty clear that this practice of wassailing the orchards taps into ancient Pagan practices and beliefs.

In England, some of traditional secular wassailing songs were performed back as early as the days of King Henry VIII (1491-1547).

The word “wassail” comes from the Anglo-Saxon phrase “waes hael”, which means “good health” Not by chance, groups would go out wassailing on cold evenings, and when they approached a door would be offered a mug of warm cider or ale.Traditionally after someone would say Wassail, the common response is “Drinc hæl” which means “drink and be healthy.”

Originally, the wassail was in fact a drink made of mulled ale, curdled cream, roasted apples, eggs, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and sugar, and it was served from huge bowls, often made of silver or pewter. Wassailing was traditionally done on New Year’s Eve and Twelfth Night, but some rich people drank Wassail on all the 12 days of Christmas.

 Wassail first appears in English literature in the Pagan poem Beowulf in the lines:
 

The rider sleepeth,
the hero, far-hidden; no harp resounds,
in the courts no wassail, as once was heard.

The word Wassail also makes an appearance as a toast that occurred right before the Saxon battle of Hastings began in 1066 CE. An Anglo-Norman poet wrote that in the last feast before the battle he heard a cry of:
 

Rejoice and wassail
Pass the bottle and drink healthy
Drink backwards and drink to me
Drink half and drink empty.

But it goes deeper than this because Wassiling is not just a phrase, greeting, or a toast - it’s lots of different things. While the word Wassail can refer to the act of toasting, it can also represent the beverage that was drunk during the toast. 

Today, Wassail is a popular holiday beverage and there are many different recipes for this drink. One of the oldest versions of Wassail is called Renwein, which is a spiced wine that resembled the ancient Roman drink called hypocras. The drink survived into the middle ages and became a popular wassailing drink among the wealthy.

Another version of the Wassail drink, called “Lambs Wool” is mentioned by none other than Shakespere himself during his play A Midsummer Night's Dream. This version of Wassil involved a dark beer that was whipped to create a frothy texture and then crab apples were floated in the drink. Shakespeare describes this version of Wassail in the lines:
 

Sometimes lurk I in the gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And down her withered dewlap pours the ale.

One legend about how Wassailing was created, says that a beautiful Saxon maiden named Rowena presented Prince Vortigen with a bowl of wine while toasting him with the words “waes hael”.

In any case, over the centuries, a great deal of ceremony developed around the custom of drinking wassail.

Traditionally Wassail was drunk in a bowl not a glass, the bowl was carried into a room with a great fanfare, a traditional carol about the drink was sung, and finally, the steaming hot beverage was served.and often people would dip their bread in the bowl or float toasted bread on top of the drink - this is where the word “toast” as a drinking term comes from. Beyond just being a drink and phrase, wassail is also a verb and “to go wassailing” is a tradition that likely has some fascinating Pagan origins, especially in the western region of England.

One of the most popular Wassailing Carols went like this:

A Wassail Bowl
Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wassailing,
So fair to be seen:

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too,
And God bless you and send you,
A happy New Year,
And God send you,
A happy new year.

 By the Middle Ages, the practice of sharing a giant bowl of wassail—that is, the practice of wassailing—evolved from a holiday celebration to a form of boozy begging. “At Christmastide, the poor expected privileges denied them at other times, including the right to enter the homes of the wealthy, who feasted them from the best of their provisions,” Robert Doares, an instructor at Colonial Williamsburg, explained. The poor would either ask to sip from their rich neighbor’s wassailing bowl or would bring their own bowl, asking for it to be filled. According to Doares, “At these gatherings, the bands of roving wassailers often performed songs for the master while drinking his beer, toasting him, his family, his livestock, wishing continued health and wealth.” The original  of Here We Come a-Wassailing are quite upfront about what’s going on:

 We are not daily beggars That beg from door to door But we are neighbours’ children Whom you have seen before.

Not all rich folk were happy to see wassailers at their doorstep. One 17th century polymath, John Selden, complained about

 "Wenches … by their Wassels at New-years-tide ... present you with a Cup, and you must drink of the slabby stuff; but the meaning is, you must give them Moneys.”

Misers like Selden may have had a point: Since alcohol was involved, wassailers often got too rowdy.  

 

“Drunken bands of men and boys would take to the streets at night, noise-making, shooting rifles, making ‘rough music,’ and even destroying property as they went among the wealthy urban homes,”  

 

wrote Hannah Harvester, formerly the staff folklorist at Traditional Arts in Upstate New York.

 

Then came the efforts to tame Christmas. In 17th century England, the Puritans looked down upon the revelry and merry-making associated with Christmas. They felt Christmas should be a time for solemn contemplation and nowhere did God call upon the people to celebrate the birth of Christ with extravagant feasting, drinking, and singing. To them, this behavior was not just inappropriate, it was sinful.

Led by Oliver Cromwell, in 1644 and 1647, Parliament effectively banned Christmas, a period lasting for about 20 years. During this time, people continued to celebrate, singing and feasting secretly. It was not until the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, that the laws became null and people were allowed again to openly celebrate.

By the 19th century, wassailing would mellow. Beginning in the 1830s, music publishers started releasing the first commercial Christmas carols, uncorking classics such as God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and The First Noel. Among them were dozens of wassailing songs, including the circa 1850 Here We Come a-Wassailing and dozens of others that are now, sadly, forgotten. As the custom of caroling became the dominant door-to-door pastime, alcohol-fueled begging dwindled.

The drunken band of rabble-rousers banging on doors begging for figgy pudding was now simply spreading good cheer door-to-door in the village while singing Christmas carols with a punch bowl of sweetened, spiced ale. but Caroling is an apt reminder that the Christmas traditions of modern times have roots that reach back centuries into the past. 

Wassail evolved from a hot punch-like beverage of mulled wine spiced with nutmeg and raisins to keep the winter chill at bay for loitering merrymakers to its modern Christmas cousin, the cider concoction containing wine, bobbed apples, and sliced oranges and in some households, to an even richer, cream-based punch containing sherry, crusts of bread or sweet cakes, and even eggs. As the punch matured, mixtures of madeira, sherry, or brandy began to appear alongside the the traditional ale or cider, becoming a modern, more complex split based punch. When settlers began arriving in America, “wassailing” had become nothing more than a celebratory gathering at home with friends during Christmas with a cider-based punch spiked with rum. An ocean now separated the old and new.

The folk singer Phil Tanner recorded Gower Wassail for a 78rpm record in November 1936 in London (matrix CA16053-1; Columbia FB1569). Tanner lived on the Gower Peninsular in South Wales where some of the people had originally come from Somerset in England. Many very old songs survived there because of the isolation of the community, similar in a way to the Appalachian music.

The Watersons with Mike Waterson in lead sang this song as Wassail Song on their 1965 LP Frost and Fire.A.L. Lloyd noted in the Watersons's original album:

 

We end as we begin, with a wassail song, sung from house to house at mid-winter, for luck. The wassailers, perhaps five or six of them, carried a wooden bowl decorated with holly and ivy. in which to collect money or bread and cheese or beer, in return for the good luck wishes conveyed by their song. Sometimes they carried a be-ribboned elder bough as an emblem of their standing as luck-bringers. Many wassail songs indicate that in the past the reception of the luck-visitors was a ceremonious affair, with the person who gave them entry dressed in her best, wearing a silver pin or carrying a golden mace. The version here, led by Michael Waterson, is one familiar in the West country and extending into the Gower Peninsula of Wales. It was one of the favourite tunes of the fine old Gower singer, Phil Tanner.

 

Wassailing may not be as popular as it  once was nevertheless in some parts of England, such as Somerset and Sussex where apples are grown especially for cider, Wassailing still today takes place on Twelfth Night or sometimes New Year’s Eve or even Christmas Eve. People go into apple orchards and then sing songs, make loud noises and dance around to scare of any evil spirits and also to wake up the trees so they will give a good crop.

It’s also a common practice to place toast which has been soaked in beer into the bows of the trees to feed and thank the trees for giving apples.

In parts of South Wales in the United Kingdom, there is the tradition of the “Mari Lwyd” wassailing horse, but this is another story https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-tradition-of-mari-llwyd-y-fari-lwyd.html. Other ancient wassailing traditions are also practiced each year in London where the Bankside Mummers and the Holly Man will ‘bring in the green’ and waes hael the people and the River Thames.

Wassail remains an important  way to connect with the past and bring it to life. It’s a way to celebrate community, culture, and your connection to nature. And for Pagans it has even more importance because it helps us tap into  rich ancient traditions and beliefs. When you say “Wassail” you’re honoring pagan-inspired literary works such as Beowulf. You’re celebrating the apple harvest and the ancient spirits that live in the orchards. And you’re honoring a tradition  that goes all the way back to the Roman solstice celebration known as Saturnalia. It certainly brings me a warm feeling.

Wassail mostly ia a salutatory celebration of a long year as you gather with those you cherish and raise a glass of good cheer to toast to a healthy, happy new year and enduring friendships. For wassail is, first and foremost, a salute.So,in light of thar. “Wassail! Drink hail!”

 

 The Watersons - Wassail Song

 

C.L.R. James : Revolutionary Socialist Historian & Thinker ( 4/1/1901 - 31/5/1989) 4 Jan 1901

 

Cyril Lionel Robert James,legendary anti-colonial activist, novelist,  socialist historian, revolutionary thinker, journalist and cricket aficionado, universally known simply as ‘CLR’ was born on the fourth of January 1901, in a small town called Tunapuna, 8 miles along the road from Port of Spain,  the largest city of Trinidad and Tobago then a colony of the British Crown. CLR’s father was a teacher, and his mother a habitual reader who helped to foster her son’s passion for literature. His strict upbringing made sure that CLR won an exhibition to enable him, at the age of nine, to attend Queen’s Royal College, the leading school on the island. 

 James, as a boy growing up in a small colonial society.considered  himself as a black Englishman. He absorbed everything  that European civilization offered to him. He  immersed himself in its history and literature, in its classical foundations, in its art and music, but st the same time he rebelled against his formal schooling, and the authority of Queen's Royal College,

Although he might have been an outstanding scholar CLR, having succumbed to the temptations that the game of  cricket offered, did not achieve all he might have at school. He was a good cricketer, a useful opening bowler and a competent batsman, although he never appeared at First Class level,  he developed a encyclopedic knowledge of the games history and sent as much time on the playing field as possible.

The island had several cricket clubs and membership was restricted based on colour, ethnicity and status. One was reserved for the wealthy whites, another for the impoverished blacks, one for the Asian middle-class, another for their black counterparts, one for the Catholics and finally another for the local police force. This system of division jarred with the  edicts of fair play that James had grown to embrace, and these brushes of white racism and prejudice struck James as a violation of the best qualities of English culture: It  "Just wasn't cricket,!!

 CLR’s first career was as a teacher, for a time at his alma mater where, amongst others, he taught the future Test cricketers Victor and Jeffrey Stollmeyer, and the man who would later lead Trinidad to independence, Eric Williams. During the 1920s CLR pursued his interest in cricket, and became a close friend of the great all-rounder Learie Constantine. He also did some writing in the press, and developed his interest in Marxism and his support for Andre Cipriani, a French Creole who built a strong labour movement in Trinidad. 

 Aside from his growing local reputation as a cricket reporter, James had begun, during the 1920s, to write fiction. It was in the style of the novels and short stories of the metropolitan writers, and yet its subject matter, barrackyard life, was new and authentically Caribbean. James was drawn to the vitality of backstreet life, particularly to the independence and resourcefulness of its women. It became the creative source for his first published pieces. La Divina Pastora (1927) and Triumph (1929) establish James’s potential as a novelist. Moreover they reveal the foundation of James’s imaginative skill in his close observation of the raw material of human life. This closeness to the lives of ordinary men and women was something James consciously developed; but he never shook off his sense of being an outsider, of looking on rather than being a participant in the vibrancy of the barrackyard communities.

James married his first wife, Juanita Young, in Trinidad in 1929, but his move three years later when he was 31 to Britain with the intention of becoming a novelist  led to their estrangement.

Learie Constantine, by now one of the world’s best cricketers, invited CLR to join him in Nelson where he was a huge star in the Lancashire League. Part of the reasoning behind the move was to assist CLR to assist Constantine with writing his autobiography. When he arrived CLR had with him the initial manuscripts of two books, the first was the autobiography which, as Cricket and I, appeared in Constantine’s name in 1933. The other book was a biography of Cipriani. 

Having arrived in Nelson Constantine introduced CLR to Neville Cardus. Cardus was shown a piece written by CLR after catching sight of the then 59 year old Sydney Barnes in a Lancashire League match. Much impressed Cardus made sure the piece appeared in the Manchester Guardian in September of 1932, and CLR was taken on to the newspaper’s staff. 

 His job as a cricket reporter on the Manchester Guardian increased his public profile, helping him, at first, to publicise the case for West Indian independence;he published The Case for West Indian Self-Government in 1933, but soon James was swimming in much stronger political currents. His experience of living in Lancashire had exposed him to the industrial militancy of working people. It was also during this time that James began to study seriously the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky; and the response of his Nelson friends to his developing political ideas acted as a useful reminder of the deeply rooted radicalism in the lives of ordinary men and women. He was made aware, too, of the constant conflict between their pragmatic political sense and developed perspective on the world and the positions taken by their so-called leaders. This division marked James deeply, establishing a creative tension in his own political work for the rest of his life.

James’s move to London in 1933 marked the beginning of his career as a leading figure in the Trrotskyist movement, ferocious in  denouncing Stalin's crimes, and James and his fellow Trotskyites remained opposed to Stalinism and offered virulent critiques of the system throughout the 1930s. 

In London, he was invited to join the Friends of India Society and to lecture on any subject connected with the West Indies at the Indian Students’ Central Association. James also attended several meetings of the India League. He joined the League of Coloured  People and wrote for their journal The  Keys. He associated with other black anti-colonialists of the time, such as George Padmore,, Amy Ashwood Garvey and Ras Makonnen. As a Trotskyist, James attracted the attention of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. A 1937 Special Branch report shows that James was a regular visitor to Balkrishna Gupta, an Indian Trotskyist who was reportedly linked to Nehrhu. In 1938, James was living with Ajit Mookerjie Ajit Roy), a Trotskyist law student at LSE and friend of Gupta, on Boundary Road, London. James and Mookerjee formed the Marxist Group in 1935 and later the Revolutionary Socialist League. 

Thnoughout this time, James became increasingly conscious of black struggles around th world. When the Italian gascists invaded Ethiopia in 1935, he helped organise the International African Friends of Ethiopia,. The Ethiiopian cisis of 1935 was a turning point,  as James was forced to confront the equivocation of the British labour movement, His essay Abyssynnia and the Imperialists (1936) was an early acknowledgment  of  the British labour movement in the face of imperialist aggression in Africas and African descent in the struggle for freedom.

James would go  on  to draw upon his extensive historical research into the 1791 San Domingo slave revolution. led by Toussaint L’Ouverture raised very concretely the question James was seeking to address in his revolutionary politics – not just the nature and course of revolution itself, the changing relationship between leaders and the people; but the dynamic of the struggles situated at the peripheries and those located in the centre.  In 1936 he decided to produce a play, Toussaint L’Ouverture, from his drafted manuscript, casting Paul Robeson in the title role. It was a magnificent part for Robeson, given the severe limits he found as a black man seeking dramatic roles; but there were other political considerations which lay behind James’s decision to stage the play at London’s Westminster Theatre. It was planned as an intervention in the debates surrounding the Ethiopian crisis

James presented to his audience a virtually forgotten example from the past – of slaves, uneducated and yet organised by the mechanism of plantation production itself, who, in the wake of the French revolution, rose against their masters and succeeded not only in winning their freedom; but, in going on to defeat the might of three colonial powers, secured their victory through independence. At the centre of this outstanding struggle in revolutionary history was the figure of Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was the natural focus for a dramatic account of these tumultuous events; and James’s play focused upon his rise and fall as leader of the slaves. Drama was a form for which James had a particular feel. His lifelong interest in Shakespeare was based on the dramatic quality of the work; and James recognised that theatre provided the arena in which to explore “political” ideas as refracted through human character. It was through the juxtaposition of personality and events that James sought to highlight some of the broader historical and political themes raised by the San Domingo revolution. He hoped to make his audience aware that the colonial populations were not dependent upon leadership from Europe in their struggle for freedom, that they already had a revolutionary tradition of their own. 

It  would be a very productive  period for James, In addition to his cricjkt  reporting and political organiising, James began to produce books at a remarkable pace. In 1936 he published Minty Ally. about life in the slums of Trinidad. Then  came World Revolution, am analysis of the Third International and a scathing account of Communist policy under Stalin. And during 1938 , while working with Padmore to launch the journal  International African Opinion , h finished his masterpiece , The Black Jacobins that combined Marxist  ananalysis with a novelists talent and a detailed knowledge to create a mostly critical  portrayal of  L'Oubertture's role in the San Domingo revolt. James revealed gow the French and Haitan revolutions interaxted abd predicted that thee would be similar upriaings i Africa during the years to come. A book that helped transform the writing of history – and history itself. Decades before historians such as Christopher Hill and EP Thompson began producing ‘history from below’, James told of how the slaves of Haiti had not been passive victims of their oppression but active agents in their own emancipation. In telling that story, he inspired a new generation of Toussaint L’Ouvertures, leaders of the new anti-colonial struggles.

Not long adter that book appeared James  was invited to tour the United States by the Socialist Workers' Party to support the cause of Black workers. As he tavelled throughout the country, audiecnces  black and white , crowded to hear him. James could speak for hours without notes, quoting facts and documets from memory . Listeners sat enraptured by his knowledge and skill.  

At a meeting in Califorinia in the spring of 1939,  he. met his second wife Constance Webb, an American model, actress and author, He decided to extend his visit, 

In April 1939 he  went to meet LeonTrotsky, in Coyoacán in Mexico , in preparation for this, he submitted “Preliminary Notes on the Negro Question”suggesting in these that the SWP should help in “the organisation of a Negro movement” to fight for civil and political rights and the opening of those trade unions that still discriminated against back workers. They discussed the conditions for the Socialist Workers Party launching a revolutionary organization for Black workers in the United States . Trotsky and James conducted a series of minuted conversations which together were to form the basis of the revolutionary Fourth International’s policies on the black question and the forms of organisation it required to be a pioneer of black liberation. Trotsky agreed with James’ suggestion of an independent black organisation in principle, but questioned whether it could be a mass movement in existing conditions. He even suggested that if other parties formed such a movement, Trotskyists might enter it as a faction.  James commented in a letter that Trotsky “is the keenest of the keen on the Negro question” and that “He agreed almost entirely with my memo on the Negro question”.

Unfortunately, these positive developments were cut short. The Trotskyist movement was just about to undergo a damaging split over the Russian Question: what was the class character of Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship in the USSR? Could it still be described as a degenerate workers’ state as Trotsky insisted, that is, a state with post capitalist planned property but a bureaucracy that had politically expropriated the working class? Major leaders of the SWP, Max Shachtman and James Burnham, developed the view that it was a new form of class society, bureaucratic collectivism. James went with them in the split of 1940 though he was to return to the SWP after the second world war, albeit as a proponent with Raya Dunayevskaya of their own  theory of “state capitalism” 

James and Webb married in 1946  and their son , C,L,R Jr , familiarly known as Nobbie was born in 1946,However in time James's activities won the attention of the FBI. Declared a subversive and  undesirable alien, Jame was arrested in 1953 at the time of the McCarthy and jailed for several weeks on Ellis Island. As a result the couple were forced to seperate, hr was subsequently deported, while Webb remained in New York. 

He returned to England for a bit  and began to report on cricket for the Manchester Guardian once more marrying Selma Weinstein in 1955,  who he  remained with until 1980. Then in 1958 at which point he was invited by his former pupil Eric Williams to return to Trinidad as independence beckoned. The job he took was a opportunity to influence events as editor of  the political newspaper The Nation. 

After leaving  The Nation, having fallen out with Williams on questions of the creation of a federation in the West Indies and a US Naval Base in Trinidad. He returned to London in 1962.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s CLR moved between the UK, the US and Caribbean and also spent time in Africa where he was involved in independence movements that swept through that region as well as the Caribbean. As a West Indian deeply-infused with Western culture, he sought to carve out a space of independence while still maintaining his love for what he saw as a series of cross-national ideals.

In 1963 he would publish Beyond a Boundary, a memoir and social commentary, that explored the place of cricket in West Indian and British society and its role in empire, family, masculinity, race, class, national culture, colonization, and decolonization.  The work is widely viewed by critics as one of the best sports books ever written.

As the political climate eased in the 1960's, U.S, authorities, allowed him back into the country to teach. Throughout the 1970's, he lectured on numerous campuses, and for several years he was a professor at the University of the District of Columbia (then called Federal City College). He lectured widely and wrote extensively on a diverse array of topic ranging  from  Black liberation to contemporary philosophy, culture, politics, radicalism, and revolution, and even touched on the anti colonial potential of cricket. 

Revolutionary though he might be, James always remained something of a Victorian gentleman, But however repectable he was in his personal manners, he remained focussed on the creative and disruptive forces st the bottom of society,of society.

"Ordinary working people in factories, mines, fields and offices ," he once wrote. " are rebellling every day in ways of their ow invention...Always the aim is to retin contol over their conditions of life and their relations, with one another. Their strivings have few chroniclers."

James returned to this theme in countless articles and lectures, and many of his books published over the last decades of his life were collections of such work. His approach to the questions of revolutionary politics acquired a distinctive stamp through his attempt to integrate the struggles of the colonial areas into the European revolutionary tradition. 

After  returning to live in Britain, a group of admirers, mostly young and black, gathered around him, heralding him as a sage.In 1981 CLR turned 80 and was invited  by the  London by the Race Today Collective to make a short series of speeches. It was then that he decided to relocate to London, and he rented a small one bedroom flat above the Race Today Collective offices in Brixton. He wrote for the organisation’s journal. The man who The Times dubbed the Black Plato was 88 when he died in Brixton  on the 31st of May 1989.

During his  last years James  had often reflected  upon his life's course, riding the gentle wave of academic fame thrown up for him by the storms of Black power, and surrounding himself with eager young associates. Although his strength had been slowly slipping away, he could in conversation often startle his visitors with the brilliance of his insight, his grasp of the details of history. and with the accuracy of his analysis of contemporary events. He remained a revolutionary to the core, 

His body was returned for burial in Trinidad, the island of his birth. His tombstone is designed as a book, opened to a page from Beyond a  Boundary:

 "Times would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and the relations of classes had to change, before I discovered that it is not the quality of goods and utility which matters, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going, and the rate at which you are getting there.”

 His death coincided with the explosion of popular forces across China and eastern Europe which shook some of the most oppressive political regimes in human history. These momentous events, calling into question the structure of the modern world order, throw into sharp relief the life and work of one of this century’s most outstanding figures. For James was pre-eminently a man of the twentieth century. His legacy reflects the scope and diversity of his life’s work, the unique conditions of particular times and places; and yet at its core lies a vision of humanity which is universal and integrated, progressive and profound.

 

Further Reading:

 

James, C. L. R. 2005 [1963]. Beyond A Boundary. Yellow Jersey Press, London.
James, C. L. R. 1989 [1963]. The Black Jacobins. Vintage, New York. [First published in 1938]

Henry, Paget, and Buhle, Paul (eds) 1992. C. L. R. James’s Caribbean, Duke University Press, Durham
James, C. L. R. 1992. The C. L. R. James Reader (edited by Anna Grimshaw) Wiley Blackwell, Oxford.

 Online Collections:

C.L.R. James Archive at Marxists.org

 

 

 

 

Hero of the Year:Mick Lynch

Been a tough old year again with so many struggling to get by. our patience daily severely tested by Tory lies and corruption, and a succession of unelected idiots and fraudsters that has reduced our country to a laughing stock.

Despite theses circumstances  people have been resilient and one person who has been a true breath of fresh air ro me in these difficult times  has been  RMT leader Mick Lynch who with.intelligent eloquence and with straightforward  integrity is able to  represents his members views unapologetically. standing up and being reasonable while at same time challenging the right wing media government narrative.

You need a lot of backbone to challenge uk media these days. Aa they only seem to be there for the benefit of oligarchs, corporations and a discredited government; not for the vast majority of ua. Lynch is a modern day legend who stands head and shoulders above out of touch. incompetent Rishi Sunak PM and his malfunctioning Tory cabinet. Lynch speaks clearly and concisely with actual facts while they lie prevaricate and twist the truth.  Lynch schools the Tories and the right wing media at every opportunity. making them   look so small by simply saying what a lot of us are thinking. Makes such  a change to have honesty instead of lying politicians.We need opposition in government like him more than ever. 

I think the term hero is bounded around too readily and many being undeserving of such an accolade take a look at the new years honour's list.The only true honourable ones are those that refuse to take part in this sham. But Mick lynch is a working class hero who has given  hope and inspiration to the NHS and other workers to stand up and say enough is enough.

I don’t really care what he’s paid, or his views on Brexit it's irrelevant anyway, the man is worth every penny. Mick Lynch is a shining star amidst the dark corruption and systemic failure of Tory Britain and  puts many parliamentarians to shame. I thank him for being the voice of the workers, and doing what Starmer and his "labour" party should be doing. 

Solidarity with all workers striking for better pay and working conditions who have been pushed to breaking point and simply refuse to accept the assaults on their terms for any longer. now fighting to safeguard not only their futures but our services. Far from spoiling the holidays, they have given me  hope. More power to the Strikers, less power to the Tories. We must keep demanding all that is ours.Together in solidarity we remain strong.  

As we close the doors on 2022. time also to remember all those we have sadly lost and .thoughts with all the homeless. refugees.the impoverished. and voices denied all over the world.Here's hoping that 2023 is a kinder happier year that brings justice.peace. freedom and equality for us all.

If you would like to join me in wishing the Tories and their voters and anyone contemplating voting Tory, a forever one way ticket to oblivion and beyond in 2023 then please do. Blwyddyn newydd da/ happy new year. Cheers

 “Get up and fight or live on your knees“ Mick Lynch, RMT GenSec, 18/6/22 

Rest in Power Vivienne Westwood Punk Queen and non conformist

 

At the end of 2022, on December 30, God summoned two great people from the world to come to him. One is Pele, the king of football, and the other is Vivian Westwood, the fashion godmother. Sad news. Two delightful people with superb skills.indeed. 

Vivian  passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family, at her home in London on Thursday, aged 81 according to a statement from her eponymous company — two legends gone in a day.“Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better."

RIP to punk queen. non conformist. fashion designer, activist and iconoclast.Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire to a working class family;on April 8, 1941 in the English Midlands town of Glossop, Westwood grew up at a time of rationing during and after World War II.  In the late 1950s, Westwood enrolled in the Harrow School of Art but dropped out after the first term.

“I didn’t know how a working-class girl like me could possibly make a living in the art world,” she said. Those blue-collar roots would inform her radical approach to urban street style, which would take the fashion world by storm.

A recycling mentality pervaded her work, and she repeatedly told fashionistas to “choose well” and “buy less.” From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work.

When she was a teenager, her parents, a greengrocer and a cotton weaver, moved the family to north London where she studied jewellery-making and silversmithing before re-training as a teacher.

While she taught at a primary school, she met her first husband, Derek Westwood, marrying him in a homemade dress. Their son Ben was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966.

Now a single mother, Westwood was selling jewellery on London’s Portobello Road when she met art student McLaren who would go on to be her partner romantically and professionally. They had a son, Joe Corre, co-founder of lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

They believed that, together, they could wage a social revolution through fashion and rock, and opened their Let It Rock shop on London’s King’s Road in the early 1970s. It became a gathering spot for the punk scene and England’s counterculture boasting customers like the four original Sex Pistols, Chrissie Hynde, Adam Ant, and London post-punk act Siouxsie and the Banshees. Westwood and McLaren’s shop changed its name and focus several times, including rebranding as Sex, a symbolic middle finger to the establishment that prosecuted them – the pair were fined in 1975 for an “indecent exhibition” there – as well as Worlds End and Seditionaries.

Together they defied the hippie trends of the time to sell rock ‘n’ roll-inspired clothing. They moved on to torn outfits adorned with chains as well as latex and fetish pieces and used prints of swastikas, naked breasts and, perhaps most well-known, an image of the queen with a safety pin through her lips. Favorite items included sleeveless black T-shirts, studded, with zips, safety pins or bleached chicken bones.

 The designer was also the mastermind behind the legendary punk image of the Sex Pistols,who Malcolm was managing and  helping to coin the iconic ‘British punk look’ that would define generations to come.

“There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood said in her biography. “And the other thing you should know about punk too: it was a total blast.”

During the 1980s, even while she enjoyed mainstream success, Westwood’s work continued to display an anti establishment flair. She famously posed for Tatler magazine cover in 1989 as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, styled in a suit that Thatcher herself had ordered but later canceled. In her 2016 book, “Get a Life,” Westwood wrote about the controversial magazine cover, criticizing Thatcher’s conservative economic policies and involvement in the oil industry and its role in climate change.

“You need heart and head to have vision and that’s why I call her a hypocrite: she did not care and used her status as a woman to pretend she did,” Westwood wrote. and later drove a white tank near the country home of a later British leader, David Cameron, to protest against fracking.

The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year. Her range was vast, and her work was never predictable.

As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion, with her designs shown in museum collections around the world. The young woman who had scorned the British establishment eventually became one of its leading lights, and she used her elite position to lobby for environmental reforms, even as she kept her hair dyed the bright shade of orange that became her trademark.

The rebel was inducted into Britain’s establishment in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth who awarded her the Order of the British Empire medal. But, ever keen to shock, Westwood turned up at Buckingham Palace without underwear — a fact she proved to photographers by a revealing twirl of her skirt.

It’s important to acknowledge that the reason alternative culture as whole looks the way it does is because her genius and innovative ideas in fashion. She really was one of the most influential designers of all time.pushed fashion in the direction of her raw, edgy notions of beauty, her eclectic politics and her determination to kick out the jams and subvert all norms. 

 “The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity’,” Westwood said in her 2014 biography. “Nothing is interesting to me unless it’s got that element.”

Westwood remained politically vocal in the final decades of her life and used her public profile and fashion to champion issues including nuclear disarmament, climate change. Palestinian rights and to protest against anti-terrorism laws and government spending policies that hit the poor. She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors. She was a staunch supporter of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange. After his 40th birthday celebrations, she would make regular cycle visits to the Ecuadorian embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder remained an asylee tenant for seven years. As with her other causes, she managed to combine heavy-accented symbolism with a fashion statement, the catwalk repurposed for radical transparency. In 2012, she created a unisex “I’m Julian Assange” T-shirt, available for purchase for £40.

As extradition proceedings mounted by the United States became ever more serious for Assange, Westwood was again on the scene. In 2020, during trial proceedings, she spent part of a day suspended in a cage outside the Old Bailey in London, kitted up in a yellow suit to signify the canary in the coalmine. “If the canary died, they all got out. Julian Assange is in a cage and he needs to get out. Don’t extradite to America.”

Little wonder that Assange is now seeking leave from the authorities in Belmarsh Prison to attend her funeral. Given the practice of UK institutions, specifically regarding Assange, this dispensation is unlikely to be granted.

Westwood also left a touching tribute to Assange’s wife, Stella: a wedding dress. In of itself, it was a striking statement of fashion and the act of naughty defiance and constant mischief: the publisher’s partner dressed in the activist’s genius.

Westwood  also long criticized the role of capitalism and its contributions to the climate crisis and was aware of the fashion industry’s role within the crisis, leading to more sustainable production of her clothes. She also called on consumers to buy less, even of the clothes she designed

“I’ve always had a political agenda,” Westwood told L’Officiel fashion magazine in 2018.

“I’ve used fashion to challenge the status quo.”

Up until the end, Westwood wrote regularly on issues of climate and social justice on her website No Man’s Land http://climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/.The website draws upon a busy life beyond design, speaking about activism over two decades in support of “hundreds of causes, NGOs, grassroot charities and campaigns, including Amnesty International, War Child and Liberty” in addition to launching the campaigning movement Climate Revolution. Last month she made a statement of support for the climate protesters who threw soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, writing: “Young people are desperate. They’re wearing a T-shirt that says: Just Stop Oil. They’re doing something.”

Her life.will continue to inspire for generations. A true Warrior who never compromised or traded her independence. There will never be another one like her. But we can all continue to play our part like Vivienne in creating change.

“Capitalism is a war economy. If we want to save ourselves, stop arms sales, stop arms production, stop war! If we can achieve this, we can save the world and everything will fall into place"  

 

"Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply."  

 

Rest in Power Vivienne Westwood. Stay fabulous,Your talent and fighting spirit will be missed.

Remembering the life of Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (née Elgee; 27 December 1821 – 3 February 1896)

Jane Francesca Agnes. the revolutionary Irish poet and mother of  Oscar and Willie Wilde was born on the 27^th December 1821 in Wexford the youngest child of four to a prominent solicitor .Charles Elgee,  and his wife Sarah (neé Kingsbury) 

Charles sadly died when she was only three years old, leading to Jane being largely self-educated. an4 incredibly  is said to have mastered ten languages by the age of 18, 

Jane’s family were staunchly Unionist, coming as they did from English stock. Jane herself was disinterested in national politics until 1845, when she saw the funeral of Thomas Davis and heard that he was a poet. Curious, she looked into his writings and discovered a new world. Davis is often credited as being the writer who inspired the Irish nationalist movement of the 19th century, despite his death at the age of 30 from scarlet fever. A Protestant himself, he espoused an idea of Irishness that ignored ethnic or religious identity in favour of an inclusive nationalism. Jane was captivated by the ideas and ideals that Davis promoted, and became a fervent convert.and political activist on behalf of the radical  Young Ireland movement  an all-Ireland struggle for independence and democratic reform.movement that was both political and cultural that produced the influential newspaper The Nation, which championed “a nationality which may embrace Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter … the Irishman of a hundred generations, and the stranger who is within our gates”.

She reinvented herself under the pseudonym  “Speranza,” the Italian word for hope. 

Recalling his first meeting with her, Charles Gavan Duffy, the editor of the Nation, who had assumed the anonymous writer of such strident poetry was a man, stated: “Miss Elgee was the daughter of an archdeacon of the Establishment, and had probably heard nothing of Irish nationality among her ordinary associates.”

When interviewed in later life, Speranza made a similar observation, saying, “I was quite indifferent to the National movement, and if I thought about it at all I probably had a bad opinion of its leaders; for my family was Protestant and Conservative, and there was no social intercourse between them and the Catholics and Nationalists.”

Speranza’s early contributions to the Nation coincided with the reappearance of the potato blight in Ireland. Inept and inappropriate relief measures introduced by the government in London transformed the food shortages into a deadly famine. Speranza used her penmanship to champion the Irish poor and to highlight their hunger and oppression. These themes were evident in several her poems, including the following ;

 

The Voice of the Poor -  Lady Jane Wilde

 

Was sorrow ever like to our sorrow?
Oh, God above!
Will our night never change into a morrow
Of joy and love?
A deadly gloom goom is on us waking, sleeping,
Like the darkness at noontide,
That fell upon the pallid mother, weeping
By the Crucified.

Before us die our brothers of starvation:
Around are cries of famine and despair
Where is hope for us, or comfort, or salvation—
Where—oh! where?
If the angels ever hearken, downward bending,
They are weeping, we are sure,
At the litanies of human groans ascending
From the crushed hearts of the poor.

When the human rests in love upon the human,
All grief is light;
But who bends one kind glance to illumine
Our life‐long night?
The air around is ringing with their laughter—
God has only made the rich to smile;
But we—in our rags, and want, and woe—we follow after,
Weeping the while.

And the laughter seems but uttered to deride us.
When—oh! when
Will fall the frozen barriers that divide us
From other men?
Will ignorance for ever thus enslave us?
Will misery for ever lay us low?
All are eager with their insults, but to save us,
None, none, we know.

We never knew a childhood’s mirth and gladness,
Nor the proud heart of youth, free and brave;
Oh! a deathlike dream of wretchedness and sadness,
Is life’s weary journey to the grave.
Day by day we lower sink and lower,
Till the Godlike soul within,
Falls crushed, beneath the fearful demon power
Of poverty and sin.

So we toil on, on with fever burning
In heart and brain;
So we toil on, on through bitter scorning,
Want, woe, and pain:
We dare not raise our eyes to the blue heaven,
Or the toil must cease—
We dare not breathe the fresh air God has given
One hour in peace.
VII.
We must toil, though the light of life is burning,
Oh, how dim!
We must toil on our sick bed, feebly turning
Our eyes to Him,
Who alone can hear the pale lip faintly saying,
With scarce moved breath
While the paler hands, uplifted, aid the praying—
“Lord, grant us Death!”

Perhaps the most famous of her poems  appeared in the Nation on 23 January 1847. Entitled “The Stricken Land’, but subsequently renamed “The Famine Year,” in which she attacked the British political establishment for creating the conditions that allowed famine to ravage rural Ireland, and called the peasantry to revolt: 

The Famine Year-   Lady Jane Wilde,

Weary men, what reap ye? —Golden corn for the stranger.
What sow ye? —Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger‐stricken, what see you in the offing?
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger’s scoffing.
There’s a proud array of soldiers—what do they round your door?
They guard our masters’ granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping? —Would to God that we were dead
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.

Little children, tears are strange upon your infant faces,
God meant you but to smile within your mother’s soft embraces.
Oh! we know not what is smiling, and we know not what is dying;
But we’re hungry, very hungry, and we cannot stop our crying.
And some of us grow cold and white—we know not what it means;
But, as they lie beside us, we tremble in our dreams.
There’s a gaunt crowd on the highway—are ye come to pray to man,
With hollow eyes that cannot weep, and for words your faces wan?

No; the blood is dead within our veins—we care not now for life;
Let us die hid in the ditches, far from children and from wife;

We cannot stay and listen to their raving, famished cries
Bread! Bread! Bread! and none to still their agonies.
We left our infants playing with their dead mother’s hand:
We left our maidens maddened by the fever’s scorching brand:
Better, maiden, thou were strangled in thy own dark‐twisted tresses—
Better, infant, thou wert smothered in thy mother’s first caresses.

We are fainting in our misery, but God will hear our groan;
Yet, if fellow‐men desert us, will He hearken from His Throne?
Accursed are we in our own land, yet toil we still and toil;
But the stranger reaps our harvest—the alien owns our soil.
O Christ! how have we sinned, that on our native plains
We perish houseless, naked, starved, with branded brow, like Cain’s?
Dying, dying wearily, with a torture sure and slow
Dying, as a dog would die, by the wayside as we go.

One by one they’re falling round us, their pale faces to the sky;
We’ve no strength left to dig them graves—there let them lie.
The wild bird, if he’s stricken, is mourned by the others,
But we—we die in Christian land—we die amid our brothers,
In the land which God has given, like a wild beast in his cave,
Without a tear, a prayer, a shroud, a coffin, or a grave.
Ha! but think ye the contortions on each livid face ye see,
Will not be read on judgment‐day by eyes of Deity?

We are wretches, famished, scorned, human tools to build your pride,
But God will yet take vengeance for the souls for whom Christ died.
Now is your hour of pleasure—bask ye in the world’s caress;
But our whitening bones against ye will rise as witnesses,
From the cabins and the ditches, in their charred, uncoffin’d masses,
For the Angel of the Trumpet will know them as he passes.
A ghastly, spectral army, before the great God we’ll stand,
And arraign ye as our murderers, the spoilers of our land.

In 1848, the Young Irelanders were planning to stage a rebellion. In the July 29th issue of The Nation, Wilde wrote a famous headline "Alea Jacta Est" (The Die is Cast) which led to the government authorities seizing the issue, closing the paper, and arresting The Nation's editor, Charles Gavan Duffy. When Duffy was brought to trial, Wilde stood up in court and announced that she was the author of "Alea Jacta Est," not Duffy, as was being alleged.however her confession was ignored and the paper was closed.

In addition to supporting the  revolutionary cause of Ireland, she was also a great supporter of women’s rights and believed that they deserved a much better lot in life, from education to property rights in marriage.  She allowed suffragettes such as Millicent Fawcett to speak at a meeting in her house on liberty for women.. She praised the passing of the Married Women's Property Act of 1883, which prevented a woman from having to enter marriage 'as a bond slave, disenfranchised of all rights over her fortune'.

In 1851, she married  eminent eye and ear surgeon William Wilde. They went on to have three children, William (1852), Oscar (1854) and Isola (1857).Jane adored her children and did not banish them to the nursery as was then the custom. Rather, she read poetry and stories to them, and when they were older they were present at her salons.

Towards the end of the 1860s, Jane began to hold soirées or conversazioni at her house in Merrion Square which soon became the most celebrated salon in Dublin. It attracted writers, journalists, lawyers, artists, dramatists and students, the latter being friends of Willie and Oscar who were studying at Trinity College, Dublin.Her literary salons were legendary not just for quality of the conversation Ostensibly, "respectable people" were forbidden from her home because they were usually so uninteresting. 

Standing over six feet tall, with lustrous black hair and “flashing brown eyes,” Oscar’s mother, Jane was considered a great beauty in her youth. with features cast in an heroic mould” seemingly, “fit for the genius of poetry, or the spirit of revolution.”

From a very young age she, “had a sense of being destined for greatness, and imparted it.” In keeping with that persona, she had a penchant for reading and writing Irish Revolutionary poetry.

By her own admission she had a wild and rebellious nature: 'I should like to rage through life - this orthodox creeping is too tame for me - ah, this wild rebellious ambitious nature of mine. I wish I could satiate it with Empires, though St. Helena were the end."

Her husband was knighted in January 1864 and so, from then on, she became known as Lady Jane Wilde. At a time when her fortunes should have been on the rise both tragedy and social scandal followed during the next few years.  A successful court case was brought by a young woman  named Mary Travers who claimed that Sir William had  sexually molested her while she was anaesthetised. Jane  leapt to his rescue by sensationally denying the accusation, and writing that, among other things, Travers ‘consorted with all the low newspaper boys in Bray’.

Travers sued her, but was awarded an insulting farthing for ‘loss of honour’but  Sir William was landed with a whopping legal bill for £2,000. Far more damaging, however, was his refusal to enter the witness box, gossip surmised that there was some truth in Miss Traver’s accusation.

Shortly after this was followed by the death of the two illegitimate daughters of Janes husband. Emily (aged 24 ) and Mary (aged 22 ) who had been invited to a ball at Drumaconnor House. After most of the other guests had gone, their host, Mr Reid invited Mary for a last waltz. As they swirled around the room, Mary’s highly inflammable crinoline dress touched the open fire and burst into flames. The remaining guests screamed in terror. Emily rushed to her sister and attempted to put out the fire. But her dress too, burst into flames. Reid tried to smother the spreading fire, even rushing them outside and covering them in snow.

But little could be done. In agony Mary died on November 19, and Emily on November 21 from severe burns.

Sir William was completely broken by the event.But is also likely that his children with Lady Wilde, Willie, Oscar and Isola Emily, knew nothing of their half-brother and sisters. The family secret was kept secret. But Oscar did not escape remorse having felt  it  when  his beloved sister Isola Emily, whom he described as ‘dancing as a golden sunbeam about the house’, died suddenly aged 10 years. dive tears before the tragic  event.

Sir William himself died in 1876 and the façade of his financial security was laid bare when it was discovered that he had been on the verge of bankruptcy.

Following the death of her husband Jane moved to London to live with her son Willie but, between them, their finances were severely stretched so she supplemented their income by writing for fashionable magazines and producing books on Irish folklore.

She wrote several books including 'Ancient legends, mystic charms, and superstitions of Ireland'  (1887), and her poems are said to have influenced her son Oscar's own work. For example, his 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2018/10/oscar-wilde-ballad-of-reading-gaol.html?spref=pi has been compared to her poem 'The Brothers' (based on a true story of a trial and execution in the 1798 Rebellion). 

 

 The Brothers - Lady Jane Wilde

 

 Tis midnight, falls the lamp‐light dull and sickly,
On a pale and anxious crowd,
Through the court, and round the judges, thronging thickly,
With prayers none dare to speak aloud.
Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the bar
You can see them through the gloom
In pride of life and manhood’s beauty, there they are
Awaiting their death doom.

All eyes an earnest watch on them are keeping,
Some, sobbing, turn away,
And the strongest men can hardly see for weeping,
So noble and so loved were they.
Their hands are locked together, those young brothers,
As before the judge they stand
They feel not the deep grief that moves the others,
For they die for Fatherland.

They are pale, but it is not fear that whitens
On each proud, high brow,
For the triumph of the martyr’s glory brightens
Around them even now.
They sought to free their land from thrall of stranger;
Was it treason? Let them die;
But their blood will cry to Heaven—the Avenger
Yet will hearken from on high.

Before them, shrinking, cowering, scarcely human,
The base informer bends,
Who, Judas‐like, could sell the blood of true men,
While he clasped their hands as friends.
Aye, could fondle the young children of his victim,
Break bread with his young wife,
At the moment that for gold his perjured dictum
Sold the husband and the father’s life.

There is silence in the midnight—eyes are keeping
Troubled watch till forth the jury come;
There is silence in the midnight—eyes are weeping—
“Guilty!”—is the fatal uttered doom.
For a moment o’er the brothers’ noble faces
Came a shadow sad to see;
Then silently they rose up in their places,
And embraced each other fervently.

Oh! the rudest heart might tremble at such sorrow,
The rudest cheek might blanch at such a scene:
Twice the judge essayed to speak the word—to‐morrow
Twice faltered, as a woman he had been.
To‐morrow!—Fain the elder would have spoken,
Prayed for respite, tho’ it is not death he fears;
But thoughts of home and wife his heart hath broken,
And his words are stopped by tears.

But the youngest—oh, he spake out bold and clearly:
“I have no ties of children or of wife;
Let me die—but spare the brother who more dearly
Is loved by me than life.”
Pale martyrs, ye may cease, your days are numbered;
Next noon your sun of life goes down;
One day between the sentence and the scaffold
One day between the torture and the crown!

A hymn of joy is rising from creation;
Bright the azure of the glorious summer sky;
But human hearts weep sore in lamentation,
For the Brothers are led forth to die.
Aye, guard them with your cannon and your lances
So of old came martyrs to the stake;
Aye, guard them—see the people’s flashing glances,
For those noble two are dying for their sake.

Yet none spring forth their bonds to sever
Ah! methinks, had I been there,
I’d have dared a thousand deaths ere ever
The sword should touch their hair.
It falls!—there is a shriek of lamentation
From the weeping crowd around;
They’re stilled—the noblest hearts within the nation
The noblest heads lie bleeding on the ground.

Years have passed since that fatal scene of dying,
Yet, lifelike to this day,
In their coffins still those severed heads are lying,
Kept by angels from decay.
Oh! they preach to us, those still and pallid features
Those pale lips yet implore us, from their graves,
To strive for our birthright as God’s creatures,
Or die, if we can but live as slaves.

 

As Oscar's writing prospered, he helped Jane financially and also secured writing commissions for her when he could. When Oscar married Constance Lloyd (Wilde) in 1884, she and Jane developed a close relationship.

For some years she maintained her social role,and her Saturday afternoon ‘At Homes’ in London were attended by a wide variety of Irish and other celebrities like Oliver Wendell Holmes and the suffragist Millicent Fawcett, as well as her sons and their friends. Her extravagant manner, her old-fashioned dress and her predilection for candlelight and closed drapes drew ridicule from some, but others like Yeats and Shaw remembered her kindness and solicitude towards the numerous Irish expatriates and aspiring writers who turned up at her house.

It is uncertain whether Jane ever understood Oscar's sexuality, but in 1895, when he was charged with homosexual offenses, she urged him not to flee the country, as many of his friends were advising, but to stay and fight. Oscar's conviction was a terrible blow, but even from prison he made sure that Jane had enough money from a fund set up by his friends

In these later years, Jane suffered ill health  and, early in 1896, she caught bronchitis.  Fearing that she may not recover she made a request to see her son Oscar who was serving a term of imprisonment.  after his conviction for gross indecency. Permission was denied and she passed away on the 3rd of February at the age of 74.

Oscar’s wife, Constance, travelled across Europe to break the news to the devoted son, so that he wouldn't take it too hard. but who reported that he already knew his mother was dead: her ghost had come to him in a vision in his cell. 

Marking her death, on 3 February 1896, a sympathetic obituary in The Athenaeum declared: ‘Under the mark of brilliant display and bohemian recklessness lay a deep and loyal soul and a kindly and sympathetic nature’. The Freeman’s Journal lauded her as ‘almost the last of that brilliant circle of poets and writers who, fifty years ago, gave to the “Young Ireland” movement a world-wide celebrity/'

Both Jane and Willie were penniless when she died, so her funeral was paid for out of Oscar’s estate.

He could not, of course, attend. Nor could he afford a tombstone, so she was buried in an unmarked grave in Kensal Green Cemetery. 

Fortunately, this was rectified by the Oscar Wilde Society in recent times, who placed a Celtic cross memorial on her resting place. It remembers her as a “writer, translator, poet, nationalist, and early advocate for equality of women”

Message to Rishi

Long before Christians claimed it, this midwinter festival was marked by congregation, food, gifts, and hope for the light and warmth to come in spring. For me, that ancient tradition holds true just as much now, and maybe even more so in a year when hope for the light of tomorrow for the most vulnerable is so quickly diminished.

Diminished by the likes of Rishi Sunak who on a PR stunt visit to a shelter on Friday, run by the homeless charity The Passage boasted that the government was "investing a significant amount" after Levelling-Up Minister Felicity Buchan said."We announced  a huge package to tackle homelessness -£654m over  2 years.

Shelter replied "the government should be doing a lot more" to help homeless people starting with raising housing benefit. which Sunak has frozen since  2020.

The charity also urged the PM to "get on with building social homes" after he watered down housing targets to quell a Tory revolt.

Chief executive Polly Neate said "Hundreds of thousands of people. including more than 120,000 children woke up homeless today." 

In the excruciating  footage above we witness a man worth £730m giving a homeless person a plate of sausages and eggs and is asked by the individual if he was "sorting the economy out

"That's what I'm trying to do." Sunak replied. then asks the man incredibly, if he worked in business.The man called Dean replies."No, I'm homeless. I'm actually a homeless person.

Then in a staggering patronising display of obscenity from one of the richest man in the UK says to Dean that the food kitchen is a great place.Pretending to be on their side but showing no respect. It is disgusting that these places need to exist in first place. What they are is evidence of  the failure of a rotten tory Government and the hypocrisy of a man who supported and helped implement  policies that led to rise in homelessness.  

His words would have mattered if  he'd said "it is an abomination that a facility like this should have to exist in the UK today. I will do everything in my power to ensure that everyone in this country has a warm place to live, has a well paid job and a health service that works"

How could he ever relate to someone  or have any understanding or sympathy for who's fallen on hard times. with no personal frame of reference. You'd be hard pushed to find another person so fundamentally lacking in empathy or even a basic understanding than him and his rotten tory government.

Ultimately we are all an intrinsic part of this universe. We are all interconnected, and even though each of us separate individuals.We should appreciate the slender threads that hold us together.Through compassion we can share the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of our emotional maturity. Rishi so out of touch of reality has none of these values. he and the Tories just show us how easily they've accepted  the impoverishment of UK society and are happy to exploit it with no concept of shame. It's time for them to stop gaslighting. get houses built. tax wealth and assets fairly and stop blaming the poor and ordinary people for the problems created by those getting richer and richer.