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Introduction

Jack White was born in the very heart of the greatest socio-economic structure the world has ever known. Blessed both physically and intellectually, he enjoyed every privilege, from education at Winchester, England’s oldest public school to access to the highest and mightiest of the British Empire. A man both of wit and charm, brave and bold like a knight of old, with a beautiful wife by his side, he projected a glamour that even still emanates from the dusty old manuscripts and letters of the archives.

But, there were extraordinary contrasts in White’s life. He was a decorated soldier embroiled at the start of the revolution that eventually expelled the British from Ireland; at one point his every move was followed and reported like a forerunner of the celebrity cult of today. His writings portray a fascinating intellectual insight into the struggles of his day, and he had a considerable grasp of the subtleties of political philosophy.

For all that I met a very eminent local historian, a great admirer of Jack’s father, Field Marshal Sir George White VC, who said to me, ‘Frankly, I think he was a bit of an eejit.’

White came to blows, literally in some cases, with every single institution and organisation he was involved with, except the anarchists and some extremely radical movements. Similarly he fought with all the law enforcement bodies and was locked up, at various times, by all four jurisdictions on these islands. He ended his life selling vegetables in his local village of Broughshane to support his family and left an estate of just £80.

Although having a vast number of acquaintances, there appears to be little indication of a close friendship with anyone; he enjoyed a long correspondence with the novelist John Cowper Powys who greatly admired White, but there is no evidence of them actually meeting.

An outsider, with an unbending adherence to an idealism that disqualified him from the cynical pragmatism of politics, he had an inherent scepticism of all authority.

His insights into the strategies of illusion employed to buttress hierarchical structures sadly allowed him little or no tolerance for the opposition and earned him a reputation as a fiery and temperamental foe. Influenced by Tolstoy, his eventual recourse was to a transcendent solution for the woes of humankind but untrammelled by the garb of organised religion.

His life and outlook provides, I would suggest, a distinctive alternative to the conventional narratives of early twentieth-century histories, in particular those relating to the whole island of Ireland.

* * *

When I started researching Jack White, his only generally available writings were his autobiography, Misfit, and six political pamphlets. These had been collected by Kevin Doyle, the anarchist writer from Cork, and were available online. Phil Meiler of Livewire Publications published a new edition of Misfit in 2005 and included most of these pamphlets. Doyle had literally kept White’s memory alive for a number of years and he wrote a brief but accurate biography of White, and this is also available online (he also wrote a play on the tragic loss of White’s papers). Andrew Boyd wrote a more detailed pamphlet on White’s life, which was published in 2001. Apart from Boyd and Doyle I could find little comment on White’s actions and no analysis of his thinking.

It is regrettable that White’s personal papers are missing. It was generally believed that his family had destroyed the manuscript of a second volume of Misfit and other papers after his death. This arose from an account by Randall McDonnell that Noreen Shanahan, Jack White’s second wife, decided the manuscript of Misfit II was ‘too outrageous and defamatory ever to be published and consigned it to the flames’.1 Not alone have I not found any evidence to support this, I am confident that this has no foundation. In conversation with the family and from the correspondence I have seen, I would surmise that it is quite probable that the papers are mouldering in some solicitor’s redundant files.

Since I began my research I made a considerable discovery of documents, including what I have termed the Katy English papers (KE). These include a large tranche of correspondence White had with his niece in the last six years of his life (about 300 pages). Katy English is the daughter of White’s correspondent, Pat English, née Napier, whose mother Lady Gladys Napier was one of White’s sisters. Katy English has very kindly allowed me full access to these papers. These include family records, in particular by Rose, White’s older sister, who wrote a history of the White family with great detail on the exploits of her father, Field Marshall Sir George White VC.

Family reminiscences included conversations with White’s two sons, Alan and the late Derrick (who sadly died in 2007 RIP), their wives, and children, and Noreen’s (White’s second wife) nieces and nephew. Rory Campbell supplied reminiscences from his grandparents who knew White socially.

White’s story is representative of something outside, and even opposed to, the dominant narrative of Irish history in the early twentieth century. It is nonetheless a valid one which questions robustly the conventional account of a straightforward struggle between indigenous and coloniser. Here was a man who agonised about divided loyalties and courted no popularity in an adherence to a rare integrity. His particular claim to significance can be justified on two bases: firstly, his involvement in the Irish Citizen Army, which included a considerable amount of contact with James Connolly, probably the most important political thinker in Ireland in the early twentieth century. Secondly, White’s professed anarchism marks him out as one of the few figures of that period in Ireland associated with that system of beliefs. Although it would be at least twenty years after the revolutionary events in which he was involved that White used the word ‘anarchism’ at all, I believe that at that late stage he saw it as an explanation of his earlier outlook. Additionally, I would contend that he was far from being an outsider in his thinking at that time; that at least some of the ideas he adopted in 1913 onwards were shared by others, not least Connolly. Consequently, a study of the writings of anarchists like Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin was called for along with subsidiary analysts and commentators like Georges Sorel. Although E.P. Thompson’s ‘enormous condescension of hindsight’ is always a danger, it was also necessary to assess how the position of those people are viewed today, particularly by those of a poststructuralist leaning, that is, thinkers like Todd May and Saul Newman. Todd May in his seminal work on anarchism – The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism – argues that the robust scepticism against received wisdom that primarily defines poststructuralism is equivalent to modern anarchist theory and terms it postanarchism. Current commentators on Irish counter-hegemonic theory, David Lloyd and Heather Laird, in particular, proved relevant to the analysis. Finally, wherever power is discussed and the nature of its multiple manifestations reviewed, Michel Foucault’s writings cannot be ignored.

Anarchism

An important part of Jack White’s claim for remembrance today is that he is regarded as one of the few self-proclaimed anarchists in Ireland. Unfortunately, anarchism has connotations of violence and bloodshed and, even in the most august of journals, is often used interchangeably with chaos. When it does get a sympathetic hearing, the idea that it supports the general abandonment of governance leads to dismay; how can sophisticated structures like the economy, or institutions like education or medicine, be organised without some central authority? Recently lack of regulation has been blamed on the destruction wrought on the world’s finances.

Accepting a general resistance to a concept that appears initially to be totally at odds with common sense, this account is not an attempt to persuade the reader to adopt at least some of the tenets of anarchism. Rather, during the course of White’s life, it is hoped to demonstrate that there was at least a justification to some of the positions he adopted, and it may surprise to note that these had their roots in anarchist thinking.

Colin Ward, in his book Anarchy in Action,2 attempts to show that quite an amount of anarchistic beliefs are tacitly accepted, and although not appearing to be obviously logical, possess, at least, a resonance of truth. One of his favourite examples is the industrial strike. Nowadays, the more conventional strike by trade unions is not to withhold their members’ labour, but instead ‘work to rule’. In other words, what they are actually stating is that they are now going to put into practise every one of the regulations laid down by the authorities which were initially drawn up to ensure the smooth running of the operation. Instead, everyone accepts that chaos will ensue.

It is far too complex a topic to address fully in a book of this type. Apart from possibly antagonising the reader, the very nature of the concept does not readily acquiesce with a succinct summary. In fact the various strands can even appear to be opposed politically, and quite often charges of subjectivity can be justly levelled at its various exponents. I actually believe there is a nebulous aspect to it that is absolutely necessary, as there appear to be premises that are not susceptible to conventional intellectual analysis.

But, before this is dismissed as nonsense, I would remind the reader of the cutting edge of science today, the world of quantum physics which Arthur Koestler described as ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Here phenomena like the ghostly quark occurs or other extraordinary entities whose behaviour alter as they are being observed. The fabled ‘man in the street’, with his concept of ‘science’, would be aghast at this nonsense.

Lao Tse, the ancient Chinese sage, purportedly wrote a book, called the Tao De Ching, which is seen as personifying anarchism. This basically consists of a collection of seemingly illogical aphorisms, including statements like ‘The sharper the spears the more restive the people’. Although appearing to be irrational and directly opposed to modern state legislation (in effect, it is saying, the more regulation, the less submission) it resonates with a truth beyond logic.

One of the principal thinkers in classical anarchism, Peter Kropotkin, a Russian aristocrat and scientist, argued that it was a fallacy that humankind needed strict control. In his book on evolution, Mutual Aid (1902), he maintained that an innate co-operation existed in all species and that this, more than the notion of ‘survival of the fittest’, was the primary dynamic of evolution. Oscar Wilde, no supporter of the status quo, was an enthusiastic fan and remarked that he ‘wrote like an angel’.

Peter Kropotkin’s entry on anarchism in the Encyclopedia Britannica begins by describing it as:

a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional.3

The antithesis, that is, a government with an emphasis on law and an authority to enforce it, is questioned by anarchists. In examining Jack White’s outlook and actions this book will confine the criteria for a support for anarchism to the two basic tenets arising from the above: one, a considerable caution against the focusing of power because of its fostering of a central authoritarianism; and, two, a scepticism about what post-structuralist theory terms the meta-narrative.

The former, a caveat about power, acknowledges Lord Acton’s dictum regarding its corrupting effect, and its role in encouraging excessive regulation and interference by the state (power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely). This can result in oppressive government mechanisms of control leading to political structures ranging from the irritating ineffectiveness of a ‘nanny’ state to the horrors of a totalitarian regime.

The second tenet is specifically concerned with questioning generally accepted ‘truths’ 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.