Cosmopolitan Welsh Volunteer
ger's Violin
By David M Thomas
Published by Mount Eagle
Price £7.99
Owen Morgan Parry, the hero of Anger's Violin, a first novel by
David M Thomas, is a tour guide, the perfect cover, it seems, for
an IRA courier. Armed with ``a few languages and a knowledge of
Europe'', the Welshman is a prized recruit entrusted with a
package. The best laid shenanigans start to unravel soon after
Amsterdam. MI6? A tout?.
You'll have to sharpen up, for this standard thriller-fare is
laced with a crash course on European cultural history. Itinerant
allusions abound with the glibness of a glossy travel brochure. A
smattering of French, German, Welsh and Gaelic is also a bonus.
The author, drawing on his experiences as an ex tour guide,
flying picket, and student abroad, copiously name-drops with, at
best, mixed relevance to the plot or Parry's itinerary:
Descartes, Erasmus, Locke, Dante, Joyce, Beckett, Camus, Marx,
Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg, Gramsci, Lenin, Marcuse, Yoko Ono.
d the title, Anger's Violin? Well, it's a pun on ``Violin
d'Ingres'' (Colin Bateman resorted to similar titular wordplay in
Divorcing Jack to approximate Dvorak.) The great French painter
Ingres also played a mean fiddle, apparently, and the phrase
translates as ``side line''. Now ``side line'' hardly conjures an
image of dedicated zeal, and we learn early that Parry intends
this to be his ``one last tour and one last mission. For the
cause''.
Why did the Welshman join the IRA? ``Who else [but the IRA] was
there fighting that smug English ruling elite who, with all their
forelock-tugging collaborators, had ground the miners into the
dust and pissed and shat on the hopes of an entire generation, my
generation?''. Working class anger is a commendable inner
resource. But ultra-left qualms about ``individualism and
opportunism'' assail Parry during the mission. What has carrying a
packet across Europe got to do with the class struggle?
Disappointingly, for a novel in which the nature of commitment,
personal and political, is a running theme, the question goes
unattended and the reader may therefore misconstrue that Irish
republican politics and motivations are as muddled as the hero's.
Novels depicting the IRA on the side of angels are rare. Thomas
improves on the stock thriller treatment of republicans. An
exception is Ned Nolan, whom Parry likens to an SS guard:
``capable of the worst brutality by day and all Schubert by
night''. The same Nolan ``went wobbly'' after a Brit interrogation,
and the IRA had to send him to the Caribbean for a spot of R&R.
Evidently, republican welfare provisions have vastly matured
since my day. Getting the cost of a weekend at the Ardoyne Fleadh
was like siphoning petrol out of a rock. And, for all I know,
probably still is.
By Pat Magee
Taking the green road
The Protest Business
By Grant Jordan and William Maloney
Published by Manchester University Press
Price £40 (hb), £14.99 (pb)
The Third Revoluton: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era
By Murray Bookchin
Published by Cassell
Invincible Green Suburb, Brave New Towns
By Marl Clapson
Published by Manchester University Press
Price £40 (hb), £14.99 (pb)
A subtle but significant difference between the organised greens
and the direct action movement is the nature of their banners.
The greens display banners which proclaim their own organisation
(Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and so on); activists unfurl
banners which attack those who exploit (Planet Rapers, Toxic
Torturers). And both want to get on TV.
But the truth, as Bob Woodward once said, is in the details. So
while Jordan and Maloney's study of Friends of the Earth and the
wider organised greens in Britain announces itself as an
examination of why people join environmental groups and not
political parties, it is much more than that.
NVDA (non-violent direct action) and DIY activists have always
known that the organised greens exist to perpetuate their own
careers. The general public, however, is not aware of this subtle
difference. The organised greens seek to protect the environment
and that is what they are seen to do. Yet as Jordan and Maloney
note: ``The growth in size of environmental organisations cannot
be solely attributed to the increased saliency of environmental
issues. The sophisticated marketing efforts of these large-scale
organisations has had a significant effect on group size:
creating an activated constituency.''
Jordan and Maloney provide the statistical evidence that the
organised greens are in it for themselves. Instead of leading
green activity, the organised greens have fallen behind and it is
only now that they are realising they may have got it wrong. You
can fool the people... The scramble to protect their jobs has
only been matched by the increasing voracity of actions by
empowered people.
Murray Bookchin is one of the most perspicacious thinkers of the
20th century. He went off the rails a bit when he started
screaming at everyone from the anarchists via the greens to the
socialists in Which Way for the Green Movement and Re-enchanting
Humanity. Now he's back on firm ground with `The Third
Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era', using
all his wisdom and knowledge to analyse why we must never give up
in the struggle for basic human rights, why we must abolish
authority, dominance and hierarchy and why only direct action
coupled with a keen political knowledge will change society.
Bookchin may think no one is listening to what he has been saying
for five decades but he is wrong - there's a vociferous, active
movement out there empowering and changing. It's a different kind
of revolution but it's a revolution still the same.
Global communities now face three major issues. Our growing
population far exceeds the carrying capacity for a way of life
that is low impact and sustainable for the long term. Our
lifestyles are highly destructive and are far in excess of the
basic needs for healthily happy families and communities. Our
values and belief systems are far too centered on individualism
and materialism and far too distant from ecological principles
and a profound respect and reverence for creation.
Having displaced people from the land in the 17th and 18th
centuries the British establishment created the social conditions
for over-population. As the population under their rule soared,
significantly in the post-45 war period, desperate building
programmes to provide homes for the working classes on the
peripheries of large towns changed the face of the landscape -
bringing new roads, more development and increasing commerical
activity.
Although Mark Clapson's Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns
focuses on social dispersal in England, noting that new estates,
new towns, new development and out-of-town hypermarkets will
become a feature of the early 21st century, his observations are
also relevant to Ireland. Not only have we copied the English
experience we have also repeated their mistakes, creating social
displacement and disempowerment. It's time for new visions.
By Robert Allen
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