Thursday 31 October 2013

George Garrett Archive Project

George Garrett Archive project. 

Module Two, Workshop Two.

Babe Ruth to Coney Island. 1918 – 1920.


This week we looked at the issue of Ireland in relation to George Garrett, and in particular, the strike on the New York docks in August 1920, which centred on the Cunard ship, The Baltic, and Dr.Mannix, an Irish-born Australian Catholic bishop, who became the Archbishop for Melbourne, Australia. Dr.Mannix was known for his sympathy and support for the Irish struggle for liberation and independence, and was travelling from Australia, where he had been seen off by a rally of 200,000 at Circular Quay in Sydney, through San Francisco and New York, to visit England and Ireland, where mass meetings and processions were being prepared to greet him; Scotland Road in Liverpool was already decked with bunting in his honour. In New York sections of The Baltic’s crew, mainly Stewards, walked off in protest at him sailing. They were persuaded to return, but the engine and deck crew then walked off and refused to return if he wasn’t allowed to sail. 15,000 people poured down to Pier 60 and Mannix was finally brought aboard and the ship allowed to sail for Liverpool. However, a British frigate intercepted The Baltic just off the Cornish coast, and Mannix was removed from the ship and held under virtual house arrest in Penzance.

At the same time the Mayor of Cork, Alderman Terence McSwiney, who had been arrested and moved to Brixton Prison for his activities in the campaign for independence, was on hunger strike. In George Garrett’s papers there are two pages from an unidentified book, with a picture and an article about McSwiney, labelled ‘1920’ in pencil, in George Garrett’s handwriting.

When the Baltic returned to New York on August 27th 1920, McSwiney was entering the fifteenth day of his hunger strike. Four days previously, a group of seven women, led by the actor Helen Godden, and calling themselves ‘American Pickets for the Enforcement of America’s War Aims’ (one of those aims being to support national self-determination), had begun a protest calling for McSwiney’s release and for Dr Mannix to be allowed to visit Ireland and America. Their protest grew from a small picket, and formal meetings with the British Consulate in new York, to a mass walk out involving 15,000 workers on the docks and from the ships, that lasted for two weeks, and unified British, Irish, Italian and American workers, and brought together for the first time the black workers, a loading gang, who had previously been used as strike breakers.

Bruce Nelson, writing in ‘Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality’, said, 
“Few if any developments in the entire history of the New York waterfront could equal, or explain, this extraordinary event and the convergence of class, nationalist and racial slogans it generated,” wrote “In this case, ‘British’ coal passers, many of them wearing small American flags on their coats, stopped work in support of the ‘Irish Republic’ and black longshoremen shouted “Free Africa’ as they joined the strike.”
At a meeting in Lexington Hall, attended by 3,500, with a further 5000 outside the hall, the biggest cheer of the night was for fifty of the below crew of The Baltic when they walked up to the table of honour.

This wasn’t a strike for wages or conditions; people were giving up a wage, when jobs weren’t guaranteed, for a cause three thousand miles away. When the shipowners, aided by the Longshoremen Union, recruited a huge phalanx of black dockworkers to break the strike, three members of the American Women Pickets went to the offices of Marcus Garvey’s Negro Universal Improvement organisation to appeal for support. Garvey sent two of his lieutenants to Piers 58 and 59. The black dockworkers didn’t break the strike, however, the Foreman of the black workers agreed to support the strike on the condition that they gained access to jobs on the piers that were always historically the Irish Piers. Negotiations went on for two to three days, but finally broke down without agreement. The leader of the Irish Dockers wanted it to happen, but was cut across by the rank and file; an indication of just how complex the strike around The Baltic had become. Although agreement wasn’t reached, after The Baltic finally sailed, Black Dockers began to appear on Piers 54 to 60. 

There’s no direct evidence as yet that George was involved in this strike, but there is no doubt he was affected by it, as many ships in New York harbour or at sea waiting to sail, were tied up while the dispute lasted. There’s no doubt either were his sympathies lay.

One significant aspect of the dispute, was the people involved, their background and what they represented in society; five out of the seven American women Pickets were actors. In New York there was the beginning of The Ghetto Pastoral; the notion that every worker, of every gender and race, has a story inside of them – the issue being how to tell that story. There developed a plethora of new magazines, such as The New Masses, devoted to new writing, seeking out new voices – an early form, maybe, of proletarian Culture. These were the voices of the Tenements, and there’s little doubt that this would have been a major inspiration to George Garrett, who would have identified with the close living and often squalid conditions. It’s easy to imagine his realisation that he too had stories to tell, from tenement courts and tiny houses in Liverpool, and he would be inspired by this different way of imagining a life of protest and song. 

The strike, the developments around it, and the methods used to organise the protests that led up to the strike, were an early indication of the forms of protest and culture that came to be synonymous with the development of the CIO (the International Longshoreman’s Association originally only associated with the AFL but then later joined the CIO as well). These methods, and the ethos of merging cultural activities with protest movements, were originally perpetrated by the Wobblies.

One of the most intriguing finds in George Garrett’s Archive is the poem Blanco Jack (An Epic of Easter Week, 1916). The poem, or ballad, is not dated, so for now we cannot comment upon it in relation to the development of George’s writing, but it is clear that he worked through a number of drafts, even gluing pieces of it together and writing verses and corrections by hand. The piece, with its rhythmic structure, and repetition of ‘Loot, loot loot’, could easily be read as a song, or ballad, and would fit in with the idea of the Liberty Balladeers, the street singers from the area in Dublin, frequented by Garrett’s friend, Jim Phelan, known as The Liberties. It’s interesting to see, no matter when it was penned, that George is playing around with new styles, trying his hand at different forms, and it wouldn’t surprise if ‘Blanco jack’ was being prepared for publication – maybe even in the form of a flyer for distribution on a march or parade.


Although ostensibly written in support of the Easter Uprising, when James Connolly led an assault on the Dublin Post Office in a revolutionary movement that was soon put down and its leaders, including Connolly, were executed by the British Army, Garrett’s ‘Blanco Jack’ is a clever piece of work, that reveals once again, George’s sympathies with the underdog, who even in times of revolution can often get overlooked. There isn’t the time here for a detailed analysis, but in the workshops we noted his simple use of the word ‘Fat’ to denote the boss class, and that although Blanco was an irresponsible man, his heart clearly lay with the poor, who this latter day Robin Hood seeks to help under cover of the revolution and gunshots all around him. Garrett’s sympathies are clear when he calls the rebels Martyrs, but, in what could be a critical remark based on the view of some that the uprising was ill-timed, he also says their deaths were ‘no surprise’. A rattle, of a gun, or of death, takes Blanco out, and Garrett leaves you with the pathetic image of the children of the slums who now wait in vain for food, or loot, loot, loot.

Significantly, George crosses out his pseudonym, Matt Low, and replaces it with his own name. 
The workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s AldhamRobarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).

Tuesday 29 October 2013

WoW and the Liverpool Irish Festival

Life has been particularly busy for Writing on the Wall during October. As well as our annual creative meeting, where we invite writers, community workers, activists and professionals to a meeting designed to set the agenda for our May 2014 festival, we have also delivered a number of other events, including the latest iteration of our What’s Your Story’ project and a special event for Black History month.

Two Writing on the Wall events that I attended had a particularly Irish flavour, appropriate as one of them was an event run in partnership with the unique Liverpool Irish Festival. This event, with Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh, focussed on Feargal’s original research examining the revival of the Irish language, and the particular role of political prisoners in speaking the language and teaching it within their communities upon release from jail. The event was chaired by Prof Phil Scraton (Queens University Belfast), a long-standing supporter of Writing on the Wall. Phil’s extended introduction placed Feargal’s work within a continuum of research on prisons, where ‘academic activists’ speak ‘truth to power’ and give voice to the powerless. The packed Bluecoat audience sat in stunned silence as Phil read testimonies from jailed women and children, concerning the horrific conditions in which they are held in prison in Northern Ireland. The fact that some of these prisoners took their lives shortly after writing their impassioned letters heightened the emotion in the room. These letters and testimonies are taken from Phil’s forthcoming book entitled The Incarceration of Women: Punishing Bodies, Breaking Spirits. Phil was a hard act to follow, but the breadth and depth of Feargal’s work saw him receive generous applause from a rapt audience. In particular, the audience clearly appreciated Feargal’s ‘insider’ perspective on the Irish language, and understood that this was a voice that had not been heard before, telling a story that had not been told before.

The other event I attended was the launch of a book by Bill Rolston, Director of the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster. Bill’s book is the fourth and latest edition in a series entitled Drawing Support. These books focus on the political wall murals in the North of Ireland, and Bill’s illustrated presentation gave attendees access to his unrivalled archive of over 2,000 images. Bill’s photos, taken in the 30+ years since the popularisation of Republican murals in the aftermath of the death of 10 hunger strikers in the Maze Prison in 1981, tell their own story, but Bill explored and explained their centrality to the visual culture of Northern Ireland. Treading a delicate path in exploring themes within both Loyalist and Republican murals, Bill did not flinch from criticising the politics found within certain specific murals, whilst also exploring the muralists’ creative achievements in developing a body of work that is now one of the leading tourist attractions in Belfast.

 WoW Trustee 
Stuart Borthwick

Tuesday 22 October 2013

George Garrett Archive Course

 
Module Two. Seamen, Syndicalists and Scribes 
1913 - 26 

Workshop One. From Beachcomber to East 42nd Street.

Garrett’s experience of America, and that of so many others who worked, on land or at sea, revealed the flip side of Fitzgerald’s ‘Jazz Age’. Not for them the endless parties and pointless conversations, but rather the daily struggle to work and keep on working. Although, in post-war New York, with mass immigration, boom-time economy and a flourishing of hope, people in all strata of society weren’t immune to a feeling of hope after much sacrifice. People were poor, but not by the standards of Europe, but they were rich with ideas. Garrett finds himself in the melting pot, jumping ship with the agreement of his wife, Grace, who waits for him to earn money to send back home. It’s a seeming contradiction – an economic boom, where America finds itself the dominant world economy, although it is yet to assume its dominant role, and bohemian nirvana, where radical ideas of all persuasions hang out together. There is a boom un the US home market, in consumer durables; radio, TV, etc., and the film industry is assuming its dominant role in world culture. Tony Wailey quotes  Jose Luis Borges, saying ‘if you want to talk about a place, imagine yourself in another’. It seems being in New York has this effect upon Garrett.

Coney Island, at the back end of New York on the Atlantic, first place devoted to weekend mass consumption, and the working classes and affluent middle classes soak it up. The testimonies of seamen bear witness to just how attractive New York was at this point.

Garrett has had five years of drama in his life as a stowaway at sea, becoming a stoker, as a prisoner of war and being torpedoed at sea. Eugenie Montale talks about how the first slice of our life is about gaining experience, and thereafter we spend our time trying to gain insight into, and make sense of those experiences that shape us.

America doing so well it doesn’t feel the need to look outside of itself, its finance sytem is now dominant, labour is in plentiful supply and its home markets soak up all it can produce. America passes Europe’s travails as if in a dream.

Compare America to Germany, when considering the five reasons that can lead to turmoil and later fascism: 1. Economic crisis 2. A growing disparity between town and country. 3. A moment of middle class panic 4. A disproportionate increase in the pace of modernisation 5. A charismatic leader. Germany has these in abundance. America lives under the banner of ‘normalcy’.

However, this is also an indication of the growing imbalance in the world economy. Debs predicts a coming crisis. The US does not need the rest of the world, and doesn’t care to act as a global stabiliser. In fact, to counter the growing radicalism in major cities, it moves to clamp down on radical aliens, and the Palmer raids, led by future CIA Director J Edgar Hoover, represent disquiet among the ruling elite.

Garrett, in New York begins to develop a world view full of ideas. He knows everything could come crashing down, and wants to create his own stories.
Garrett’s first play (we assume as it is not dated yet), Two-Tides, finds its genesis in New York. It begins his life long love of writing and theatre, and his struggle through the written word to find his own place in the world.


Legendary Labour leader James Larkin is also in New York, and is later jailed for his radical activities. Garrett may or may not have known Larkin, but what is beyond doubt is that in this period Garrett meets and joins The Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World - IWW), the trade union movement that has cultural activity and engagement at its core. Garrett, who has little time for politics that spends time on discussing the minutiae of text, loves to read but prefers action to bring about change, immediately identifies with the Wobblies, and becomes a radical on the streets of New York. For this he is caught up in the Palmer Raids, and is either deported or jumps a ship to escape before he is arrested. He arrives back in Liverpool as a writer, ready to lead the unemployed campaigns at home, but dreams returning to the US, which he will do in 1923, but this time as George Oswald James.

Thursday 17 October 2013

George Garrett Archive Course

Module One, Workshop Four.

From The Walker Art Gallery to the First Hunger March.


Detective Sergeant John Barnes, in a written report of the unemployed demonstrations in Liverpool throughout September 1921, held in the lead up to the Police attack upon the demonstrations at The Walker Art Gallery, reports hearing George Garrett speaking at one of the meetings along the way. Garrett, he quotes, said he was,

‘Taking a stand for the working class of this country against the parasites living on the workers. “They are living over there” pointing to the North western Hotel “and they will have to come out of it. In 1914 you fought for your King and Country but why should you fight for a man simply because he wears and ermine collar and has a crown of jewels. It is the wealth of that which you produce and must get. When this is done you will share equally the good things of life and that time will witness the end of unemployment and distress in this country. I do not want to say any more but will close my remarks by saying, “To hell with 1914, up 1921”.’

In our fourth workshop of Module One we discussed the significance of Garrett’s statement, against the backgroundof the prevailing world-wide financial orthodoxy of wanting to hark back to the economic conditions prior to WW1. Tony Wailey, quoting the economist Kondatrievtalked about the pressure in a ‘down period’ to cut supply when demand is slack. This was a continuation of the discussions in the previous workshop relating to the development of nationalism and the national state. Britain and France desired to return to the world of free trade, but post WW1 looked far different, and as borders rose so trade became restricted. This was to have a direct impact upon George Garrett and the Liverpool working class as in the early 1920’s 169,000 people depended upon shipping and the associated port industries for their livelihood.
Before WW1 British shipping represented 44% of the world fleet. In 1921 it had fallen to 30%. At the same time the former dominions of the British Empire, Australia, Canada, South Africa, India and the countries of Latin America, had begun to build their own infrastructure.
The move towards nationalism led to the formation of the National Maritime Board A cartel began to coalesce, forging an uncertain unity between the shipowners, The National Seamen and Firemen’s Union, and the state. As discussed previously, this saw extreme developments including the formation of the ‘White Seafarer’s Union’. This jarred with Garrett, and others like him, who had spent time in the US and had mixed with, or as in Garrett’s case, even joined The Wobblies’ (IWW – Industrial Workers of the World’), and had an internationalist outlook.
Some of the trade union leaders dressed like Lords, even turning up to meetings in top hats, seeing little distinction between themselves and the bosses they were meant to oppose. The problem of cosying up to the state became clear later: what were they to do when Lloyd George wanted to cut seafarer’s wages due to there being no demand for shipping? The Seamen were heavily criticised and threatened with jail for rejecting wage cuts.As restrictions were imposed on their protests at home, this period also seamen beginning to take action when docked in foreign ports where they felt they had more freedom to move and more power over the ship owners.
When there was no work you were forced to go ‘On the Parish’ and seek support from the poor law Guardians. Garrett, and other activists such as Jack Braddock, recognising the difficulties of dealing with Guardians across the country, some of whom were generous while others, Liverpool being a case in point, were extremely harsh, tried to drive a wedge between the state and the Guardians by raising the cry for ‘Work or Maintenance’ to be provided by the Government. However, some, such as GDH Cole and Raymond Postgate, writing in The Common People, argue that ‘it was commonly said in the winter of 1921 & 22 that the ‘dole’ saved Britain from revolution.’ Easy to say in hindsight, but what were activists like Garrett meant to do, among the poverty and suffering that they, their families, and their fellow unemployed were enduring?
The Trades Unions had grown rapidly in the period leading up to 1921, but although unemployment was a major problem across the UK, there was little articulation between the trade unions and the unemployed. The trade unions did not know how to deal with them.
1920 saw the birth of the British Communist Party. This galvanised the unemployed as a force and led to the formation of the National Unemployed Workers Movement, a movement that brought under one banner a cross section of society, of Catholics and Protestants, and even, as demonstrated in the leadership of the unemployed struggles in Liverpool, the clergy marching alongside ex-policemen.
Garrett’s writings on this period, Liverpool 1921-22 and The First Hunger March, coming as they do from someone who is both an active participant and keen observer, must rank as among the most outstanding pieces of writing about the unemployed struggles and the plight of the working class, and the response of the political and state forces of that period. 
Garrett, while carrying in his mind the heady mix of ideas and internationalism he had imbibed from his time in the States, now had to consider what might be achieved in Liverpool and the UK. He was now forced to go into the minutiae of the law on benefits and relief to be able to be of service to those suffering all around him. His scrapbooks, with detailed notes and newspaper cuttings, reveal this dedication to exposing and exploiting the law and the rules for relief to the benefit of the unemployed.
The unemployed marchers, led by ex-police striker Bob Tissyman, The Reverend Vincent Laughland, Jack Braddock, George Garrett, and others representing a diverse group of political outlooks and experiences, led a sustained, well organised and inventive campaign for work or maintenance, to get the Liverpool Guardiansto raise their rates of relief. These campaigns are brought to life in Garrett’s work, drawing you in with such a fluidity of pen and turn of detail that you are tempted to look at your feet to check you aren’t shoeless yourself.
The first stage of the campaign culminated in a ‘riot’ at The Walker Art Gallery. Frustrated by a lack of progress in their campaign for work or more relief, under pressure to win some sort of victory, and undecided about how to take the movement forward, Bob Tissyman, rather than leading the demonstrators gathered at the plateau at St George’s Hall on their usual demonstration around the city centre, called upon them to take a ‘walk’ over to the Walker Art Gallery
The demonstrators who reach the Walker Art Gallery, even though gathered peacefully inside and in negotiation with the manager who was trying to contact the mayor by telephone, becomea prime target for the police who were waiting behind St George’s Hall, in the Assizes and in the Museum. They attack the demonstrators from behind and within the art gallery, and charge them on horseback outside. They lock the gallery doors and proceed to beat the demonstrators and staff so savagely that people jump from the windows to save themselves. By the end of the day 16 were injured so badly they are taken to hospital, including ex-policeman Tissyman who has a broken arm and gashes to his head, and 140 were arrested, Garrett among them, who was picked up after the demonstration is over.
When the case came to court the judge, clearly shocked by what he sees and hears, jails the main defendants - for one day, ensuring they are immediately released. His understated comments that, ‘I think most unnecessary violence was used to these men in The Walker Art Gallery,’ gives an indication of the disquiet at the role of the Police on the day.
In the aftermath of The Walker Art Gallery the demonstrations continue, but ironically, it was the general shock at brutality employed by the Police in their efforts to curtail the demonstrations that may have contributed most to the decision by the authorities to back down and grant an increase in relief.
The idea for a national march is born, and it is this that Garrett throws his energies into next. George’s description of this campaign in The First Hunger March, organised by the National Unemployed Workers Movement,demonstrates the full range of his character as a leader of the march, and his skills as a reporter and writer. From the marchers’ refusal to accept poor food and bedding from ‘stingy’ Guardians; their protests and liberation of parents and children who are separated from each other by chicken-wire in a workhouse they stay in for the night; to the mock funeral, with George Garrett himself in the role of chief mourner and priest, leading the prayers at the burial of their old ‘comrade’ Bully Beef, the pitiful dish served up once too often to a march full of ex-servicemen, the life of the march on the road to London is brought to life, without pity, or the desire for sympathy, but with anger, pride, humour and humanity.
At the end of the march, after speaking outside parliament, George realises his prospects are still no better, and, due to an intense period of radical activity, are in fact probably far worse. And so in 1923 he embarks upon his second spell in New York…as George Oswald James.
The workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s AldhamRobarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).



Friday 11 October 2013

George Garrett Archive Course

Module One, Workshop Three.

Radicals Under Pressure - 
Vigilance and Marching On.

The end of WW1 sees the world beginning to close down; the control of the individual states grows as they begin to police their citizens and decide, who are the ‘correct’ members, who are the interlopers, and most importantly, who are the carriers of dangerous ideas? In this our third session of the course, Tony explored the period leading up to 1920 when Britain, although one of the victors of the war, finds its Empire on the wane. Germany, defeated, will be made to pay, while Russia, in the midst of a civil war following the revolution of 1917, is also out of the economic picture. Quoting from The Common People by GDH Cole, Tony explained that by the end of 1918 300,000 soldiers were unemployed. At the time this was regarded as a catastrophe, but by 1920 this figure had grown to one and a half million and had ballooned to 2 million by the end of 1921. After the ‘war to end all wars’, things were getting worse rather than getting better.
In 1918 George Garrett, now married with his first son, Matty, and with the agreement of his wife Grace, who was prepared to eke out a living until he could send money home,  went straight to America, to New York. The conditions on the American ships were better, but he was attracted to the radical life there, and was soon active with The Wobblies.

In the US ‘Normalcy’ was the new catch-word summing up the desire to return to pre-war progress, but it was a false dawn. In 2912 Garrett is caught up in the anti-radical Palmer Raids and returns to Liverpool where all fingers are pointing, looking for someone to blame. The divisions leading to the race riots of 1919, culminating in the murder of Charles Wooton, are reflected in The Seamen’s Vigilance Committee, which had been set up to try and protect war time wages. The Seamen’s Union is pulled into the British Empire movement, and a White British Seafarers Union is also formed.

Prevalent economic theories of the time, including those of Nikolai Kondatriev, point to the patterns appearing in Capital; 25 year cycles, or waves, of boom and bust, which are mirrored in the development of the workers movement. Capital in 1920 is most definitely on a downward spiral, and Garrett is no stranger to the privations it brings, writing that he would leave the house without eating and spend the day with other unemployed men, not eating, so that his wife could eat what they had. When he returned home and she too had not eaten, a quarrel would ensue.

Although incarcerated in the unemployed struggles, Garrett’s stateside experiences stay with him, and are reflected in the wry humour he brings to his activities in the unemployed and seamen’s struggles, including the use of theatre and song and mimicking the Wobbly methods of cultural engagement alongside the political and industrial struggle.
Garrett feels responsibility on all fronts; he has a young family, is being drawn into radical politics alongside the young communist Jack Braddock, and is also beginning to try and find time to write.
The interwar economists argue that all is good – and the development of consumer goods indicates that capital is coming home. But in Liverpool and in George Garrett’s employment, all the industries are associated with heavy export. With the collapse in trade Liverpool, as well as Lancashire, becomes an unemployment black-spot. It is here that the genesis of the UK’s North-South divide can be found.

All roads lead to depression, the development of radicalism – the Liverpool branch of the British Communist Party is founded in 1920, and the subsequent clampdown on dissent. Although the contradictions of the world economy see people enjoying the Jazz age in the United States, which the true victor in the shift in the balance of relationships following WW1 (although the growth in protectionism see it becoming more and more isolated), while in the UK massive numbers of the unemployed, many with war medals pinned to their chest, are marching for work or maintenance.

The revision of the Poor Law Act in 1834 means that people are now forced into the territory of the Poor law Guardians – The Parish Guardians, who operate with local autonomy to decide if and how much someone should receive if they cannot find work. Attitudes vary, from the liberal to the dictatorial, with women in the areas of hard-line Guardians often having to take prams to the parish to disguise the huge Harvester Loaves doled out to them in place of cash relief.

The mass demonstrations in 1921-22, and the ‘Storming of The Walker Art Gallery’ arise from this period of turmoil and rebellion, but that’s for next week.

In the workshops, were we considered three questions relating to George’s writing and some of the artefacts from the archive, participants discussed the significance of Garrett being published, possibly for the first time, by writing and distributing song-sheets for the mass demonstrations of the unemployed and for the Seamen’s Vigilance Committee. The Wobblies are a clear influence here, but we also considered the influence of protest songs from slaves in the southern states of America; the tradition of popular song sheets being sold on the streets; the use of language, sometimes biblical, reminiscent of Shelley, and how these songs could unify demonstrations and could be picked up and shared by even the most illiterate. Garrett uses these broadsheets to announce himself as a writer, but one who is committed and engaged with the struggle all around him.
Garrett’s speech to the Seamen’s Vigilance Committee, on a platform where other speakers make outright racist comments blaming aliens for the lack of jobs, marks him out as brave, progressive figure with some authority. He attacks those who take patriotic pride in being British to extremes, praises the struggle for liberation in Ireland, and calls upon people to follow the example of Ghandi in India. In his writing, from the extracts from Liverpool 1921-22, he again uses humour to put to shame a police recruit, and in the Wobbly tradition of non-identification, describes himself variously as ‘The Young Seaman’ and ‘The Deportee’. Participants felt he didn’t want to put himself centre stage, wanted to make his stories, even non-fiction, universal and accessible to all, and, maybe protect himself for fear of victimisation and recrimination from the Guardians, the Police, and others. The ironic fact that it is a plain-clothes member of the CID from whom George Garrett’s words are handed down to us, indicate that he has reason to be cautious.

The workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s AldhamRobarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).


Friday 4 October 2013

What's Your Story? LMHC

WoW's What's Your Story? writers perform at the Liverpool Central Library


WoW are holding a celebration event for our What's Your Story?, in collaboration with Liverpool Mental Health Consortium, writing group. Participants will be performing their work at the Central Library and will be presented with a published book of their work that they have completed within the course. 




Established author and dynamic poet, Clare Shaw has been leading the 12 week creative writing workshop.
Clare has two poetry collections, Straight Ahead and Head On and has been anthologised by Faber and Faber and Some Girls' Mothers. Clare has been published in several national journals and newspapers and was awarded High Commended in the Forward Prize 2006. As well as a popular performer, she is also a self-harm trainer and consultant, working independently and in partnership to enable services to respond helpfully to people who self-harm.




The course has been in partnership with the Liverpool Mental Health Consortium. The Liverpool Mental Health Consortium was set up with the aim of improving mental health services in Liverpool. The Consortium offers valuable opportunities for those who have experienced mental distress to develop a collective voice.

Clare Shaw's group, in partnership with The Liverpool Mental Health Consortium, will be performing on 10th October, World Mental Health Day. World Mental Health Day is a day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy. 


Find out what else is happening in Liverpool on World Mental Health Day. 



Wednesday 2 October 2013

The George Garrett Archive Course

Module One, Workshop Two.

From stowaway to a Seaman at War.


Tony’s introduction to our second workshop, covered a lot of ground, and the amount of discussion following his introduction and in the workshops went further and deeper into this area of Garrett’s life. George is back from his travels in South America and into the War in 1914 that Tony argued sees the world beginning to close down; opportunities for unimpeded travel become limited and for the first time the Merchant Marine, and its representatives in the Seamen’s Union, formed in the white heat of battle in 1911, are pulled back from radicalism towards nationalism. The development of the dreaded U-boats, which Hobsbawm argues are the only weapon to have a major effect upon the First World War, wreak havoc on the Merchant Fleet, which prior to the U-boat received little in the way of escorts from the Royal navy. Garrett, although not under threat from a U-boat but from a destroyer, has direct experience of dangers of war on his first ship, The Potaro, which is scuttled by the German seamenafter the crew of The Potaro are given just fifteen minutes to abandon the ship. The SS Potaro was a British Merchant Steamer of 4,419 tons. On the 10th January 1915 when 560 miles E by N ¼ N (true) from Pernambuco, off the coast of Brazil, she was captured by the German Auxiliary Cruiser SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm and scuttled. We believe that Garrett, who was taken aboard the Kronprinz Wilhelm and forced to sign a declaration against taking up arms again against the Germans, may have been transferred to an internment camp in Buenos Aires from which he later escaped. George would have felt as though he was on familiar ground, as only a few years before he had spent some time wandering and working across South America prior to sailing back to Liverpool to sign on for the war. The Kronzprinz captured many ships, and took, politely apparently, all the crew and passengers from each ship on board, and held them while searching for other ships to capture. Here is a link to an amazing account published in The New York Times in 1915 of the experience of the prisoners held on board the Kronprinz for six weeks. And look out at the end for a fascinating insight into why, in April 1918, George Garrett writes to The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company requesting confirmation that he was forced to sign the above mentioned declaration.

Ideas abounded as to why he sought confirmation of his status as a prisoner of war, with suggestions including: the development of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland, and how the attempt to seek a non-aggression treaty there may have been used smear any radicals linked to that movement; a gap in his CV, or record of service that he needed to explain when applying for other jobs; his fear of being smeared as in the pay of the Germans after the war, possibly foreseeing the red scares that would develop as a result of the Russian revolution of 1917. Tony touched upon why Garrett was such a cosmopolitan figure, explaining how George’s involvement with the American Industrial Union known as The Wobblies (The IWW: Industrial Workers of the World), influenced him and gave him such a developed world view. The Wobblies grew in the years leading up to, and on the cusp of the rapid industrialisation of America, which led to a vast itinerant, relatively unskilled workforce, that moved in hordes across the USA in search of work in the grain fields and in the mining towns. The Wobblies believed in One Big Union for all workers, its heyday beginning to come to an end underrelentless repression and the development of the more organised union structures under the AFL-CIO (American federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations). We discussed in some detail one of George Garrett’s first published articles, Sons of the Sea in the All Power magazine in 1922, within which he describes the torrid conditions endured by seamen, Stokers and Firemen in particular, on the Merchant ships of the time, and within which we can find the seeds of a number of his short stories – Letter Unsigned, Fishmeal and The Maurie. It was an extract from The Maurie that we turned to in exploring further what life was like for the stoker in the hold, and how he likened it to ‘A subterranean theatre’, as the firemen and trimmers ‘swarmed below as one’ for their next watch. Garrett captures in The Maurie, and most importantly from the point of view of the Stoker, the potent mix amongst the fiery heat of the furnaces of the disdain for ‘glass-back duds’, and the spirit, strength of pride and camaraderie amongst the team who drive the ships engines to ever higher revs per minute. The pictures of Garrett as a young stoker show him at this stage in his life with an amused but pride look, a vest stained black with coal dust, a bandage on his right arm and the beginning of the end for any puppy fat he’s carrying from his youth and wanderings in south America, as the rigours of the stokehold begin to mould him into the ‘Stoker with Punch’ he is soon to become.