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Severely Dealt With: Growing up in Belfast and Glasgow
John Taylor Caldwell is over 80. For the last 60 years he
has been an active anti-parliamentarian, a close comrade of
the late unorthodox anarchist-communist, Guy Aldred * and
more recently a writer and historian recording these times.
Now, encouraged by the publishers, he has turned attention
to his own eventful life. The first volume deals with his
first 16 years, moving from Dumfries to the hurly burly of
Belfast, and a voyage of discovery that led him to Glasgow.
It is remarkable how John has been able to recall his
innermost thoughts and cope with recalling the brutality
he suffered as a child. He also provides a vivid picture
of life, as his family spiralled down the social ladder.
The respectable pretensions of his father, insensitive
to the misery inflicted on his wife and kids (he fathered
10 by way of three women) are brought into focus, as his
employment prospects worsened in Belfast and the standard
of housing worsened with each successive move.
It is a life before the 'safety net' of the Welfare
State, of poverty, not couched in 'good old days' nostalgia
but of subsistence, with the children being dragged down to
the level of street urchins. The state's attitude when
school beckoned was to treat these working class kids,
catholics and protestants, as "outcasts...herded into
classrooms, not just to be educated, but to be disciplined,
to be tamed. Hence order, silence, unquestioned
obedience....made to fear authority". The sadistic recourse
to physical punishment commonplace in such 'centres of
learning' is described, with some humour in the chapter,
"Severely Dealt With".
John remembers, sharing a bed with all his brothers and
sisters, lying awake -
"...nowadays it would be said that I had a hyperactive mind. It
was never still. It burned inside my head like a great flame in
a little candle. It illuminated a stream of hazy visions,
colourful dreams and profound thoughts". The book is amazing
in its record of how his mind developed its own philosophy,
from a child through to a page boy in the Picture House in
Sauchiehall St..
For those interested in history, we get a view of
pre-War xenophobia, the horrors of thousands maimed, and
the post war mood that "WAR IS MURDER, WAR IS HELL, NEVER
AGAIN" is captured from a child's view into adolescence.
At the recent book launch in Glasgow Cross, the actor
Kenny Grant read this brilliant chapter on the post-war
mood in Glasgow, Anti-militarist with disabled out-of-work
soldiers everywhere. In Belfast, the mood was deflected by
the revived sectarianism accompanying partition, and in
"Rooting out the Fenians" we get a child's view of catholic
families being driven out of the east Belfast streets.
After the death of his mother, through domestic violence,
John, still tied to his uncaring father, was called over to
manage house in Glasgow, where the father fled to. We get a
chilling account of Glasgow: "big city, where the people
lived' up closes' which had stone pipe-clayed stairs with
a lavatory on each landing to do three or four more houses.
At night many of the closes were occupied by the homeless,
some of them addicted to a brew concocted of methylated
spirits and an injection of coal gas from the stairhead lighting.
It was a tough city where many of the side-street
dwellers wore cloth caps with razor blades sewn into the
cap, and often carried cut-throat razors in case the need
arose to cut a few throats. The 'polis' were to be feared:
mostly big men who, like the Irish, spoke in amusing
malaprops (for instance 'Come on get off', 'If you want
to stand their you'd better move along') ".
We also hear of a hanging of an unfortunate youth
Kean, whose hanging took place at Duke St. Prison, and
John imagining him in his cell "beneath the bell's great
hammer, having a sentence of the Court pounded into
his mind in a last stroke of retribution".
Although many biographies of the period have
been written, John Caldwell's book is unique in it's
experience of brutality and poverty first hand, while
recording the path of his conscious development from
philosophy to anarchist communism.
The book can be obtained for 5.95 from the publishers,
Northern Herald, 5 Close Lea, Rastrick, Brighouse HD6 3AR.
or after requesting a catalogue (send a large SAE)
from AK Distribution, 22 Lutton Place, Edinburgh.