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. 

* Come Dungeons Dark, the auto-biography of Aldred 
is published by Luath Press and available through AK for 6.95.