Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
being jailed.)
The book is written as the memoir of Avis Everhard,
wife of labour leader Ernest Everhard who comes to
lead the workers’ insurrection. Avis is the daughter of a
prominent US academic, and begins her account as the
pampered intellectual circles her family frequents find
it a delightful parlour game to invite Ernest for debates,
much as panel games will have the token revolutionary
on our TV screens today.
Ernest, long-suffering, self-taught and assured union
man has steely determination and razor intellect. He
rips their arguments to pieces, and the smug smiles subside.
In the final confrontation he manages to get one
more forthright and honest plutocrat to admit the truth
and discard the flannel. In the end their power over the
worker has no moral basis and must be set in steel:
“In roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of
machine-guns will our answer be couched.”
“It is the only answer that can be given” replies Ernest.
“Power. We know, and well we know by bitter experience,
that no appeal for right, for justice, for humanity
can ever touch you. Your hearts are as hard as your
heels as they tread upon the faces of the poor.”
Avis is entranced not only by the power of Ernest’s
magnetic charisma, but also by the unpleasant but
unassailable truth of the frightful poverty which, as he
points out, props up her own classes wealth. She begins
to notice the wretched poverty, only streets from where
BUY Jack London books online from and
she lives. The scenes of misery are jaggedly drawn,
once again, without any need for exaggeration from
what London saw daily with his own eyes.
We see both the Everhards and the wider union
movement as a whole as they’re wrenched to snapping
point. As America’s oligarchs realise the conflagration
to come is a fight to the death, they stealthily cast off
the flimsy pretences of democracy. They organise into
the great Dictatorship of the Iron Heel. The bloodiest
repression seen in humanity’s history ensues.
The novel’s narrative skilfully shifts focus from the
small scale to the large and back again, the snapshots
of poverty signifying the minutiae of the bigger vista.
We see as the dictatorship takes hold it does so steadily,
creepily. The insidious little signs -the silencing
and ostracising of academics, the blackening of the
names of campaigners, – are shown as Avis’s father
is hounded from his job, and a reformed priest the
family know is hounded into a mental institution. The
icy paranoia of the witch hunts is evoked chillingly.
With the thug gangs bought from the criminal caste by
the ruling-class to pummel dissent – the wonderfully
named “Black Hundreds” – the paramilitary paratroops
of future Fascism are equally well predicted. He even
got the colour right.
The story continues to centre around the Everhards as
the years go on and the Iron Heel kicks in. Congress is
suspended, dissenters are machine-gunned. Scenes of
325
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z