Our hidden history and the heroes of the past

History is filled with many heroes, men and woman whose names we never will know like Kurnutovsky, the engineer who fought against the Tsar and for the revolution in Russia. I am reading at the moment the story of Edward and Catherine Despard, two heroes I have had no previous knowledge of. They are both etched now in my memory as among those I have to thank for fighting, and in the case of Edward, dying for a better world.

I am always impressed in particular by those revolutionaries like Edward who came from a privileged background as an Irish landowner and became an important figure in the British colonial system; they have other choices and reject their class privilege. He was a friend of Horatio Nelson who pleaded for his life before he was executed by the British Bourgeois.

His wife was a black woman who he may have met in Nicaragua or Belize, or possibly Jamaica but he never left her there on his return to England, instead taking her home as his wife and companion. As the authors of the book I am reading point out, she was one of the influences on him as she was, as a slave and a woman no doubt experienced in revolt and resistance.
Other influences on Despard were the struggles against poverty and repression in the Caribbean where, as an influential figure he took the side of slaves and the free poor against merchants and landowners.

Executed with him was another Irishman and his early years in Ireland provided him with ample examples of the brutality of the English invasion as well as the resistance to it.

I just read a great quote from the book (p 279) from Thomas Russell in "An Address to the People of Ireland" (1796) and it is no less relevant today.

"You have been told that politics is a subject upon which you should never think: that to the rich and great men of the country you should give up your judgement in the business of government....Who gives this advice?...The men who profit by your ignorance and inattention. Why not think of politics? Think of it seriously; think of your rulers; think of republics; think of kings"

For more reading on the Despards and the conspiracy for which Edward was executed read: The Many Headed Hydra by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh ISBN 0-8070-5006-7