Wilfrid Scawen Blunt               [1971]

[These remarks on Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922) occur in a review by Desmond Greaves of Andrew Rothstein’s book, “British Foreign Policy and its Critics” (Lawrence and Wishart, 1969) in the February 1971 issue of the “Irish Democrat”]

This is an extremely interesting and important book for Irish readers. It consists of a series of lectures given in Moscow by Mr Rothstein, who is the son of the famous Russian refugee Theodore Rothstein whose history “From Chartism to Labourism” is still a classic

Its thesis is one which was always insisted upon by the English historian T.A. Jackson who would never finish a lecture on British imperialism in Ireland without saying, “But there were always those who opposed British policy root and branch.”

This is the book about such people and among those of whose lives a brief but adequate account is given are E.D. Morel, Robert Dell and, most interesting to Irish people, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

Blunt, incidentally, was first cousin to George Wyndham who brought in the great l903 Land Act, and it would be of interest to know how far Blunt may have led Wyndham along the road that gave the land to the people, though at a price. There was less solidity in that Conservative administration then in many other others.

Blunt of course left masses of material about himself. He was a small Sussex landowner, a Tory, a member of the Carlton Club, and became disgusted with imperialism during travels in India and the Near East.

His compendious diaries tell of his activities in support of the Land League. He did two months for speaking at a meeting at Woodford, Co. Galway which was proclaimed.

He opposed the 1914-18 war, condemned the trial and execution of Roger Casement, and wrote a ballad in his memory. He was one of those who subscribed to the arming of the Volunteers in 1914 and thus helped to make possible the Howth gun-running.

Although he became very friendly with William Morris in his last years, he never understood or studied socialism, though he agreed with many of the conclusions of the socialists.

The story of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt shows that it is possible for a member of a ruling class through sheer integrity and a regard for truth, to dissociate himself from the position of his class on vitally important matters of policy, while not ceasing to remain in general terms a part of his class milieu.

Some of the over-simplifiers who are a present trying to put all their fellow-men into predetermined pigeon holes would do well to read about Blunt, and think over what is possible in the complicated society we live in.

CDG