The Collected George Garrett

by George Garrett

George Garrett's stories vividly record the experiences of a merchant seaman during World War I and his return to the working-class realities of "a land fit for heroes."

270 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

George Garrett was a Liverpool seaman and radical political activist. He wrote a number of short stories and plays.

Reviews

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Communist Liverpool writer, seaman, docker and closely associated with the International Workers of the World (the 'Wobblies'), Garrett lived through the turbulence of the times from the First World War and what Eric Hobsbawm calls the 'short century' ((The Age of Extremes). This collection contains a previously unpublished (and fragmentary) autobiographical sketch, short stories, critical reviews and accounts of the conditions facing the working class in the 20s onwards. During this time workhouses were turning poor away at the door so great was the demand, and on the 1922 Hunger March Garrett was appalled to come across a workhouse set up like a concentration camp (the British having invented concentration camps during the Boer War):

A high-wire fence divided the workhouse grounds into sections. Through this, wives conversed with husbands, and children with their fathers. Some of the the marchers stared in amazement as little tots pressed their lips to the wire in awkward kisses for their fathers, stooped low on the opposite side of the netting.

Yesterday I watched with others a mid-1950s British Pathe documentary covering the same period. Not a single mention of any of these issues, the political upheaval, the mass sufferings. Instead a glorification of Liverpool soldiers embarking for war, of the marvellous new housing being built for the people, public cheering at the visit of royalty: the old lie that 'we are all in this together'.

This collection includes Garrett's accounts of the 1921 highly disciplined protest marches in the streets of Liverpool, for adequate maintenance or jobs; an extract about the 1922 march for jobs to London; and a brief fragment of his autobiography, "Ten Lives on the Parish". Also included are some of his literary criticism pieces. The bulk of the book is given to some of his short stories: they disply a straightforward set of skills in crafting a well formed tale, and their compression and starkness perhaps far outweigh any amount of academic studies in revealing the texture of life in the times.