The Unfortunate Colonel Despard

by Mike Jay

The story of Edward Despard, a celebrated and decorated British infantry officer executed as a traitor in 1803 for plotting to establish a republic, is a window into a remarkable period of British history; a time when democracy was undergoing its birth pangs.

Genres: History, Biography, Politics

379 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

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Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of a tragic existential hero of British politics, Colonel Marcus Edward Despard, a man of undoubted integrity. Despard took on the British State, Old Corruption, and lost. He was sentenced to being hung, drawn and quartered in 1803.

This book is not so much original work (though Mike Jay is recovering the real man rather than the false myth of the mad man through researching original documents) as an original interpretation.

The story is really about the political conditions that existed in England in the late eighteenth century and it is a game of two halves.

The first tells of a young Anglo-Irish officer’s experience of British imperial expansion at the very margins of Empire and what he learned there.

Class interests overwhelmed the instinctive democracy of a mass settler society in favour of rich traders and endorsed racial strategies, more by cynical accident than scientific design.

The story of Despard’s experiences in what is now British Honduras is the story of the road that eventually leads to the casual racism of twentieth century Britain.

Racism appears here as the monstrous creation of the self interested few defending their turf against the legitimate aspirations of the many.

The second half suggests how Despard’s reluctant but accurate analysis of the British State leads him remorselessly down a path towards political direct action.

This led to him participating in serious conversations about overthrowing the State with the help of disaffected soldiers. That he did so is beyond reasonable doubt.

I have no doubt that, by a definition of the British State which defined its own terms, Colonel Despard was a traitor and so his judicial murder under conditions of state terror was fully ‘justified’.

But I also have no doubt that this book exposes the degree to which the State declined into despotism under William Pitt the Younger who started as a reformer.

Pitt ended up the creator of the ‘Crown’ as we know it today, an entity that can reserve emergency powers to itself of staggering ruthlessness.

The trajectory of Despard is the trajectory of a man of great natural integrity as his eyes open to the realisation that what he serves as a patriot is corrupt, malign, self-interested and brutal.

He also discovers that those who claim to oppose Old Corruption in Parliament are weak, ineffective and egoistic. Much like today, in fact.

It is the story of many such men in many circumstances who are simply written out of history as stupid or mad (which they are by the lights of the system) in a world where integrity is a crime.

Itis a truism that no one in power every really wants integrity around them – it shows them up. The tragedy here is really the eternal tragedy of British political culture.

Jay raises interesting questions (well rehearsed in the academic community) about the degree to which the English were radical or conservative in the 1780s and 1790s.

What applies then probably applies now. Being normally human, most people most of the time are indifferent to their rulers so long as they deliver the economic goods.

And, of course, so long as they don’t push them (rather than their neighbours) around directly. Sentencing a couple of Facebook naifs to four years in jail is a fact to be observed not acted upon by most.

When the economy weakens or a rival bunch of gangsters emerges at Calais, in Kabul or from within, the State will then start pushing people around.

But it will be adroit at building up the anxieties that bind those who fear losing their small pittance of wealth against those who are actually losing it.

Add to this the fact that most people are actually rather ignorant about how power is exercised. This ignorance is eminently exploited because there is a core of legitimate conservative fear of change.

Thus, it is probably true that, at any one time, in non-extreme circumstances, around two thirds of the population is naturally prepared to accept the State’s narrative even if a third will not.

The numbers, in short, are always for Old Corruption, today as much as in (say) 1780 and, if one wants proof of that, we only have to compare the rule of New Labour with that of Pitt the Younger.

Despard wanted the impossible – an honourable politics that kept its word and preserved old liberties. Old Corruption simply wanted to generate economic growth and preserve itself by any means necessary.

In the end, Despard had to die because he was a genuine ideological, organisational and moral threat to the thugs at the top.

The book is thus instructive not only about England at the end of the eighteenth century but about the essential nature of the ‘Crown'.

This is the centralised machine, using the dynasty as figurehead, that represented itself and the interests of landowners and traders then and itself and that of bankers and special interests today.

Despard was led by circumstances into a cul-de-sac. Jay refers to other radicals like Burdett, Place and Henry Hunt. He was far from alone and E.P. Thompson famously recovered them for the modern age.

All these men proposed a system of society that was defeated at the time (including democracy, basic human rights and even the lineaments of welfarism) but that is now taken as read.

Most did not follow Despard to the point where armed resistance was considered but most were not men of action but of words.

The problem for Despard was that it was rare to find a trained and experienced soldier in a radical context and this is probably why he had to die, after some failed attempts on other radicals.

What has not improved in our society despite all the wins forced through by brave men such as these, the Chartists, the original Labour Movement and others is the general attitude to both State and Empire.

Having achieved so much, the low point of contemporary British history is almost certainly the arrival into office of New Labour which consciously sought power through appealing to the conservative middle.

This was a centre-left Party that to all intents and purposes rapidly became direct heir to the centralised operations of Pitt the Younger in defence of its own special interests and alliances.

Many of the original radicals were country Tories as much as working men or the colonised Irish, often people like Despard and Cobbett.

These saw the State at close quarters and were horrified by its combination of self interest and corrupt action in favour of small minorities of supporters. This led them to opposition.

Grenville and Dundas are fully matched by a recent succession of Home Secretaries with little interest in liberty, manipulators of the media agenda to isolate and traduce critics.

If Pitt is also matched by recent war-mongering Prime Ministers, then there are other parallels to be found in the detail. But history never entirely repeats itself.

Despard undoubtedly had moral right on his side as a radical and probably as an atheist, one of a politicised mass unpolluted by Marxism but reliant on the rigorous polemic of Thomas Paine

History was against him in three regards whatever the debate over whether England was ripe for revolution at some point in the 1790s (it was certainly ripe with the potential for civil war at one point).

The first was the sheer ruthlessness and authoritarian lust for power of the State itself. More died in Cornwallis’ punitive raid on Ireland in 1798 than in Robespierre’s terror.

The State organised networks of spies on high salaries, fixed juries, lied to the public and hired people like Gillray for them.

The second was the ancient fear that split radicals on the meaning of a colonial revolt in nearby Ireland.

The original Irish revolts united Protestants and Catholics in one cause but the British State cleverly set the two communities against each other and exploited ancient fears of priestly reaction at home.

The third was the collapse of the ideals of the French Revolution into Napoleonic despotism.

High ranking radicals could plausibly introduce the conspiracy trope of Pitt and Napoleon being in league to militarise their societies and introduce a centralised despotism for the benefit of their elites.

By 1802, the probability of holding down the population was high but not if the radicals were led by people from its own ranks with military expertise.

Over and over again, informants repeat Despard’s character as a ‘gentleman’ (notably his green umbrella!) and the experience of dealing with Wolfe Tone was immediate in the memory.

The man had to be taken out or purged by the State and if jury-fixing and dubious witness statements would do it, then so be it.

Despard had fallen into the trap of desperation, consorting with Irish radicals and implicitly connected to the French just as Tory radicals were seeing Napoleonic France as just another thug state.

A ruthless State found an easy target and took it out for the narrative value of suggesting that its own terrorism was justified in the past by real threat (how familiar from New Labour tactics!).

It also saw the opportunity to promote a new populist narrative of national mobilisation when war was to start again, ironically making great use of Despard's friend, the Lord Nelson.

Part of that narrative was not to present Despard as desperate and naive (because that left space for him being right) but that he was mad.

An accusation of madness could evade any sense that his and others’ critique of the State was correct and that it had a moral integrity not shared by the dynastic thugs.

So, this is a tragic tale of someone who, under other circumstances might have led a revolt that would probably have been crushed in any case.

Perhaps better to die with dignity as murder victim than compromised as leader of a revolt that would have meant atrocities on both sides.

Yet he is still an existentialist hero, alongside, say, St. Maximilian Kolbe, someone who did what was right even though it was absurd and would end with his own extinction.

There is no real evidence of a French connection and his purposes appear reasonable and honourable. His conduct on the scaffold was certainly a model of dignity and courage.

Despard was a true soldier to the end, refusing at any time to implicate his own comrades. If anyone plans a statue to him on the site of his murder by the State, I would subscribe.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice history of england in 1776-1804. colonel despard was and anglo-irish from a very rich family living in ireland. the 7th of 7 brothers he went into the military. stationed in Jamaica, had his first military exploits (with a young h. nelson) at lake Nicaragua. then was made commissioner of what is now Belize. was fired from that job, and went back to England to try and get his back-pay and job back too. was caught up in the reform movement of tooke and burchard(sp?) and was eventually draw, hung and beheaded for his pains. WAY ahead of his times in thinking the governed should be by their vote and consent and that there was no such thing as "race". mike jay has written some other very fine histories. well worth reading.

[T-bone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of the unfortunate Colonel Despard; unfortunate might be an understatement because he was the last man in England to be condemned to be hung, drawn, and quartered. That's not a spoiler, it's pretty much the subtitle. Though it is a little misleading. Early 19th century judges were notoriously soft on crime and backed out of applying the full sentence. So, if you only came for the end of Despard's life—described in the beginning of the book—you might be disappointed. Although even I found this part interesting; in his gallows speech Despard gave an impassioned plea for democracy and civil rights before concluding with the immortal line: "Tis very cold; I think we shall have some rain."

Mike Jay does a remarkable job with this bio considering there seems to be little surviving evidence about Despard. This lack of life detail is overcome by fascinating descriptions of the people and politics in the British colonies of Jamaica and surrounds where Despard served in the British colonial army. Jay also does a good job of succinctly explaining British domestic politics during the French revolution and the campaign for democratic freedoms, which led to Despard's treason conviction. For me, who knows nothing about this period of history, this book was a real page turner, but I imagine more serious scholars of the period would be alarmed by the lack of referencing. Back in my day that kind of thing was mandatory, but biographers feel they can get away with such shenanigans in these soft on crime kind of days.

In any case, we should all read more biographies!

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A prime example of 'how to write history people want to read'.

[ladylassitude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially loved the swashbuckling early chapters. Hard to person to write about, given paucity of sources but very well done

[Susan Thornton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really interesting history of the sugar trade in Jamaica, slavery, the British and the Mosquito coast. However, there was a lot of supposition rather than fact about Colonel Despard's life and motives, and some general history about the French Revolution and the rights of man which I felt dragged on rather. Hence only 2 stars.