SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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How to Lose a War
The Spokesman, 90
Trevor
Griffiths, These Are The Times – A
Life of Thomas Paine, Spokesman
Bernard
Vincent, The Transatlantic Republican – Thomas Paine and the Age
Rodopi
B.V, 186 pages, paperback ISBN 9042016140 £28.40
Thomas
Paine, Common Sense, Penguin Books Great Ideas Series, 112 pages,
Just
about 20 years ago, with Jill Craigie at the top of her intellectual form,
when she thought the cinema could raise all the arts to a higher degree of
excellence, we got the news from a good source that at last a proper film was
to be made on a subject which cried out for it: Thomas Paine.
He
had been my number one revolutionary hero and, instructed perhaps by her love
of revolutions, Rebecca West, he was high up on Jill’s list too. It so
happens that we had been together with several Indian friends who knew what we
were seeing at the first-night showing of Richard Attenborough’s Ghandi was
the truly epic subject properly displayed. The actors contributed to the
film’s success but it was the vision of the great director testing his new
instruments to the limit which would achieve the great results. Not so long
after that night of triumph we were told that Attenborough was turning his
imaginative mind to Thomas Paine as his next great subject. It could still
happen, but meantime I must give readers an update on Thomas Paine matters.
Some may recall that I have, on occasion, such is his important role in
history, suggested changing the name of Trafalgar Square to Thomas Paine
Square. It would be a nice compliment to the Americans and the French, since
he played such an important part in achieving their freedom as well as ours.
However,
I now report not the great film but three new books, which should remind us
afresh how essential were the causes we honour today.
The
first and the most significant is These
Are The Times: A Life of Thomas Paine by Trevor Griffiths, who makes
his dedication: ‘For Richard Attenborough, comrade and conductor on this
long march’. Such words might suggest that the march is ended, but not
necessarily so. Here is the brilliant and truly original screenplay written by
Griffiths for the film, and I hope that its publication may revive the idea of
making it. Most of the scenes take place in America, but they speak again to
the whole world. Griffiths is a true Painite, and I was sent this copy by an
old friend who also qualifies for that title, Ken Coates, of the Bertrand
Russell Peace Foundation in Nottingham.
The
second book, Bernard Vincent’s The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine
and the Age of Revolutions, offers a series of fresh lectures and reviews.
Vincent has already played a leading role in restoring Paine’s proper
reputation in France. Paine himself never forgot his debt to the people of
France and Paris in particular. But only with Vincent’s scholarship and
political insight has that association been properly restored. The other truly
great contribution to this period was John Keane’s book, Tom Paine: A
Political Life, published by Bloomsbury on May 1, 1995. Never was there a
better date to remind us of the even greater glory of July 14th which all
those truly entitled to call themselves revolutionaries, the women even more
than the men, must still celebrate. Keane then told the story better than ever
before, and he would have been happy to acclaim those who are just catching
up.
Third,
Penguin has just published in its Great Ideas series, Thomas Paine’s Common
Sense, which first made him infamous. On December 3rd, the Thomas Paine
Society held its annual meeting in London’s Conway Hall, which is our
regular meeting place. Without Conway Hall, without Moncure Conway, true
revolutionaries of the modern age would have no such appropriate place to
meet. Without his truly liberal ideas, embracing women as well as men, which
he brought from America, we would still be living in the intellectual dark
ages.
The
more we look today on the persistent topicality of Paine’s political ideas,
the more we see for ourselves that it is the potency of his writing which
prevails, and we may be all the more amazed to recall that Richard Carlile was
imprisoned in 1823 for selling Paine’s Rights of Man. Carlile
concluded that matter thus: ‘His pen continued an overmatch for the whole
brood.’
Michael Foot
