Overview

This book rediscovers a remarkable South African life. James T Bain, hero and antihero of the South African past, has a claim to be the founder of trade unionism and socialism in South Africa. He started the first substantial trade unions in southern Africa on the Rand in the early 1890s. His International Independent Labour Party, founded in 1899, was the first socialist party in sub-Saharan Africa. He was a close associate of both the founders of the Communist Party and of the white segregationists of the South African Labour Party. But his political views, like much else about him, were complex: he often hesitated between democratic and racist ideas.

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9781919931722

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Some kinds of biography require a certain kind of alchemy. To snatch a forgotten life from obscurity and turn it into a memorable story requires diligent research compounded with imagination carefully balanced with empathy and detachment. From base metal Jonathan Hyslop has extracted pure gold with all its distinctive qualities: something with intrinsic value, which often surprises and which will undoubtedly endure. If the function of biography is to give history a human face then Jonathan Hyslop, in his portrait of JT Bain, has given South African and especially Johannesburg history not only an outline of its features in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth but also colour, expression and, above all, character. Jonathan Hyslop once again reminds us of the magic of biography. He takes an unknown person from the throng of history and turns him into a person of real interest. What is more, with meticulous research and a light and sympathetic pen, he casts his drama with a fascinating parade of colourful characters from Irish revolutionaries to Indian pacifists. --Tim Couzens, author, Tramp Royal and Murder at Morija

Some kinds of biography require a certain kind of alchemy. To snatch a forgotten life from obscurity and turn it into a memorable story requires diligent research compounded with imagination carefully balanced with empathy and detachment. From base metal Jonathan Hyslop has extracted pure gold with all its distinctive qualities: something with intrinsic value, which often surprises and which will undoubtedly endure.If the function of biography is to give history a human face then Jonathan Hyslop, in his portrait of JT Bain, has given South African and especially Johannesburg history not only an outline of its features in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth but also colour, expression and, above all, character.Jonathan Hyslop once again reminds us of the magic of biography. He takes an unknown person from the throng of history and turns him into a person of real interest. What is more, with meticulous research and a light and sympathetic pen, he casts his drama with a fascinating parade of colourful characters from Irish revolutionaries to Indian pacifists. --Tim Couzens, author, Tramp Royal and Murder at Morija

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"Jonathan Hyslop's book tells Bain's story in a way which breaks out of the boundaries of traditional South African history writing. It demonstrates that globalisation has much earlier roots than we think. The South Africa of the 1890s and early 1900s can only be understood by looking at what happened here in international context. The book shows how South Africa was deeply affected by such different forces as Indian and Irish nationalism, Australian and British labour politics, steamship travel and undersea telegraph cables, and international migration. The book offers us a better understanding of the origins of the globalised world in which we live. Bain, born in Scotland, came to the Rand in the early 1890s. His long career as political radical culminated in 1919, when he and trade union colleagues for one week overthrew the Johannesburg Town Council and Bain became 'dictator' of Johannesburg. In a massive general strike more than twenty people died in clashes with the British army. Louis Botha's government deported Bain to the UK, where he briefly became a national celebrity. Syndicalism, the name given at the time to the militant labour protests which he supported, seemed to be sweeping the world. To the newspapers Bain was ""The Notorious Syndicalist"". JT Bain was an extraordinary, contradictory character. He fought for the British in the Zulu War, and the Boers in the South African War. He was a spy and a newspaper editor, a lover of literature and a street fighter. He knew many of the leading figures of his day, including Gandhi, and was the sworn enemy of General Smuts."

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