Ragnar Redbeard: The Antipodean Origins of Radical Fabulist Arthur Desmond by Mark Derby (review)

Mark Derby is probably the leading contender to inherit the late Bert Roth’s title as “the” champion of the bold, brave, neglected and occasionally eccentric makers of the NZ radical tradition. In pithy prose, driven by dogged research and frequently by a narrative “individual story” approach, Derby helps Wobblies, participants in the Spanish Civil War, and Maori resisting oppression by New Zealand state come to life for the reader.

This little book on Arthur Desmond is his latest contribution and it is a little gem. Over a colourful but not well-recorded life, Desmond was variously a radical supporter of Maori resistance to colonial injustice, a labour activist and organiser, a journalist, editor and publisher, a radical parliamentary candidate, a poet, a polemicist, a fraud, a racist and anti-Semite. His playground included various parts of New Zealand and Australia and then Chicago. Desmond’s life was driven by ideas, some admirable to a present-day progressive world view, others, especially later in his life, quite the opposite. He wrote, spoke and published voluminously and is perhaps best known for Might is Right, in which the character Ragnar Redbeard strides superhumanly across the stage.

The characteristics and contradictions of Desmond challenged Derby. He was initially drawn to Desmond’s “progressive writing and actions” but ended in “appalled fascination at this extreme instance of ideology gone rancid and idealism sacrificed entirely to ego.” I am glad he did not abandon the project when the story lost its rosy pink glow. We are too often drawn into telling the positive and heroic stories over those less appealing. When, as they often are, the good, the bad and the ugly are combined in one life, we are forced to grapple with the muddy contradictions of humanity. That’s why most of us love history so much. I, for one, can’t wait for the next instalment of the Derby chronicles.