Arthur Desmond - Early Years

Early Years

As with most aspects of Arthur Desmond’s life, there is a snag by starting his biography with his birth statistics. Arthur Desmond spent his adult life concealing his origins as well as his identity, which is understandable when one considers his radical persona, Ragnar Redbeard, and his daring, anti-social, anti-political and heretical Victorian book, Might Is Right.

This is why George G. Reeve, Desmond’s first biographer, could honestly write that "To many another person seeking his acquaintance Desmond held aloof, and to a great extent surrounded himself — ‘behind the veil’ as it were — by a ‘mystery halo’ and a sacrosanctness hard to penetrate." Desmond’s second biographer, Darrell W. Conder, concurs and indeed, after presenting the tangle that constitutes Desmond’s life in New Zealand, Australia and America, questions not only Desmond’s origins, but his actual birth name. This doubt is based on Desmond’s continuous use of pseudonyms and aliases throughout his adult life. George G. Reeve continues "Arthur Desmond, for that was the real name of ‘Ragnar Redbeard’ was a native of Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, where he was born about the year 1842 of Irish ancestry." In 1921 The International Communist carried a short article on Desmond in which it was claimed that he was "… a native of Napier, Hawkes Bay, Maoriland". (The International Communist for Saturday, 17 September 1921, p. 2 article "Redbeard in Sydney" by 'Gullangulong') New Zealand National Dictionary biographer Rachel Barrowman adds: "Arthur Desmond was unknown to the electors of Hawke’s Bay when he stood for Parliament in 1884. 'We only know that Mr. Desmond is a cattle-drover, and that he is of Radical tendencies’, the editor of the Hawke’s Bay Herald wrote. He was said to be 25 years old, born in New Zealand of Irish descent. He had been in Hawke’s Bay since the late 1870s, and had worked as a musterer in south Taranaki. Of his background and personal life nothing more is known." Of the three candidates, Desmond came last.

However, the most detailed information about Arthur Desmond’s origins come from records after his immigration to the United States in 1895-96. On the occasion of his first appearance in a U.S. census record in 1900, Desmond declared that he was born in England in the year 1859 of parents who were also born in England. This declaration was backed by Desmond’s Illinois death certificate on which his son stated that Desmond and his father were both natives of Northumberland, England. This information is corroborated by Desmond’s 1904 Chicago marriage record. In that instance Desmond declared that he was born in place called Claud, Northumberland, England in 1859 to Samuel Desmond and Sarah Ewing. Nevertheless, to compound matters, in the 1910 U.S. census record Arthur Desmond claimed his birthplace as California, but changed that to England in his last census appearance in 1920.

Whatever the truth of his origins, the first concrete evidence of Arthur Desmond’s life comes when he stood for parliament in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand in 1884. His two addresses to the Electors of Hawke’s Bay still survive. In one of the addresses, Desmond said: "You, yourselves, are principally to blame for allowing this in the past. You have allowed great squatters of the worst type to rule you to their own advantage; they have themselves grabbed the good land, and they attempt to pose as your friends by offering you the crumbs that fall from their table. You have the power in your own hands now, and if you do not wish to be for ever serfs of territorial gods almighty; if you have got any of the energy of your progenitors, you will not stand this kind of injustice any longer. You will say to them with me — Wealth that we make for you, money we earn; give us our share of them, give us a turn. If you have the pluck to say this, then return me as your representative, and I will lead you."

With only a dismal 190 votes, Arthur Desmond lost the 1884 election. However, he didn’t give up on politics and sought out the patronage of Sir George Grey KCB, former Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, former Governor of Cape Colony in South Africa, former Premier of New Zealand, a prolific writer and founder of the prestigious Grey College and Grey High School in Port Elizabeth. Since Sir George was a staunch defender of the Māori, Arthur Desmond also took up their cause, a move that was no small issue in the New Zealand of his day.

In 1887 Arthur Desmond again stood for Parliament, this time running on a platform that consisted of a concentrated attack on landlords, bankers and monopolists. Desmond advocated land reform, the nationalization of large estates and banks, and promoted Henry George’s single taxation—a proposal that taxation should be confined to land rent, since, in Desmond’s view, land was the real source of wealth. When he publicly denounced bank directors as "scoundrels", estate owners as "blood-sucking leeches" and the local press as "hirelings of monopoly", Desmond was essentially standing on a socialist platform. Additionally, Desmond championed the Crown’s right of preemption of Māori land, which meant the resumption of a 6 February 1840 agreement whereby only the Crown could buy land from the Māori. This move made Desmond a lot of enemies among European New Zealanders.

In his second parliamentary attempt Arthur Desmond made a respectable showing of 562 votes to the 968 of the sitting member, Capt. W. R. Russell. An unemployed and no doubt discouraged Arthur Desmond left town to find work in the timber mills of Poverty Bay and on the farms of the Waikato. Of those latest hard times he would write: "Many a time when lying on my back in a bush whare or a tent after a day of grinding toil, have I resolved that if ever I had a chance to sweep away such a brutal system, it would not be neglected."

In February 1889, 60-year-old Te Kooti, the leader of the Hau Haus, decided to visit Gisborne, the land of his birth. This impending visit caused an uproar among the European population because they were convinced that the chief was there to prevent the sale of Maori land. For Arthur Desmond Te Kooti’s action was disastrous since he found himself in the untenable position of supporting the chief against New Zealand’s European population over an issue that had been a major plank in his parliamentary aspiration—the Crown’s right of preemption.

In Poverty Bay, at a packed schoolhouse in Makaraka, Arthur Desmond faced a meeting of some five hundred angry settlers on Te Kooti’s behalf. Amidst talk of armed resistance and bloodshed, Desmond explained to his brethren that he knew many of the chief’s supporters and that the Maori meant them no harm. His arguments were not convincing, and in the resulting chaos some of the settlers grabbed Desmond and bodily threw him from the schoolhouse.

Several days later another meeting of some eight hundred settlers took place, and a resolution was passed to stop Te Kooti’s visit—by force if necessary. Once again Arthur Desmond was there to speak in favor of the chief. When he let it slip that he had been in contact with the Maori leaders and went on to forcefully threaten that the settlers had no legal or moral right to interfere with Te Kooti’s visit, fights erupted. This time police officers had to escort Desmond from the meeting for his own protection. In the New Zealand Herald Desmond was called the "pakeha emissary from the Hau Haus" and was reported lucky to have left the meeting alive.

In the end the crisis was averted when Te Kooti and seventy of his followers were arrested by the government and thrown in jail. Desmond went on to pen a poem dedicated to Chief Te Kooti, which he titled the "Song of Te Kooti."

According to the preface of the 1896 edition of Might Is Right, which was released with the title of The Survival of the Fittest, it was in the aftermath of his 1887 parliamentary bid that Arthur Desmond first conceived of and began writing Might Is Right. Obviously the book had not taken its final form because in 1890 Desmond submitted an article to Zealandia magazine that was published in the June issue with the title of "Christ as a Social Reformer." The article was so well received that Desmond decided to publish it as a booklet and, as added prestige, used one of Sir George Grey’s personal letters as a preface. Although it sounds odd for the future "Ragnar Redbeard" to pen such an article, a careful reading of "Christ as a Social Reformer" reveals it to be nothing short of a shrouded call for Christian men to take up arms in a socialist revolution — the antithesis of the catholic message that if Christ's kingdom had been of this world, then would his servants fight.

Whatever the intended outcome of the article, one that was not foreseen was the charge by Desmond’s enemies that he had plagiarized "Christ as a Social Reformer" from an American magazine. The charge was serious enough that a highly embarrassed Arthur Desmond finally worked up the pluck to write to Sir George Grey. However when one reads his protestations of innocence to Sir George, they seem to be an admission that the charges were correct.

Charges of plagiarism were not confined to "Christ as a Social Reformer". When Desmond’s poem "The King that is to Come" was reprinted as "The Leader of the Future," he was accused of plagiarizing the piece from American poet James Whitcomb Riley’s "The Poet of the Future". A comparison of the two poems does bear out the charge of plagiarism, which doesn’t bode well for Desmond’s innocence in the earlier charge.

Amidst this controversy, Desmond was very active on behalf of workers’ rights. During the Maritime strike of 1890 Desmond wrote: "How can we expect just legislation and equal laws when those who control private plundering concerns are our legislators." Desmond was relentless with his condemnation of employers and those who, he said, had a "strangle hold" on Auckland’s commerce. At the head of his list was the Bank of New Zealand, which he charged was rife with corruption.

While openly writing against the government and big business, in 1890 Arthur Desmond used a typewriter to produce twenty-five copies of what he would later designate as the first edition of Might Is Right. Using the pseudonym "Redbeard" ("Ragnar" would be added to the name five years later), this first edition filled only 16 small pages and was titled Might Is Right Logic of To-Day. This edition also carried the notation "for private circulation" and "printed in Sydney" on the title page.