Jack White

Captain James Robert "Jack" White, DSO (1879–1946) was an Irish republican and libertarian socialist. After colonial service in the British military, he entered Irish politics in 1913 working with Roger Casement in Ulster to detach fellow Protestants from Unionism as it armed to resist Irish Home Rule, and with James Connolly to defend the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union in the great Dublin lock-out. White rallied to the defence of those condemned for the 1916 Easter Rising, but the combination of his socialism and anti-clericalism placed him at odds with the principal currents of Irish republicanism. Until experience of Republican Spain in 1936 convinced him of the anarchist critique of the party-state, he associated with a succession of communist-aligned groups. His last public appearance was in 1945, at an Orange Hall in his home town of Broughshane, County Antrim, where he proposed himself as a "republican socialist" candidate in the upcoming United Kingdom general election. Early years Jack White was born on 22 May 1879, at Richmond, Surrey, to Amelia Mary White, daughter of Joseph Baly, Anglican Archdeacon of Calcutta, and her husband Captain—later Field Marshal— George White V.C., an Anglo-Irish landowner and distinguished soldier. The family home was Whitehall, outside the village of Broughshane, County Antrim, where an English Presbyterian ancestor had found refuge from Cromwell's Commonwealth. An only son, he initially followed in his father's footsteps. He boarded at Winchester College and, despite being expelled (on charges ranging from gambling to pyrotechnics), won a cadetship to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. British officer and veteran In 1899, White, commissioned as a lieutenant with the 1st Gordon Highlanders, was shipped out to South Africa for service in the Second Boer War. While his father's command was besieged at Ladysmith, he took part in the Battle of Magersfontein and the relief of Kimberley. Passing into the Orange Free State he saw action at Paardeberg, Poplar Grove, Driefontein, Vet River and Zand River. From May 1900 in the Transvaal, he took part in the engagement at Doornkop (where he threatened an officer who ordered him to shoot a shell-shocked prisoner), the occupation of Johannesburg and Pretoria and, in August 1900, in the last set-piece battle of the war at Belfast-Bergendal.