‘The Assassination Of Keir Hardie ‘ By Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel is infamous for her self-gratifying fantasy that expressed her deeply felt desire to kill Keir Hardie, a man for whom she still feels a ‘boiling detestation’…even more infamous is that the BBC felt the need to broadcast the short story...‘In Hilary Mantel’s mischievous story a knock at the door announces an unexpected visitor who has plans to alter the course of history as we know it. Harriet Walter reads.’  The Left were naturally outraged that such an iconic figure should be treated in this way by the BBC.  Here is a small snippet from the short story….

The gunman kneels, easing into position. He sees what I see, the flat cap crammed onto the unruly bush of wiry hair. He sees it bob like a dog turd in a gutter, he sees it big as the full moon, but dark with ill-omen. On the sill the wasp hovers, suspends itself in still air. One easy wink of the world’s blind eye: ”Rejoice comrades,” he says. ”Fucking rejoice.”

The BBC, which has presumably cemented its credentials as a right-wing instrument of the neo-con, bourgeois Establishment, has flung caution to the wind and decided that the story resonates so strongly with its audience that it deserves to be short-listed for its short story award…..as reported in the Times…

Mantel’s The Assassination of Keir Hardie, published by the Telegraph after the Guardian refused to print it despite paying for exclusive rights to the piece, sees a sniper disguised as an Aga repairman set out to shoot the radical left-wing politician.

The story was attacked by the Mirror when it was first published in September last year, and then again in December when it was chosen as the BBC’s Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 (“Radio 4 ignores protests to give author’s ‘sick and perverted’ fantasy a coveted broadcast slot,” wrote the paper). Mantel said at the time that “I recognise that this latest nonsense from the Mirror is not about me or my work; it’s a skirmish in a war with a right-leaning BBC.”

Now the BBC has chosen the story from among 438 entries as one of five going forward to compete for its prestigious national short story award, which is presented in partnership with by Booktrust. 

Hilary Mantel has had Keir Hardie in her sights for more than 30 years. Somewhat surreally, Mantel reveals that it was her grandmother who gave her the idea for the story as her grandmother had seen Hardie as he wandered into view around noon on Saturday 6 August 19o6. Mantel’s grandmother’s flat, on a quiet Windsor street lined with cherry trees, overlooked the working man’s club where Hardie was having a pint and a fag. She was just standing by the big sash window in her bedroom when she spotted Hardie “toddling” around the club yard with a rabble of flat-capped mates.

“Immediately your eye measures the distance,” Mantel says her grandmother told her, measuring each syllable, her finger and thumb forming a gun.  Her grandmother said “I thought, if I wasn’t me, if I was someone else, he’d be dead.”

Apparently Mantel’s grandmother had long held a deep loathing for Hardie as she recognised that his type of politics would do untold and long-standing damage to the nation and her own life.  Mantel herself says she feels a ‘boiling detestation’ for Hardie as he made her grandmother’s life, and that of others like her in the coming decades, so miserable.

Mantel’s grandmother, like Hardie, was self-made – her mother was a mill worker and her father left when she was 11. But, Mantel believed, Hardie hated the end result of his self-transformation into a maverick, wild-eyed radical…he wanted to be loved, respected and welcomed into the Establishment, but it wasn’t to be, he was never accepted: “He couldn’t turn himself into a posh politician with the right vowels. If you’re that dissatisfied with yourself you try to fix other people, and if they won’t be fixed you become punitive.’

Hardie had to die or his terrible legacy would be like a running sore throughout British history….he had to be stopped.

I wonder if the BBC would be so keen to make ‘The Assassination Of Keir Hardie’ its ‘Book at Bedtime’ and then short-list it for its Short Story Award?  Possibly not.  It was just before the latest Labour leadership elections that the BBC decided to broadcast a Gordon Brown elegy to Keir Hardie….I wonder why?  Looking at the BBC’s own history of Hardie you might be suspicious that someone at the BBC was trying to suggest, when they broadcast Brown’s hagiography of Hardie, that a maverick radical such as Jeremy Corbyn could be viewed in a similar light and therefore is worthy of the leadership….unusual dress sense, radical politics, anti-monarchy, not good at dealing with internal rivalries and anti-war (all perhaps except the championing of women’s rights)…….

In 1892, Keir Hardie was invited to stand as the Independent Labour Party candidate for West Ham in east London. He won and took his seat in parliament. He marked himself out as a radical both by his dress – he wore a tweed suit when most members of parliament wore more formal dress – and the subjects he advocated, including women’s rights, free schooling and pensions and Indian self-rule. He was heavily criticised for appearing to attack the monarchy, which may have contributed to his defeat in the 1895 election.

After a long battle to win another seat, he was finally elected MP to Merthyr Tydfil in 1900 and was one of only two Labour MPs in parliament. But by 1906 this number had increased to 26. Keir Hardie was elected leader of the party in the House of Commons, but was not very good at dealing with internal rivalries and he resigned from the post in 1908. From then on he devoted his energy to promoting the Labour Party and championing equality, particularly in the cause of women’s suffrage. In 1910, 40 Labour MPs were elected to parliament and Keir Hardie gave up the party leadership to George Barnes.

During the first year of World War One, Keir Hardie was an outspoken pacifist. He died on 26 September 1915 in Glasgow.

And look…Corbyn can sing (croak)…the Red Flag…