During the writing of this book the popular conception of international terrorism has changed shape at least twice. I first noticed the preponderance of 1970s terror novels back in 2010. Al Qaida was then the face of international terror. Nine years on from the World Trade Centre attacks their enigmatic leader Osama bin Laden was still at large and, in the mind of the average British person, a āterrorist attackā meant a bombing conducted by an organised cell of committed jihadis. Four years later I was completing my Ph.D. on a different but related set of mid-century novelists, bin Laden was dead, and Al Qaida ās place in the media spotlight had been overtaken by the new terror threat, the Islamic State. ISIS turned away from the cultivation of international networks and instead focused on building a really existing Caliphate among the war-torn wreckage of Iraq and Syria. Suddenly, it appeared there was a whole country of terrorists. The British media was no longer obsessed with foreign terrorists entering Britain, but with British-born youths turning jihadi and flying over to join the insurrection. As I sit here typing now, in 2017, the terrible carnage in the Middle East has resulted in a refugee crisis to match that of the Second World War. European governments have opened their doors to these migrants, with Germany and Sweden leading by example. The British governmentās efforts, by comparison, have been comparatively meagre. This is largely attributable to the new vehicular form of terrorist attack first carried out in Nice in July 2016, then in Berlin in December 2016 and, most recently, in London and Stockholm in 2017. Gone are the days of elaborate networks of underground terrorist cells. When the average British person thinks of a terrorist attack in 2017, they think of a lone attacker whose only weapons are trucks and kitchen knives but who, perhaps because of this very lack of sophistication, prove totally unpredictable.
This book does not aim to provide any answers regarding contemporary terrorism. I begin with these statements merely to indicate the extent to which our understanding of terrorism can shift within the stretch of only a few short years. And this is only the most prominent narrative around terrorism; the picture becomes even less clear when we introduce far right terrorists, Boko Haram, The Invisible Committee, Hamas, or cyber-terrorism involving a huge range of disparate groups from LulzSec to the Russian state. Terrorism is a complex thing, and itās often said that one manās terrorist is another manās freedom fighter. Some things are, however, definitely terrorism. These problems donāt go away when we put quotation marks around them. It is for that reason that I have refused to opt for the distancing formāāterrorismāāfavoured by many academics. I trust that you, as readers of an academic monograph, will be capable of detecting ambiguities of usage yourselves without my foregrounding them. Indeed, the core of this bookās argument is that it is the very flexibility of the concept, terrorism, which makes it valuable as a tool for historical analysis. The ways in which British society has used the word terrorism have shifted not only in response to the real-life terrorist threats that it faces, but also in relation to the way it perceives itself, the lines it draws between liberty and security, and the level of tolerance which it holds for radical ideas. The 1970s are the setting for this study, and British novels are its subject matter. You will find that the ways they deal with terrorism are often alien to our contemporary mores, and yet, in context, they are always comprehensible. If this shifts your perceptions of terrorism then so be it. It is not the primary purpose of this text.
This study came about due to a separate study related to experimental writing in Britain during the 1970s. The decadeās politics were perhaps best described by Francis Wheen as a āpungent melange of apocalyptic dread and conspiratorial feverā (2010, 9). In order to better immerse myself in the structures of feeling predominating at this time I took to reading pulpy thriller novels (this also provided a much-needed respite from the complex, avant-garde material I was supposed to be reading). As I worked my way down the Corgi bestseller lists and into the lesser-known paperbacks, I noticed a recurring trope, jarring at first but eventually becoming an obsession. There were an awful lot of novels published in Britain in the 1970s in which terrorists were the main protagonists. Initially, I thought this may have been a trend common in the thriller genre overall which I had never noticed, never being an enthusiastic reader of thrillers before this point. Research confirmed its particularity to the 1970s, however; both my own and in papers like Appelbaum and Paknadelās longitudinal study. Alex Houenās groundbreaking book, Terrorism and Literature (2001), demonstrates that literature encounters terrorism throughout the twentieth century, but it makes no comment on the quantity of works published. Randall, Banita and Rothberg, among others, have commented on the glut of terror-themed novels published post-2001, although the number with terrorist protagonists remained low. Discussing my initial research at the International Terrorism and Aesthetics conference in Szeged, Hungary, in 2011, I was confirmed in my suspicions that this was an important, under-researched phenomenon. The work then continued for another six years, trying to make sense of this initial finding. What I found is as follows.
In order to understand both the novel and perceptions of terrorism in any given society, one must embed them in the historical conditions from which they are produced. Terrorism has its own history, as both a concept and a tactic, which must be addressed first in order to grasp its importance in a given moment. The reasoning behind any given act of terror can be manifold and often opaque, but the form of action we define as terrorism is one that is shaped by preceding acts. Terrorism changes but it is not reinvented anew on each occasion. The history of terrorism framing the 1970s novels which are this studyās main concern is outlined in Chapter 2. Drawing on the work of terrorism and security studies, this chapter argues that terrorism as a concept emerges alongside the development of the nation state. Assassins and zealots precede this historical juncture, but it is only with the formal elevation of the body politic to the basis of constitutional power that terror as an explicitly political force can be seen to exist. From this point, Chapter 2 traces terrorismās troubled relationship to anarchism, National Socialism and Marxism , before it was eventually translated into the guerrilla doctrine and its doomed 1970s siblingāthe urban guerrilla. The chapter closes with an overview of the standard terrorist novel narrative. This morphology emerged in response to repeated tropes in terrorist fiction and the majority of novels covered in this study conform to it, more or less. Like all structures it is contingent, but it is important to establish before moving on to the content of the novels themselves.
Chapters 3ā6 focus on distinct categories of terrorism encountered in 1970s novels. Some, like Chapter 5, engage with one particular groupās impact; others, like Chapter 3, ask broader questions about how these novels relate to British identity in the 1970s. For ease of reference I have also listed here the key texts engaged with in each chapter in the hope this makes the work more navigable for reference purposes.
The Terrorist Novel, Thrillers and Postcolonial Britain
Chapter 3 places the British terror novel in both its national and international context. Although the end of Empire had been feted since the 1950s (Whittle 2016, 14), the 1970s saw a renewed postcolonial funk dominating Britainās understanding of its role in the world. The 1973 recession which marks the decadeās break from 1960s prosperity is largely blamed on the Oil Crisis ; an embargo by Arab states on trading with the West. Common depictions of foreign terrorists conform to colonial prejudices regarding race but are also contrasted against depictions of Britain and its agents as powerless in a postcolonial world. By analysing postcolonial structures of feeling, this chapter also establishes the core themes which will emerge throughout the proceeding study including questions of belief, authenticity and commitment, the morality of violence, and role of the state in the protection of liberty. From a primarily foreign focus, the chapter then goes on to show how Britain itself is presented in a postcolonial manner. Terrorist novels written from left, right and centrist perspectives all consider the meaning of Britain following the collapse of its Empire and the foundation of multiculturalism.
Key texts: The Honorary Consul (Graham Greene 1973), Guerrillas (V.S. Naipaul 1975), The Levanter (Eric Ambler 1972), The Day of the Jackal (Fredrick Forsyth 1971), The Volunteers (Raymond Williams 1978), Who Killed Enoch Powell? (Arthur Wise 1970), The Chilian Club (George Shipway 1971).
Writing the IRA from the Mainland: Truth and Fiction
Chapter 4 focuses on the number-one terrorist threat to Britain during the 1970sāthe Provisional IRAāand the correspondingly few terrorist novels which feature them. Drawing on the large and detailed body of scholarship now existing relating to the conflict in Northern Ireland, this chapter focuses on investigating the truths and falsehoods about the IRA which are communicated in the novels. By comparing fact to fiction, the content of the novels, many of them bestsellers, reveal the processes of miscommunication and misunderstanding through which the conflict was mediated to the British public. The chapter then extends its analysis of popular misinformation to investigate Claire Sterling ās claims that the Provisional IRA was part of an international terror network directed and funded by the Soviet Union .
Key texts: Harryās Game (Gerald Seymour 1975) and The Glory Boys (Gerald Seymour 1976), The Family Arsenal (Paul Theroux 1976), The Sweets of Pimlico (A.N. Wilson 1977), The Good Terrorist (Doris Lessing 1985).
Countercultural Writers and the Angry Brigade
Chapter 5 concerns the left-wing terrorist group The Angry Brigade (shambolic counterpart to the Italian Red Brigades and German Red Army Faction) and the surprising level of sympathy these terrorists drew from the broader British ...