The International Brigades: My Novel

A while ago I set myself the goal of embarking on the project of writing a novel.  As a voracious reader, in many ways this was almost a natural progression for me.  In my late childhood leading into my early teens when I came back from living in the United States living and my family was temporarily living in my grandma’s house I didn’t have many distractions to keep me occupied.  I didn’t get along very well socially at the school so I didn’t have any friends to meet up with and do things with.  So I eventually started to write.  First of all there were small plots here and there followed by entire series of my beloved series Star Trek Voyager.  Eventually I conceived of an entire series of books about a bounty hunter in space who only took contracts to fight bad guys with a robot sidekick in tow.  This boy was, and in many ways still is, a science fiction nerd. It certainly passed the hours by.  And while many of those creations back then make me feel slightly embarrassed now (although they were pretty creative for an aspiring author so young) I still have a bit of pride in me for the results of my efforts. 

A few years ago I caught the writing bug again and attended first a short course in novel writing for a day then one that went over months.  I remember vividly coming into class in the evening from my latest soul destroying job.  Sharing ideas with people.  Being inspired by new ideas for my novel.  Getting excited when a plot twist idea came out of nowhere.  I decided to pursue a vaguely conceived idea of a police detective story including vampires, set in Bristol of all places.  Its working title was ‘West Sector Nine’.  It was mean’t to be like The Wire or The Shield with vampires.  Why vampires?  Well to be honest I was sick with the Twilight craze and wanted to try to bring vampires down to earth.  No more sappiness and portrayal of vampires as mysterious, ethereal and often improbably attractive and athletic looking (despite the long term deceased condition).  I wanted to seriously conceive of how the characters of vampires would change and how it would living as second class citizens to humans effected their view of the world.  Vampires I decided ultimately would be more startling in their similarities just a lot more world wise.  Some would be nice and some would be appalling characters who frankly wouldn’t care about suffering they inflict, either just to survive or to gain supremacy over their human rivals.  They would be a mixed bag of characters, much like ourselves.  But most intriguingly for a detective story they would have learned from human behaviour from many years and as a result become exceptionally skilled liars and master manipulators.

But the more I pursued this project the more frustratingly impractical and elusive it became for me.  Vampire stories have been done to death in films, books and TV series.  I could sense the cringe when I mentioned my pitch to certain people.  When I gave my pitch it was often inevitably followed by the inevitable “True Blood have already done this”.  In the end I decided to put the project on ice.  Not destroy everything, just shelf it until further notice.  My interest in the project waned and in the end I recognised that I had nowhere near the staying power of the writers of True Blood.  To the victor the spoils.

But at the beginning of this year the novel idea just wouldn’t let me go.  Perhaps it had something to do with this year being one which I began with the objective of setting myself ambitious personal goals.  I told myself I would not be in the same place career wise that time of year in a year’s time.  After seeing a documentary about the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa that moved me to tears I decided to do something I never did before and run a half marathon to raise money for the relief effort.  Two months onwards from then I was running 3 miles for my training, which was 3 miles more than I have ever ran before.  I continued on my merry way satisfying my acute hunger for reading, absorbing ideas as I went.  I mostly read non-fiction but now and then I would stumble on a stand out piece of fiction that gripped me and taught me lessons about novel writing that I will never forget.  The book “I am Legend” is a prime example of this.  More on this later.

But ultimately my ideas for novels tend to stem from contemporary debates and by observing the wonderful and god awful things that happen on this crazy planet, this latest project being no exception.  Looking at these things from a comparative historical point of view can also put an interesting light on things and can produce a goldmine of ideas.  With West Sector Nine I wanted to recall many issues that seemed to be hovering around the country at the time.  My own experiences of the abuse of police power and the shocking revelations that came out about the Hillsborough disaster made me want to pick up on the moral problem about giving individuals too much power.  I wanted to express the public’s cynicism about politics and the politician’s dilemma of being ever demonised by them no matter what they do.  Recalling from my own experience I wanted to play on the theme of lasting friendly relationships unexpectedly forming between unlikely people, which is pretty much the happy story of my life.  But the world turns quickly and before you know it the news cycle has turned once again.  A new strand of thought began.

The year 2014 saw the emergence in the world media of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  They seemed to spring forth from the ashes of wartorn Iraq and Syria, from the press's simplified perspective at least.  Here we have a genocidal horde who are so evil an ultraviolent that even Al Qaeda, hardly pacifists themselves, denounced them as being devils.  Their motto "we expand" seemed then to suit them well ( and in many ways still does) since they seemed to effortlessly take entire swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory.  But one of the aspects of this threat that seemed to chill western countries including this one was the speed with which many, but mercifully not anywhere near the majority, of disaffected Muslims sought to leave this country and join this group of religious fascists.  Britain has been left dealing with the prospect of approximately 500 and growing trained jihadists coming back to our shores once the Islamic State is no more.  There seems to be a majority consensus that those fighters who return from the Islamic State must be detained in some way or another, lest they merge back into the population and become ticking time bombs.  But what most interested me when reading into this topic was the increase in reports of Britons going abroad to join groups that are fighting against IS.  An edition of BBC Question Time seemed to capture the dilemma well.  Most of those in the audience wanted to see the British IS fighters dealt with, no surprises there, but they were more divided over what do about those that went out to fight on the opposite lines.  Much of the audience was baffled.  Who would do this?  Isn't it a bit strange to just get up and fight in some far off land when you can stay at home and change the channel?  The Tory MP guest seemed to be advocating locking up all of the returning fighters up regardless of what flag they were flying.  Then a woman put her hand up and asked something that seemed to give everyone pause for thought; "Aren't those going out to fight IS just like the brave people who volunteered to go out and fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War?"

The Spanish Civil War broke out between the elected republican government of Spain and it's supporters known as the Republicans against much of the Spanish military and it's supporters under General Francisco Franco in 1936.  This was during the age of fascism where Hitler had been in power for 3 years and Mussolini had been in power for 14 years.  The Blackshirts in London started to stir too.  It seemed as though fascism was on the way up.  In response to this socialist, communist and anarchist parties within and without Spain called for volunteers to help form the International Brigades.  Volunteers from all walks of life answered the call such as ex servicemen and various members of the working class of different political persuasion, all united by their opposition to fascism.   Even a few now well known writers including George Orwell joined the fight. In terms of international support for the different sides of the conflict there was a power imbalance since while the Soviet Union supported the Republicans and the Fascist powers supported the Nationalists, the main democracies in Europe stayed neutral. 

So this all led me on to the idea of writing about the concept of a modern International Brigade.  My novel would explore various questions such as most notably how would it work?  Wouldn't such an organisation be essentially an illegal paramilitary organisation?  Or indeed technically a terrorist group?  What would separate the members of this group from terrorists?  Why would people even want to join in the first place?  Why is this idea seemingly less attractive now than it was back in the days of the Spanish Civil War.  I think the latter has a lot to do with the fact that thanks to 24 hours news the images of war and it's horrors are a lot closer.

In many ways this novel concept is my cheeky act of revenge against the parts of the political left who don’t fail to disappoint me.  Years after the wars in Libya and Iraq it seems many voices just can’t help themselves and say a little too smugly “I told you so”.  Those voices even go so far to talk up the leaders who came before those wars, making Gaddafi sound like Mother Theresa with a secret police force.  It is not that those people’s opinions don’t have a point about raising cautionary tales about interventions, to me what I find distasteful is the extent they take them to.  What is more frustrating is that it works more as a mental roadblock more often than it works as a practical argument when it comes to working a way out of the difficulties we face today.  For instance in a typical argument on a political forum on Facebook, any discussion about IS and what to do about them is met by the overheard “well we created the conditions that brought them there”.  Thanks for that Sherlock, any suggestions about what to do about this awful situation.  Essentially then the person espousing this view will argue to do nothing, either by referring to their initial answer described or by implying that anything we do is useless since we are ultimately selfish.  Yes the standard of debating is set that low on the internet.

But if you dwell on the concept of an International Brigades group formed for the sole purpose of fighting against tyranny and promoting democracy you find there is definitely not a shortage of tyranny out there.  In Equatorial Guinea a tinpot dictatorship has been in place longer than I have been alive.  After the not so affectionately named previous president Mad Uncle Macias was executed his nephew took charge of this tiny African nation.  After discovering massive oil and gas reserves in the country the lions share of the oil money went to the President’s family and government officials.  The President’s son Teodora is famous for spending the country’s annual education budget on luxury cars, yachts and hotel suites.  All the while the country is ruled by a climate of fear.  In The Gambia President (formerly general) took power in a military coup in 1994 and has since not left.  He is notable for making outlandish comments such as claiming that he can make herbal remedies for AIDS and Yellow Fever.  Police violence is endemic as is corruption through all levels of society.  The most well known African basket case at the moment is Zimbabwe, on which my planned novel will focus on (albeit with a fictionalised variant).  Robert Gabriel Mugabe the man once lauded as a freedom fighter and a beacon of hope has now pretty much become the complete opposite.  Betraying every ideal he seemed to stand for Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is a democratic society in paper only.  The economy is a mess.  The health system is near hopeless.  Corruption is everywhere, especially centred on the President’s family and loyalists. Democratic elections may as well be relabelled civil wars given the scale of government supported violence that occurs during them.  As one student opposition activist says “As peaceful revolution becomes impossible, it makes violent revolution inevitable.”

Character wise I am very excited at the prospect of developing the African dictatorship angle.  The dictator (for simplicity’s sake I will refer to him as Mugabe) has a lot of potential to develop as a frightening but at the same time very diverse character.  He will be portrayed as someone who is outwardly charming and polite in one on one interactions, but someone who at the same time is slowly losing their grip on reality.  He would be someone who is constantly planning ahead, checking potential threats in the immediate and long term.  He will often be nostalgic given his elderly age and at the same time persistently worried about his vulnerabilities, which are most obviously manifest in his physical ailments.  His firey and often blood curdling speeches will hide an inner addiction to violence as well as an inner insecurity, but at the same time serve its purpose to fire up loyalists.  But as his age advances he becomes more aware of his rivals; his defence minister and heir apparent and now more worryingly his wife the First Lady.  The former is an outwardly charismatic but inwardly Machiavellian character who is playing a quiet but ruthless long game for the presidency.  The latter who was before dismissed as no more than a corrupt debutant is now gaining in political confidence, destroying rivals unexpectedly at a rate that worries even her husband whom she nonetheless has a massive influence on.  As the conflict with the International Brigades gets more heated, so do the tensions between these players.

And what of the International Brigades myself?  Whose idea was it anyway?  In the novel I plan to have this most unlikely of organisations assembled by some of the most unlikely and motely collection of individuals you could imagine.  This would include hated figures in British society such as a tabloid journalist and a corrupt and flamboyant City banker (as well as his long suffering PA who loathes him).  A disillusioned Secret Intelligence Service Case officer will also lend their expertise to the project as will a South African ex apartheid-era assassin.  They will be accompanied by a less flamboyant and humble figure who is a taxi  driver by trade but also voluntary relief worker.  This taxi driver figure is based on a real life person who was tragically killed  by IS, so if this novel becomes a reality and goes towards being sold, I will need to consult his family out of respect for them.  I read about his story in the BBC News and I found his story a touching one, and his warm character one that other people would likely learn to appreciate and connect with.  As you can see some of these people do not sound like the most selfless people in the world.  It is hard  to imagine all of these people being in the same room, let alone organising a paramilitary group with altruistic intentions.  But this is when the central themes of my novel come into play. From  a personal point of view, there is no real definitive type of person I am friends with.  My friends are a humble and diverse coalition of the strange.  Some people I get on with and others I do not.  Often with the former this tends to happen with people who are from completely different backgrounds than my own.  To this end I wanted to play on the theme of a group of seemingly random (and sometimes antagonistic with the banker and the journalist) group of people, putting up with each other’s eccentricities and faults and working towards a common cause.  The theme of redemption will also be very important, with some characters seemingly against their nature trying to fight for it.  Sometimes this craving for redemption is prompted by a life changing event, such as it does with the banker, or the acknowledgement of feelings that have been building up in them for a long time, such as the case with the assassin.  With some of the originally most selfish characters, the nature of the enterprise that they are in leads them into unavoidable moral conflicts.  After all the group has been formed to create violent struggles, albeit for good causes.  This does not always run smoothly alongside their mission to make the world a better after spending most of their lives doing the opposite.

So there we have it; my novel.  Please do not ask when it is going to be done because I do not have a bloody clue.  This is not on a strict timetable and the story arcs may evolve over time into a direction I haven’t considered before.  Either way I am confident that this will be a personal challenge worth embarking on.