{"id":713,"date":"2019-09-14T12:11:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T12:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/?page_id=713"},"modified":"2019-10-06T10:46:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-06T10:46:40","slug":"recollections-martin-russell","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/?page_id=713","title":{"rendered":"Recollections – Martin Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Martin Russell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anti-apartheid activist and painter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following is the obituary that appeared in the Independent Newspaper\non the morning of Thursday 8th<\/sup> January 2009. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russell\u2019s lived in Wattlefield from 1964 to 1973.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brief resume of Martin Russell’s eventful life illustrates why he was\ndescribed by one of his family as “a true contrarian, but a highly\nprincipled contrarian”. He was a Christian who became an atheist, a\nconscientious objector who went on to become a full-time saboteur in South\nAfrica, immersing himself in the world of dynamite and detonators. A lifelong\nopponent of Communism, he began to see some attractions in the system in his\nlast years: in true contrarian fashion, he veered towards it just as much of\nthe world was veering sharply away from it. Thus it was that, at his request,\nhis coffin was covered with a large red cross, on which was stitched a hammer\nand sickle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in\nLondon, he went to art school there for two years but as a teenager left for Germany\nin 1946 as part of the Red Cross relief effort. His work included helping to\nrun camps for the homeless, providing supplies for displaced persons and\nreuniting families which had been broken up during the war. During his\nfive-year stay he also drove an ambulance in Berlin, where he was involved in\nsmuggling people out of the Russian sector. His parents were Salvation Army\nofficers but in the course of his German sojourn he became a resolute atheist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He heard\nmany horrific stories from people who had been in concentration camps. He\nalways said the greatest shock of his life was the realisation of how few\nordinary Germans had helped anyone in need. A God who would allow such things\nto happen, he insisted, must be either mad or bad, a belief which left him with\na profound, lifelong conviction that people had a personal responsibility to do\nwhat they could in this life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On his\nreturn to England in 1950 he studied social work at the London School of\nEconomics, going to work in the East End where he met an American, Nancy\nCliffe, who became his first wife. When called up for National Service he\nregistered as a conscientious objector, his German experiences having made him\na pacifist. He was sent to work for a pathologist who, he recalled, delighted\nin setting him particularly grisly tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1955 he\nwent off to South Africa to work at a mission hospital but was so appalled at\nthe apartheid system that he soon became immersed in political activism. Within\na year he had come to the attention of the authorities, who stiffly informed\nhim that his permit to enter native areas was being revoked. This effectively\nrendered him unemployed. His reaction was to throw himself into full-time\nrevolutionary politics, becoming close to ANC figures such as Fatima Meer, and Govan\nMbeke, whose son Thabo later went on to become prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other\nwhites joined an organisation close to the ANC, the Congress of Democrats, but\nmost of its members were also in the Communist Party and Russell was adamant\nthat he would not take orders from Moscow. He also favoured the use of force,\nwhich at that point was not yet official ANC policy. In his own highly\nindividualistic way he figured that the apartheid state was so repressive that\nit needed to suffer severe shocks. The way to do this, he concluded was through\nsabotage, aimed not at taking lives, but at economic disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A family\nmember recalls his explanation for such extreme measures: “He said it\nbegan with thinking that things were absolutely outrageous and that something\nhad to be done. It just made him so angry and was so unjust that he could not\nsit back and say it was terrible. The state was so powerful that you had to do\nsomething that would shock it, something which damaged it economically, that\nwould hurt the whites and not the blacks. And then if someone’s going to do it,\nhe said, ‘it had better be me.’ “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His second\nwife Margo, an academic, joined in these resistance activities. He was\nfrustrated by the difficulties of finding recruits, and by a shortage of both\nexplosives and expertise in using them, but his organisation managed to blow up\nsome electricity power-lines and railway-signalling systems. The authorities\nreacted to such incidents with mass arrests, lengthy detention periods, brutal\ninterrogation methods and hefty prison sentences. His daughter Jenni later\nwrote: “We lived in an atmosphere of\nfear. My earliest memories are of police raiding the house at night, emptying\nout dolls’ cots and sweeping books off shelves. People would simply\ndisappear.”<\/em> During one search of the house police took only a cursory\nlook underneath it, deterred by its dark and spider-filled atmosphere. They\nthus missed a box of detonators concealed there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russell\u2019s\nbrooded on the prospect that both of them could be locked up, leaving their\nthree children to be brought up by the South African state. Since this was too\nterrible to contemplate they fled to England in 1964.  From a farm in Wattlefield in South Norfolk\nRussell taught and became a painter, his portrayals of African scenes featuring\nin several exhibitions. But Africa was the passion of both Russell\u2019s and they\nmoved to Botswana in 1973, though with a Foreign Office warning that if they\ntravelled via South Africa they would be arrested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1976\nthey moved on to the Sudanese city of Juba, which the family remember as having\nmany electricity cuts, very little food, horrendously high temperatures and\nepidemics of cholera and bubonic plague. However, “My father had never been happier,”<\/em> according to Jenni\nRussell. “He just loved everything\nabout the culture and the society, and he would spend much of his day going off\nwalking into the bush and talking to chiefs about what had happened during the\ncivil war there.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980’s they moved on to Swaziland where, after a period teaching, Russell was recommended by the British High Commission as tutor to the teenage king and absolute ruler, Mswati III. When Russell told the uninterested royal that they would study the Russian revolution the adolescent king ignored him and persisted in reading a comic. It was only when Russell explained, with heavy emphasis, that the tale concerned an absolute ruler who was killed because he lost the confidence of the people that Mswati sat up and took notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the collapse of apartheid the Russells were able to return to South Africa in the 1990’s, Margo becoming a sociology professor while her husband effectively retired to become a prolific painter with exhibitions in London, Nairobi, Cape Town and Wales. He was cynical about the ANC government, arguing that the party should follow much more radical policies, in particular transferring land from whites to blacks. He regarded much of the government as “a middle-class lot who have got accustomed to hand-made suits and chauffeur-driven cars, just intent on becoming part of the international business elite as fast as possible.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was,\naccording to some close to him, pretty much the most argumentative man in the\nworld, devoid of small talk but extraordinarily trustworthy, endlessly\nhospitable, highly amusing and with a gift for friendship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David\nMcKittrick<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Russell, anti-apartheid campaigner and\npainter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born 14 October 1929 London; married 1954 Nancy\nCliffe (one son, marriage dissolved), 1960 Margo Phillips (one son, four\ndaughters).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Died McGregor, South Africa 15 December 2008. Mr Russell\u2019s daughter Jenni Russell grew up in Wattlefield and went on to be a Columnist for The Times and a senior producer for Chanel 4 News.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright remains with the Author and our thanks to The Independent for allowing this content to be shown on our website. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Russell Anti-apartheid activist and painter The following is the obituary that appeared in the Independent Newspaper on the morning of Thursday 8th January 2009. The Russell\u2019s lived in Wattlefield from 1964 to 1973.  A brief resume of Martin Russell’s eventful life illustrates why he was described by one of his family as “a true […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/713\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spoonerrow.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}