Review: Track Record by Darren Campbell with Trystan Bevan

Darren Campbell is one of the fastest men in the world and has won Olympic Gold. I’m probably one of the slowest men in the world and know next to nothing about athletics. The Olympics though are unmissable, especially the mens’ sprints. Campbell achieved the zenith of his success in Athens 2004 leading the British 4x100m relay team to a stunning victory against the USA. The success of Darren at the peak of world sport is all the more impressive in that he came from very humble beginnings, growing up on the Sale Racecourse estate in Manchester, a stone’s throw from Gunchester and the violent poverty of Moss Side. His mother Marva raised him as a single parent. She settled in Manchester after emigrating from home in Jamaica, part of the Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants who faced a lot of difficulties settling into British society. The sacrifice Darren’s mother made was surely revealing and I think she was responsible for paving the way to his success. From enrolling him in Sale Harriers at the age of 8 to patrolling the estate streets keeping tabs on gang culture, his mother always had his back and I think he is a strong character able to make a critical junctures in his life the correct choices. He has never forgotten his roots on the streets of Manchester and although the anger can sometimes be revealing as part of a negative character trait, to succeed in the face of adversity is clearly demonstrated in the meteoric rise to success that his career path as a professional athlete took him. An early shooting of a gang mate when Darren was a young man led him to flee to pastures new and get out of dodge, moving from Manchester down to sunny Newport in South Wales, where under the tutelage of an aspiring Colin Jackson he could concentrate his focus on running.
The strength in unity of the UK athletics professionals is stark and it is no surprise that team GB achieved so much during Darren’s era. He was soon being coached by legend Linford Christie and working in the same training camp as the likes of Jamie Baulch and Christian Malcolm. The whirlwind of globetrotting around international athletics events were a bit of a blur. Taking in Budapest, Sydney, Atlanta, and obviously Athens, we are shown an insider’s view of life on the track. Aside from the glamour of the very short time in which the races actually take in the spotlight of the stadium it is quite sobering gaining an understanding into the immense preparation a professional athlete faces. Being at training in the middle of winter or running up and down sand dunes to improve endurance it is definitely hard graft.
I particularly enjoyed Darren’s recounting of the special event in Sarajevo which was to show unity with the people of the Balkans who had suffered so much during the conflict of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. I think that Darren’s poignant words about the athletes that boycotted this event and the gifts it gave him in understanding humanity show a depth of character in him that he should further. He came from nothing and he can relate to the children of the warzone who have lost everything.
To me the most interesting part of the book was post career when he moved into coaching. The list of professionals he’s worked with during that time is pretty impressive. Moving through athletics into team sports such as rugby union and football, to have been called by Cardiff Blues to mentor Jonah Lomu and then by Chelsea to oversee Andrey Shevchenko’s form improvement clearly indicate how well revered Darren’s achievements in sport have been. He keeps giving his skills to others and is obviously a positive role model to many. I hope he can continue into his retirement achieving further life goals and that his business PAS, a successful sports nutrition company can continue to open doors for him in the future. As a side note in the epilogue he discusses health issues but these should be trivial for a man who can sprint 100m in 10 seconds to overcome and I hope that he can rebuild to full health and fitness to continue with his obviously cherished family life.
A good book to read for anyone with even the faintest interest in athletics and professional sport.

Review: How to Change the World – Tales of Marx and Marxism – by Eric Hobsbawm

This is the second Hobsbawm book that I have tackled and I find him to be a detailed, erudite, intelligent author and his obvious left-leaning politics readily assist him in compiling this study of Karl Marx and his work. The first part of the book looks directly at Marx’s work, specifically his writings with Engels. I’ve read the Communist Manifesto and faced a Marxist indoctrination in the social sciences whilst reading Geography at UCL in London. I like the revolutionary aspects of Marxism and do consider most of my day to day living to be quite Marxist in its constant desire to uproot society from the bottom up with a distant Utopian goal that is a fairer and more balanced society constantly in mind.
The second half of the book looks at the history of Marxism and its context in varied global ages. The Russian Revolution and Soviet Union are obviously important although for a lot of the book we look at Marxism in European socialist and communist parties. There are two chapters on Gramsci, the Italian who I must try and investigate further. Sometimes reading the book can get a bit tiring and it is very thorough in its detail. I’m going to tackle more Hobsbawm and would recommend this to anyone who wants an entry level understanding of Marxism.

Review: Prison Writing of Latin America by Joey Whitfield

Joey is a teacher of mine at MLANG in Cardiff University. This is his first book. It explores prison writing in Latin America and looks at abolitionism of the penal system and draws on some really rather delicate themes that expose the dark brutality of prisons in a developing continent where sometimes human rights can be totally thrown out of the window. There is a schism in the penal code between political prisoners and criminals and Joey looks at how these two groups affect each other’s progress through the system. Often it is the poorest and racially discriminated against that suffer the worst fates in the prison system. Poor, indigenous women victims of Reagan’s War on Drugs when Latin American governments need to satisfy captivity quotas in order to get their dollar funding are the ones which are locked away as they are easy targets for a corrupt police force. The first chapter looks at political writing within the prison system. I was totally blown away by the imprisoned Costa Rican author José León Sánchez. This man was a true victim of the system and was wrongly given a life imprisonment term on the barren prison island colony of San Lucas, condemned to carrying a ball and chain around with him whilst manacled all day. In the face of adversity, Sánchez became literate and his work ‘La isla de los hombres solos’ catapulted him into national and international fame, his original work confounding all the critics. Chapter 2 of Whitfield is very dark and difficult to read. It explores homosexual love in the prison system, from rape through to desperate displays of machisimo. The men turn to each other in a way of confronting the system. This chapter looks mainly at imprisoned Cubans. Chapter 3 is brutal in the way it describes the prison massacres of Senderoso Luminosa captives who fight wars with the Peruvian authorities from behind the door, all in defence of their leftist communist ideologies. Some of the worst prison massacres in history occurred in Peru during the 1980s at the peak of the Senedero resistance guerrilla war with the state. Chapter 4 is about the War on Drugs where the Reagan administration turns its Southern hemisphere politics away from leftist insurgents and criminalises the narcotics industry, creating a new criminal class. Comando Vermelho (Red Command) is Brasil are a drug-trafficking criminal gang that originate in prisons and go on to seize control of the urban favelas in Brasil and based on resitance tactics and influence from political prisoners their command structure do a lot for prisoner rights within South America. There are interesting references to the decadent tourist industry in La Paz where the Bolivian prison system has been opened up by a UK prisoner’s book (Marching Powder) which glamourises the capitalist excesses of the jail there.
I found Whitfield’s book to be neat and compact, well-researched, with clear translations from the author when excerpts of Spanish or Portuguese texts were required. There is a shock element to the book and it is hard to imagine what life is really like for these prisoners. Through literature they have discovered a means of dealing with their suffering and I think that one of the main points that Joey makes is that this prison literature is important if we wish to develop more progressive ideas about how to deal with this marginalised element of society. There is sympathy there but also we see excesses of the banality of evil that lurks in these bins of society and this is often mirrored in real life in the criminal enterprises that originally give birth to the prison.

Review: Even Silence has an End – My six years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle – by Ingrid Betancourt

Ingrid Betancourt was one of the most high profile political prisoners in the world during her captivity in the Colombian Jungle at the hands of the FARC-EP, Colombia’s left wing communist guerrillas. A brutal civil war has raged for the best part of 60 years in this Southern hemisphere country. The rural FARC occupy the West of the country and fight against a government that is propped up by US military aid and this Cold War-esque struggle has raged for decades. Most of the information we gather in the international press regarding the conflict tends to be heavily biased and actually obtaining real information about the FARC and their ideologies is very difficult and suppressed. This book, is a rarity, in that it offers an insight into the Guerrilla aspect of the struggle. It does this perhaps inadvertently and perhaps against the intentions of the author who perhaps expects the reader to be overly sympathetic to what was indeed for her a terrible ordeal and a life changing one.
Betancourt was born into a political family and was a member of Colombia’s elite. She is a dual national and it is her French nationality that really projected her plight to the international world. The French government were very active in campaigning for her release.
The manner in which Betancourt was captured by the FARC, I feel, needs to be questioned more thoroughly. To me it seems as though due to the scanty provision of security by the government as she conducted politics in or on the fringes of the FARC held sone, I think that perhaps the forces that be within the government might have deliberately pawned her as a political captive. It just didn’t add up how easily she was initially kidnapped and the government were certainly somewhat responsible.
She was taken off to the jungle and for the next 6 years spent her life on the move darting between various military camps, evading capture from the authorities and evading death from the ongoing violent conflict between the insurgent guerrillas and government armed forces. One of the highlights of the book to me was the way in which we learn about the ways of the FARC. From day-to-day activities to the political organisation of the armed units. to relationships with their leaders and the discourse between authorities and the way in which the captives had access to international and national media via radios. The vocabulary of the FARC is explored and a word which rang in my ears and that we hear a lot of is ‘chontos’ which are the makeshift jungle lavatories. To me the captivity seemed like a bit of an adventure. On the whole, within the camps Betancourt had relative freedom and was allowed such luxuries as a dictionary and to regularly listen to messages from her family on the radio. Life was harsh and the camps were very disciplined. It was made clear to our protagonist that she would die if necessary from a bullet at any stage, in particular if she resisted her orders when marching between camps. AT various points her captivity became more intense and she was rather inhumanely treated like a prisoner – I felt sorry hearing about when some of her privileges were removed but underpinning the whole period of her captivity were the FARC’s precautions in maintaining her as a high profile hostage without letting down their military guard. Hostages are an unpleasant but consistent feature of war throughout history. IT may be brutal as the taking of hostages is often just down to bad luck and they are innocents but equally they can be powerful bargaining tools particularly in the nature of this conflict where the FARC were primarily a weaker military force and they needed to make critical decisions and tough ones in order to withstand the onslaught from government backed forces supported very heavily by hi-tech US aid. The leadership of FARC availed themselves to Betancourt and I think she was very respected for her integrity by these senior military figures. The ending of the story is a happy one for Betancourt as the FARC inadvertently let down their guard and allow for her to be rescued. She is reunited with her family although her father has passed away during her time as a hostage. I think that she may have very strong elements of Stockholm syndrome and it would be interesting to hear her long term views on the whole situation and the political aspects of the Colombian Civil War. I think that her use as a hostage had its merits as it may have ultimately sped up the conclusion and end of the overall conflict as the FARC have now on the whole laid down their weapons and we are almost at the point of a genuine lasting peace. The book is a wonderfully told tale and it provokes a lot of thought and is a very worthy read, whatever your expectations are in approaching it.