Life
1879-1946; b. White Hall, Broughshane, nr. Ballymena, Co. Antrim; s. of
Field-Marshall Sir George White; ed. Winchester and Sandhurst; served
in Gordon Highlanders, and 6th Mounted Infantry in Boer War, made trouserless
escape from the Boers and was subsequently decorated DSO; ADC to Sir George
in Gibralter; served in India; adjutant of Terrritorial Batt. of Gordon
Highlanders; taught in Bohemia; visited Canada; returned to Ireland to
support Home Rule; spoke with Casement at pubic meetings; quarrelled with
Casement at Rev. J. Armour’s meeting in Ballymoney; supported James
Larken in Lock-Out; organised Citizen Army for Larkin; arrested, Mansion
House, 1914; quit Citizen Army, May 1914; organised Irish Volunteers in
Derry and Tyrone; called on British Govt. to recognise Irish Volunteers
as defence force; dismissed from Irish Volunteers; did not enlist, but
took an ambulance to France at his own expense; organised Welsh miners’
strike in support of James Connolly, 1916; imprisoned for three months
in Pentonville, arriving shortly before the execution of Casement; invited
to stand for Workers’ Republican Party in Donegal, 1923, offered
himself as Christian Communist candidate, and was refused; settled in
N. Ireland; autobiography, Misfit (1930); twice married, first
in a love-match with a Catholic girl in Gibraltar (Mercedes “Molly”)
Mosley, and later to a Catholic lady (Doreen) who survived him; d. White
Hall. DIH
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Quotations
‘I have followed two lines in my life, roughly speaking the lines
of Christ and Lenin. They do not yet visibly converge.’ (Misfits;
cited by Sir Charles Brett in communication of 23 Feb. 1997.)
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Notes
Maurice Headlam, Irish Reminiscences (1947), records that in 1913
Countess Markievicz ‘generally had with her a Captain White, son
of Sir George White, of Ladysmith fame’; further, ‘Mr Ryan’s
book [W. P. Ryan, The Irish Labour Movement], implies that he it
was he who gave the idea of “arming the workers”. (pp.128-29.)
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