The Book

There are various forgotten radical texts included in Irish Writers and the Thirties. As it is a cultural history dealing with the role of Irish writers in the diverse Left cultures of the Thirties, these texts have significance both as social history and cultural artefact. The book treats of the Thirties as a long decade with cultural and political traces in art and literature of the Forties, too. 

Sabotage, The Plot Against America, a book authored by Albert Kahn with Michael Sayers, and published in 1942 by Harpers and Brothers Publishers New York and London, described the reach and influence of anti semitism and anti communism being spread through both Axis fascist propaganda activities and nativist rhetoric. As Kahn and Sayers put it, ‘….during the years 1933-1939 scores of American fascist organisations mushroomed in the United States...... these native fascists spread Propaganda  blaming all social and economic ills on “the Jews” and asserted that the New Deal was a “Jewish-Communist “ plot to rob Americans of their independence. It is no surprise that with the growth of this type of propaganda, Jewish writers took up the pen in forms of  literary or journalistic resistance to either document or refute the calumnies being spread. The Hour was a news bulletin that identified many and various outlets for different types of anti Jewish propaganda. Sayers was an early contributor. Sayers was later blacklisted for pro Soviet sentiments expressed in his last book written with Kahn. He wrote TV scripts under the name Michael Connor during the blacklist years, including episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood.  After the blacklist exile years, Sayers returned to America in 1967 and died in New York in 2010.