Gary Kent Reviews Lost Revolution September 25, 2009
Posted by Garibaldy in Irish History, Workers' Party.trackback
I know some readers here read Sluggerotoole, but my impression is that most don’t, so I thought this was worth mentioning. Gary Kent, a British political activist who worked with The Workers’ Party and then the Democratic Left, has reviewed The Lost Revolution over at Sluggerotoole. Kent is a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, and Director of Labour Friends of Iraq. The review is basically a mixture of some comments on the book with his memories, and his inaccurate characterisation of WP policy on the north. I think it’s fair to say that it’s the most critical take on the book I’ve seen, although not all the criticisms are fair.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Sorry, any signatory of the Euston Manifesto has long declared his/her idiocy and political cretinism.
And the so-called “Labour Friends of Iraq”; so friendly their political party was responsible for killing tens of thousands of Iraqis. With friends like that….
I’m not going to bother….
PS. there’s an interesting thread on Crooked Timber about the belated awareness of many on the self-described “Decent Left” (i.e. the Euston crowd, Labour Friends etc) of just what a disaster Iraq has become.
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please see moderation policy
” The CLR is an open forum for discussion. But, it’s not Politics.ie, which is – to apply what splintered sunrise noted on another discussion on comments – ’something of a bear pit’ and where various terms are bandied about recklessly.
The point is that the CLR is – and has to remain – a place where people can discuss and feel free to discuss but also a place where people can be heard respectfully.”
If you want to bandy about phrases like cretinism maybe the playground of politics.ie is more for you
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OK, “cretinism” violates the moderation policy; I withdraw that term. But the Euston gang and their cronies through their bad faith, imputations of fascism and support for fascism made against anti-war groups on the left, refusal to face the consequences of the positions they supported, the cheer leading of the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and innumerable other examples of their arrogance and wilful stupidity surely warrant the use of the term. But I accept that CLR is not politics.ie and will try not to use such terms again.
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CMK,
I’d agree with you on the Euston Manifesto and the Labour Friends of Iraq. I thought the review worth reading though. It does make an interesting point about WP influence in Britain (probably exaggerated), echoing something Mick Hall said on the Smullen thread recently.
I’ll check out the Crooked Timber thing. Thanks. And yes, these people should all hang their heads in shame.
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I haven’t been following the various WP related threads here recently, but I have finished reading the The Lost Revolution.
A cracking read, a genuine page turner, and a revelation to someone like myself who didn’t know what ‘sticky’ meant up until recently. Definitely recommended reading.
A question that arises from the final chapter of the book regarding the metamorphosis from WP to NA to DL is: will the same or similar trajectory be followed by the SP or PbP here?
How is TLR doing sales wise?
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There’s an interesting continuity between Kent’s role as a pro-Government cheerleader on Iraq, and his career in Ireland, where he was responsible for introducing David Trimble to Sean O’Callaghan, who described him as a “supposedly left-winger who is more right-wing.”
There’s also a definite parallel between aspects of the history of the Workers Party, and what Sidney Blumenthal called the ‘shadow leftism’ of the neoconservatives.
They had expected to be the key intellectuals in the Democratic Party, but found themselves supplanted by a younger, more radical generation on the New Left. Increasingly defined by that split, they became useful allies of, and ultimately key propagandists for, the Republican Party.
I tend to think of Eoghan Harris as the Irving Kristol of Irish politics. He’d probably appreciate the title.
Neoconservatism is in large part a tradition which renews itself by recruiting left intellectuals for the right. Without wanting to get into witch-hunts, etc. I think it is important for the left to understand and counteract that process.
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Gari, I read Slugger and post under another nom – guess who! Your comment on the review on Slugger is fair enough as far as it goes. But I think the best one liner description of that sorry time is that both sides were right in what they said about each other (Colm B’s words, I think).
CMK: No chance of SP or PbP following a similar trajectory. Some individuals in them will of course.
Saleswise, I didn’t see TLR on the best seller list in the Irish Times last week. But at the Dublin launch one of the authors claimed it would be at no.4 in the next non-fiction list, two of those ahead of it being about angels (which are one of the current opiates of the people)…
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I’m now going to have to wrack my brains every time I read Slugger Joe. At a guess, Dublin SF supporter? :p
That might be the best one liner. Not necessarily the most accurate though.
I don’t think either the SP or PBP are yet big enough for the pressure of careerism to forge a significant split. We’ll have to wait and see if they get big enough. Obviously the different history of each group from The WP would mean some pressures present there would not be present in these groups. And vice versa. For example, the fall of the USSR on the one hand, on the other the possibility of a split in the international organisations they are part of being mirrored in Ireland.
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Gary does not mention that he was (is?) a member of the ILP grouping in the British Labour Party. This small grouping was descended from the Independent Labour Party which had exited from the Labour Party in the 1930s on the basis of a left critique, had developed what could be called a libertarian socialist politics (they supported the POUM in the Spanish civil war and sent out volunteers, they opposed stalinism and social democracy etc.). Having shrunk significantly they rejoined Labour in the 1970s. They linked up with the WP despite that partys pro-soviet stance because of a shared analysis of the North. There was a fair bit of interaction.
As a WP member, I attended two ILP conferences myself in the 1980s. Their ideological positions was one influence on my own political development away from leninism towards libertarian marxism.
Although they were enthusiastic about the WP, the WP were only really interested in using them to gain access to the higher echelons in Labour but knew they were lacking influence. The WP had a front/support group in Labour called the Committee for Peace and Progress in Ireland in which the ILP played a role.
Sadly the ILP moved far to the right in the 1990s and ended up supporting the war in Iraq and generally being ‘ever so-slightly left of blairites’. I think some of their Glasgow based people did not go in that direction and are still involved in the Campaign for Socialism, which is the main (only) left grouping in Scottish Labour.
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I meant Gary Kent of course rather than our regular Garibaldy
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Thanks for posting up that review.
The Lost Revolution was indeed at no. 4 (with 462 sales) in the charts for the Republic of Ireland two weeks ago. I’m afraid it has slid down the charts since then. To complicate matters many smaller independent bookshops are not counted for the chart figures and we haven’t heard any figures for the north. We are told it’s selling steadily but we have encountered strong competition from the angels and also from books about more malevolent characters. Sincere thanks to anyone who has bought it and to the various people who have offered comments and reviews on this and other sites.
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Congrats, 462 copies in a week is very decent indeed. And well deserved.
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Thank you Eamonn.
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No bother. Glad to hear it’s selling well. Quite a few people I know have bought it off the internet too. If there’s any other reviews anyone is aware of, let us know and we’ll stick up a link to those too. Someone posted a link in a previous comment to an Irish Times one, and I assume most people here will have seen Splintered Sunrise’s comments on the Belfast booklaunch here
Might be an idea actually when more appear to have a thread dedicated to the reviews so people can find them all in one place.
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Interesting.
I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that the WP helped sway the Labour Party towards neutrality on the North. After all, as far back as 1981 when the Labour Party was much more left-wing than it became, you had the appalling spectacle of Labour NI spokesman Don Concannon visiting The Maze to tell Bobby Sands he had no hope of getting any concession from the British government. Even at the time this was criticised as a gratutiously insensitive act mainly carried out so that Labour would look tough on the North.
The people in Troops Out etc. were always on the far left of Labour and other parties. It would come as a surprise to anyone who recalls the glory days of Roy Mason to find that, pre Workers Party intervention, Labour had been on the side of the nationalist community in the North.
And I hope the WP didn’t put up posters with the word ‘craic’ on them. That nonsensical neologism is one of the most irritating additions to the language in the last few years, it’s up there with ‘going forward.’
Of course anyone who supported the invasion of Iraq doesn’t have much moral right to pontificate on the North, given their apparent willingness to accept massive civilian casualties in pursuit of a nebulous objective.
Also interesting to see, yet again, Stalinist being used as having the same meaning as ‘pro-Soviet.’ Did Kruschev really exist or was that a dream I had?
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I’d agree he was exaggerating the influence those events had, but a lot of people who were or would later be important in the Labour Party, including in 1997 on, did attend them. I think we can safely say that it did give a viewpoint to many more people in the British Labour Party than would otherwise have heard it, and some were sympathetic, but beyond that hard to say. I’d be interested to hear if Brian has a view on it.
I had the urge to mention the death toll in Iraq, but I thought the mere mention of the Euston Manifesto and the Labour Friends of Iraq was enough to discredit him 🙂
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The WP had a front/support group in Labour called the Committee for Peace and Progress in Ireland in which the ILP played a role.
Blimey – never knew that was what they were. I went to an LP fringe event given by the LCPPI some time in the early 90s, in the hope of (a) seeing De Rossa and (b) hearing somebody being rude about the Provos from a left-wing position (TOM’s dominance on the LP Left was pretty solid at the time). De Rossa was certainly there; so too were a ghastly ranting Unionist whose name I forget and Brian Wilson MP, whose contribution was openly pro-unionist (the Unionists have always been good friends to Labour, the SNP are tartan Tories, PSF are Fascists and you can’t trust the SDLP). Extraordinary evening, and not in a good way. I don’t think the WP viewpoint really got across – at least, I hope it didn’t.
Eamonn – I don’t know the language, so I don’t know about ‘craic’, but I can tell you that the adverts for the LCPPI meeting promised ‘crack’. The Guardian Diary later recorded that the local constabulary had been in touch with the organisers over that one. If ‘craic’ is a back-formation, maybe that’s why people adopted it.
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Interesting that according to Lost Revolution, LCPPI was sponsored by then-MP Harry Barnes, later the President of the Labour Friends of Iraq.
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Harry did become closely associated with the WP and was very open about it. Certainly more open than the WP was in terms of its own influence.
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CMK doesn’t wish to bother to engage with Labour Friends of Iraq but for others, let me explain that we are composed of those who supported and those who opposed the intervention but who decided that the priority was, for instance, to support the new and independent unions which had been able to emerge from decades of repression by Saddam.
We have sent three delegations to Iraq and met many, in government, in the unions and women’s groups who are seeking to build a federal, pluralist and democratic society. They have mixed feelings about the intervention. Many saw it as a liberation, especially in Kurdistan which was the victim of genocide over many years (nearly 200,000 were killed) and most were furious about the post-intervention mess. But they generally want to build good relations with the UK and other countries, not least as they need increased international trade, investment and all sorts of exchanges to overcome the legacy of dictatorship and isolation. See http://www.labourfriendsofiraq,org.uk for more information.
It’s said that I was responsible for introducing Sean O’Callaghan to David Trimble. It wouldn’t be a crime but it is not correct. I did, however, help organise the New Dialogue/New Statesman meeting at the Labour Party conference in 1996, from memory, which was the first time that a Unionist leader had attended Labour conference. I make no apology for this and thought, and still do, that it was very important that the party engaged with unionists as well as nationalists
As for The Lost Revolution, I wrote that WP events at the Labour Party conference had an impact on the debate. People differed over this but that’s how I saw it over many years.
Gary Kent
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It’s good to hear that Colm (September 25) remembers attending ILP conferences in the late 1980s and acknowledges our influence on his political development. It’s good to know we had some influence somewhere for we certainly didn’t have any with the Labour leadership, whatever he and his comrades in the WP youth wing hoped at the time. We stuck to a political position that was far from comfortable – not many on the left in Britain were prepared to stand up against the pro-Sinn Fein/IRA view of Northern Irish politics in the 1980s.
Like the WP, the ILP re-thought much of its political perspective during the 1990s, especially in the wake of Communism’s fall and the rise of Blair. But to describe this as a move ‘far to the right’, as Colm does, is both simple and simply wrong.
If you want to know where the ILP really stood in relation to Blair and new Labour get hold of ‘A Socialism for Our Times: The ILP Perspective’, available from our website (www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/publications/).
Also incorrect is Colm’s assertion that the ILP supported the Iraq war. We did nothing of the sort. The ILP was absolutely opposed to the war and many ILPers were active in anti-war campaigns and took part in demonstrations around the country. Indeed, the majority of the ILP’s (admittedly small) membership was on the million-strong anti-war march in London in 2003.
Once the war happened, however, we saw no contradiction in supporting the development of a democratic trade union movement in Iraq. That may have been an unpopular stance with some on the left but then that’s nothing new for the ILP.
We have never made any secret of the fact that we don’t have all the answers – we didn’t think so back in the late 1980s, and we certainly don’t now. But we are still trying to engage in the issues through open, friendly, yet hard-headed debate.
If you want to join the discussion, and find out where we really stand these days, have a look at http://www.independentlabour.org.uk.
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