Stalinism, the Big Lie, the Workers’ Party: Ah it must be Kevin Myers giving us yet another master class in consistency. November 14, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Kevin Myers is exercised by the past this week. It’s the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and so… celebrating that event he decides there’s no time like the present to attack the… er… Labour Party and …er… the Workers’ Party.
Historians will wonder at it but the simple truth is that the Labour Party was, in effect, taken over by the relics of the Workers Party
Intriguing stuff, tell us more Mr. Myers.
Twenty years ago this week, the Berlin Wall fell, and shortly thereafter, communism collapsed across the subject countries of the Soviet empire. We now know this happened: but we did not know it was going to happen back then. Some days after the wall was demolished by capering youngsters, I was in Prague to report on events there. No one at that point realised what a hall of mirrors communism really was, a few commissars with their power magnified within the minds of the audience simply by the reflective power of the state. But then I saw the communist edifice collapse before my eyes: it was one of the most wonderful moments in my entire life.
Very good… me too as it happens. I hoped at the time that this would be distinctive shift in the history of socialism. I’m still optimistic… as the joke goes, it’s too soon to tell.
The Irish Workers Party [sic] indeed, now incorporated into the Labour Party, can truly count themselves lucky at the poor memory of the media classes, aided no doubt, by the influence of well-placed party-sympathisers. The Czech people had been crushed by the tanks of Soviet imperialism in 1968. Twenty years on, Czechoslovakia had fewer graduates than Nepal and had a growth rate below that of Peru. Before the Nazis had rolled over its democracy in 1938, Czechoslovakia was the third richest country in the world. By 1988, it was the 50th, and almost worse still, it had to endure these fraternal delegations from despised foreign pro-Soviet parties, most especially the Irish Workers Party, telling them how lucky they were.
Now I hate to be the first to break it to him but the ‘Irish’ Workers’ Party continues to exist and while not necessarily in rude good health remains pretty chipper across the island, has a councillor or two and is doing some useful research. Moreover there’s the small but not insignificant detail that the WP was never incorporated in the LP.
What an honour. And with the wall gone, and with the Soviet smiles fading on their WP faces to be replaced by smiles of the EU — the new official party loyalty — all was soon forgotten. Men and women in an open, and relatively free, western European society, who had voluntarily sided with the last imperial oppressors in Europe, against the downtrodden and the dispossessed people of the east, stayed silent, trusting in the benign amnesia of a left-biased media to ignore their role in supporting the Soviet Empire. And by God, they were justified in their trust.
Good stuff, but surely he’s aware that the WP was actually ahead of many other Marxist and further left parties in accepting a role for private enterprise, that it was supportive throughout the period of Perestroika and Glasnost of those policies and that this was reflected in documents which, should he so wish, can be consulted in the Left Archive. That’s not to say it was not supportive of the USSR, but this wasn’t uncritical support. Which makes his next comment simply pointless…
After the wall had fallen, no one challenged the Workers Party about their faithful support for a continent-wide communist dictatorship, with its vast armies of secret police, that had reached from Vladivostok to Riga.
You’d find no one more critical than me of many aspects of actually existing socialism. Hard to believe though that the WP’s critical support was much of a motive force in holding up the USSR.
But there’s more…
And where laziness and cowardice might not have sufficed to ensure journalistic silence about the true history of the Workers Party, why, the old Stalinist trick of fixing the historical archive might just do.
When in the 1990s and working for the ‘Irish Times’ I went to write about the Workers Party, I found the party file had been removed from the library, presumably by one of the party faithful working in the newspaper. All the annual ard fheiseanna votes in support of the Soviet Union were thus gone from the record.
Well now, who can say why the file vanished, and more to the point why it wasn’t replace? Perhaps some sub-editor or journalist left it down and forgot about it. So perhaps conspiracy or perhaps cock-up. Who can tell, I can’t but then I’m not hazarding semi-paranoid theories about this stuff.
And it’s not as if the data has vanished. Again, the CLR has put together a lovely archive of stuff which again he could consult. And the party itself, no doubt, could also be consulted and I’m certain they’d be happy to assist if he’s really keen on pursuing this. Which makes the rest also a little… trite…
The wonderful search engine which today can reveal the archival truth did not then exist, and no doubt the Stalinists thought they had got away with the Big Lie.
And then, in a fabulous elision one of the most dramatic and wrenching experiences of many a political life, including mine, where the WP splintered is glossed over as follows…And actually, in the shorter term, at least for the duration of their careers, they had. Historians will wonder at it, but the simple truth is that the Labour Party was, in effect, taken over by the relics of the Workers Party, and all that dreary WP reiteration of Soviet 10-year planning was forgotten. No one now remembers Eamon Gilmore forcefully demanding economic policies that rejected private enterprise in favour of state-run industries.
I do believe I see a red scare before me.
Twenty years ago, when tyranny and armies of secret police oppressed the peoples of eastern Europe, where stood the Irish left? And does it make them feel proud today, that in the one great example of right and wrong in European politics in their entire lifetimes, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the apparatchiks of the Soviet Union?
So, what precisely is the enlightened, socialist, principle which causes a “democrat” to defend foreign, autocratic regimes from demands from democrats for democracy within their own countries? Which begs this further question of course: what does this term “left-wing” actually mean?
As it happens – and again if he consults the materials in the Archive he’ll see a range of opinions expressed in WP publications from cautious to enthusiastic welcomes. That’s where almost all the Irish left stood. Because, if he troubled himself to look it up unthinking fans of the USSR were thin enough on the ground on the mainstream and further left by the 1980s. And I’d hazard a guess that those on the left who were overtly critical were a majority, and a large one than otherwise during this period.
But speaking of the ‘poor memory of the media classes’ how odd then to read this from a national newspaper columnist from earlier in the decade…
This [decommissioning by PIRA] is not like the Workers’ Party and Democratic Left, which not merely forsook the gun, but over time forsook the entire republican witchcraft which underlay it. To be sure, for a while, they continued the macabre and incomprehensible dance with Soviet-style communism, but in time they rid themselves of that – and in due course became among the most courageous and insightful critics of a Provisional fascism they knew all too well. Friday October 7 2005
Let us skip back some years previous to that…
Two parties in Government support our involvement in the Partnership for Peace. Democratic Left does not. We shouldn’t blame it for that. It is just about the last relic of its old identity from the days when it was the Workers’ Party, Moscow’s favourite bunch of comrades in Ireland. I’d love to remind you of the ringing endorsements for “socialism” i.e. Soviet style communism which were passed annually party conferences, but I can’t, alas, for the Workers’ Party file for that period is missing from The Irish Times library. What a shame. [note that no conspiracy theory is aired at this point]
Anyway, Democratic Left is squeaky clean these days, having pupated twice from having an armed wing which bumped off Marcus McCausland and Ranger Best in Derry, and which blew a few gardeners, some serving women and a Catholic priest to pieces in Aldershot, through to being faithful followers of the party line emanating from the Politburo, through to being the suited democrats that they are today.
DL consistency.
That’s fine. We all have our journeys to make in life: I just don’t want to hear any moral superiority lectures from that quarter, all right?
Saturday January 25, 1997
Squeaky clean? Rid themselves (plural) of that? Courageous and insightful critics of Provisional fascism. Whoever it is likes the WP and DL a lot. An awful lot – eh? I mean these must be paragons of moral and political virtue. They must be… quite literally… anti-fascists.
And who is this columnist, this fan of the courageous and insightful?
Why step forward Mr. Kevin Myers.
That’s fine. We all have our journeys to make in life: I just don’t want to hear any moral superiority lectures from that quarter, all right?
Me neither, pal.
Clearly for him, when the opportunity arises, any old stick will do to beat someone else with… (including themselves).
I’ll get my coat.
I don’t know if I’m missing something, but isn’t the “squeaky clean” passage actually attacking DL and connecting them very strongly to a violent and Stalinist past?
The bit about the library file is barmy though. I mean am I supposed to believe that it’s the sole repository anywhere of information about decisions the WP took in the past?
You’re absolutely right, he is… it points up though the contradiction between his ‘we all have our own journeys to make in life’ cant and the nature of his attack. For him it is impossible to change an opinion. Unless it his own.
I am still in the Workers Party and am not, nor have never been, a member of the Labour Party.
Does Myers not understand that the individuals he’s talking about are long gone from the Workers’ Party ? (17 years, almost a fifth of a century ago).
Is there not, even in the words of the Provos, a frank and full history of the WP now out there. A possible stocking filler for Myers or prehaps a couple of snooker balls would be better.
The DL does today try to portray this squeaky clean image while nothing has changed that much in reality.
From first hand knowledge I know elected members of the left in Ireland who aspire to imposing Marxist policies. Some of them sensibly hide it, others do not and rather try to cloak their ideas in veils of anti capitalist rhetoric.
I would love to take some of these extreme leftists, bring them here to Poland and let them see the damage that 50 years of these policies they aspire too have caused.
It is easy to write off these mistakes as being the result of totalitarian regimes but the facts are they are basically the same policies put forward by the left in Ireland.
Socialism can be a force for good but the extreme socialism that persists today in the Labour party, is more dangerous than the current governments mismanagement of the economy in recent years.
mactifosi, if your knowledge of Polish politics is akin to your knowledge of Irish politics (DL having left this mortal coil ten years ago) it must be a powerful and wonderful thing. Much like the extreme socialism so clearly evident in the LP today.
From first hand knowledge I know elected members of the left in Ireland who aspire to imposing Marxist policies
Could you give us some examples?
And in America we have a socialist president:
“Texas governor Rick Perry declared that the Obama administration was “hell-bent” on socialism during a speech to the Republican Women’s Club in Midland, Texas yesterday, according to Texas local newspapers. He also called for more tea party protests against health care reform efforts.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/12/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5631012.shtml
I’d love to know why Myers had to leave Belfast in the early 70’s according to posters on another thread here. Can anyone help?
Not publicly… not publicly…
posters on this issue should be aware of possibe legal difficulties.
however the supreme court judgement quoted at this link should illuminate the issue at a number of levels
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=IRISHLAW;pboCVA;200202051026000000
Thanks eejoynt. The pockets of the CLR aren’t deep. If people can remember that…
I maybe allowed to say – Billy McMillen took a dislike of him due to his job as a fearless reporter making him close to some elements within the state. Questions were asked, answers were found and Kev was told go do one
Thanks folks.
Yeah, that’s grand
I’ve little wish to incur the wrath of Myers or his proxies.
Is this perhaps the first shot in a possible media campaign against Gilmore, now that the latter is, within two and half years, going to be at least Tainiste and possible a ‘rotating’ Taoiseach?
Gilmore’s past affiliation with the WP being something FF’s friends in the media can use to ‘frighten the horses’ and try to thwart the possibility of a Lab/FG pact with Labour at parity with FG.
Speaking of the influence of political parties in media organisations. Having read The Lost Revolution and followed the debates here as well as picked up other dark mutterings about the WP and RTE etc. this seems the beg several questions about the degree to which contemporary political parties operate within the media.
Does anyone know, for instance, the extent of FF influence in the media? That is, full, active members of FF working in media organisations. Specifically, what is the extent of FF influence in RTE? My own belief is that there are substantial numbers and that it’s a scandal.
@WbS
Can you point to some well-defined moment when the fawning over the Soviets stopped?
Some equivalent to Khrushchev’s cult-of-the-individual turn in ‘56?
Or was it more a slow and quiet process of inching away, much as one might wear one’s favourite pair of flares less and less as the winds of fashion changed during the ’80s.
The problem is the term ‘fawning’, I can show you pieces in the United Irishman from the 1970s that were overly solicitous (actually disgraceful is the term that comes to mind in my opinion now) about Soviet interventions in Europe long before you’d think that Sovietism was force in the party. I can show you reprints of critical pieces of the USSR (measured and useful) in the 1980s in party publications when people might imagine that the ‘Stalinism’ was at its height. The WP was a lot more diffuse and diverse a beast than the preconceptions. But people did think broadly in terms of statist solutions from say 1976 through to the middish 1980s. And in that it was no more or less different say than British Labour even if the dial was turned well to the left.
Even to talk of an identification is difficult because the WP didn’t have the sort of relationship with the USSR that say the CPI, holder of the Moscow franchise in Ireland, did. Hence you’d get a fairly eclectic crew at Ard Fhéiseanna.
As Ratata says in 14, most of us in the party managed quite well to have level headed view of such matters.
Frank Dunlop talks about how, when he was at RTE in the very early 70s, the rivalry between News and Current Affairs had a political cast, the former being an FF stronghold and the latter mostly Sticks. I recall from the 1980s – and I always thought this was really weird – that the Sunday World was full of WP people.
Of course this background influence is probably still there, in that journos are human beings with their own ideas, and parties will want to use what contacts they have. The only problem would be if a) there was a disproportionate influence from one party, and b) if journalistic standards weren’t being met for partisan reasons.
No 12 – silly, silly questions some in the party were always critical of the USSR etc, some loved it, most didn’t mind ethier way and got on with the type of serious WC political work Myers really hates
13 – journalistic standards? You watched FF-Rte lately?
Well, given that we’re talking Myers here, I use the term loosely.
Interestingly, considering his fondness for pedantry, accusing others of illiteracy, and fogeyishly lamenting the decline in the standard of journalistic English, Myers does not himself appear to understand the meaning of the term ‘to beg the question.’
(If he sues you over that one, WbyS, refer him to Aristotle!).
The WP did have fraternal relations with the CPSU however and was in competition for the franchise imo. Plus it did recieve funding from the USSR. At least according to the book I’ve just read, heavily promoted on this blog. It is to the credit of the ‘The Lost Revolution’ that despite the damning evidence it produces about the WP’s links to both the Eastern Bloc and paramilitarism it has not been used as a stick with which to beat the WP, or ex-WP members such as Eamon Gilmore. Myers could have name-checked it (in fact it is glaringly obvious by its absence); he didn’t. Sarah Carey and other others of her ilk have attacked Labour but no mention of TLR and what’s in it. I can only imagine this is because the book is not a hatchet job and does not slag off it’s subjects in a way in which the favoured writers of the right always do. You can read it and make your own mind up and are not told on every page…’now that was really bad.’
I wouldn’t deny any of that. You’re right NVD. The relations were fraternal, just as now it has relations with a range of parties, not all of which I’d be entirely happy about myself. But I’m not a member and that’s their decision.
Whether these are all damning is an interesting point. Let’s put it this way. The USSR in 1980 was a rather different regime to the USSR in 1952. In 1986 it was different again. As someone not mad keen on statism I can still understand why it had those fraternal relations.
The party was more diverse than that though or how else to regard the eurocommunist current within it during the same period etc, and regarding franchises it seemed to be bidding for more than one from my recollection of Ard Fhéiseanna.
BTW, promoted is a good word, but I suspect the CLR has a parasitic relationship with TLR… It makes for good copy.
It’s absolutely amazing that Brian Hanley and Scott Miller were able to uncover the WP’s links with East European Communist regimes, especially as the the press clippings in the WP folder in the Irish Times office, the file with the newpaper reports of these links, was missing.
I mean, how were they able to uncover these links? The press clippings from the file were missing for Christ’s sake! Gone! From the Irish Times’ office.
Certainly it stumped the investigative genius of Kevin Myers, who was unable to prove such links existed, as the clippings from the WP file in the Irish Times office was missing.
Instead he looked into the file, saw that the clippings were missing, and then got all Charlton Heston in the Planet of the Apes, falling to his kness and screaming “GOD DAMN YOU ALL!!! I WAS GOING TO WRITE SOMETHING ON THE WORKERS PARTY AND ITS FRATERNAL GREETINGS TO SOVIET REGIMES BUT THE PRESS CLIPPINGS ARE MISSING AND I’M FUCKED IF I’M GOING THROUGH THE PAPER’S CONTENT INDEX LEDGERS TO FIND THEM IN THE ORIGINAL EDITIONS. I’LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL THEY DIGITIZE THE NEWPAPERS AND ITS ARCHIVE SO I CAN SIT AT HOME AND TYPE ‘DE ROSSA’ AND ‘SOVIET’ INTO THE SEARCH BOX WHILE I’M SCRATCHING ME BOLLICKS.”
Yeah, how did Miller and Hanley do it?
Certainly The WP went out of its way to build fraternal relations internationally – and still does. Internationalism is a core part of its political philosophy. And it certainly had fraternal relations with the CPSU (formally from 1983) and other socialist governments and parties from the eastern bloc.
Whether it sought the “franchise” (in so far as that is a term with any meaning) is a more complicated question. The WP took a much more independent line that people typically associate with Communist parties, including criticising the Soviet approach to Ireland. Rather than adjust its line to Moscow, it sought to adjust Moscow’s line to The WP. It certainly sought funding from the CPSU. And rightly so in my opinion. The only problem is that they never provided the million punts that was asked for.
WBS makes a good point about the use of the word “damning”. People forget now that in practically every country in the world, it was only a small minority of the left that didn’t seek fraternal relations with the socialist states in their various hues. Nothing to be ashamed of in seeking fraternal relations with the most powerful anti-imperialist force in the world, especially when that did not involve slavish adherence.
I think your point about an independent line is very true. And slavish adherence. And again, the relations with the CPSU weren’t high on the agenda for most of us out there actually trying to do something useful in this country. I’m still a bit irked about the free health care though for party members!
Yes, free health care would have been utterly evil.
No, I mean maybe I should have stayed with the WP…
The penny drops :p
I venture to say that Kevin Myers operates according to his own ’sealed moral system, an internal autonomy that is immune to penetration or logic’. See ‘Fear of Islamophobia’ earlier this week.
Countess, I’m afraid to look it up.
I’d say Countess you are entirely correct that he operates in a world of his own construction.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Myers….
There are those who agree with Kevin Myers though
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/left-supported-soviet-tyranny-1943468.html
And also those who disagree with Myarse:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/mr-myers-knows-left-only-too-well-1941077.html
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/dead-hand-of-unions-on-the-hse-59514.html
This Dr Hanley has form – he may even be the same thing that ran in Bray local elections for the PDs
Who the fuick is Dr. Ruari Hanley?
Cheers for that Hendrick.
@Garibaldy
Nothing to be ashamed of in seeking fraternal relations with the most powerful anti-imperialist force in the world
You didn’t detect even a hint of the imperial about Soviet policy towards the satellite states?
NVD: Myers could have name-checked it (in fact it is glaringly obvious by its absence); he didn’t. Sarah Carey and other others of her ilk have attacked Labour but no mention of TLR and what’s in it. I can only imagine this is because
they don’t read books? (Not sure if that’s a more or less flattering explanation than yours.)
Garibaldy: in practically every country in the world, it was only a small minority of the left that didn’t seek fraternal relations with the socialist states in their various hues
I think that’s bending the stick a bit too far. Moscow-line CPs were a very big deal in a lot of places, and Beijing-line and Tirana-line parties weren’t to be discounted. (I believe the Eritrean liberation front was dominated by Tirana-line Maoists, and I’ve heard that they influenced the Sandinistas early on.) But they hardly dominated the Left in any Western European country I can think of – not least because they were generally only very ambiguously seen as part of the Left.
I ought to have said further left Phil, I agree.
@Phil
I’m really hoping this reference to the Tirana-line is some form of shibboleth that’s gone way over my head.
And not in any way connected to Tirana, the capital of Albania, where technological progress reached its zenith the day the donkey was hitched to the cart.
Ah, a joy awaits you. If you look up Communist Parties Marxist Leninist on wiki… very much a minority interest.
Re: Eritrean liberation fronts and their foreign affiliations.
The original Eritrean Liberation Front is usually described as dominated by Muslim notables, and as having tried to repeat the strategy of the Algerian FLN in the Eritrean context.
The cadres who split to form the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front in the late 1960s had indeed been trained in the People’s Republic of China – but they had a policy of strict self-reliance in matters political and military, and an offer of Chinese aid dependent on a denounciation of the USSR as ’social imperialist’ was rejected.
In the 1980s, the EPLF gradually moved away from marxism and socialism – unfortunately it retained Leninist methods of political organisation which have since morphed into what can only be described as a Stalinist attitude to political and cultural dissenters inside Eritrea today.
PJ: “nasha”. (British journalist visiting Moscow, fails to hide reaction to disgusting cup of coffee. Bystander nods, grimaces sympathetically, says “nasha” – meaning ‘ours’. Literally meaning, “we get all our coffee from Nicaragua, not from the places where they grow the good stuff”. Figuratively meaning “look at us – one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, plus seventy years of socialist planning, and we just end up carrying these awful useless countries where they can’t even grow a decent coffee bean”.)
The USSR certainly dominated its satellite states, but I don’t think the relationship was imperial. Interesting to speculate how differently things would have turned out if it had been – life would have been much worse in Eastern Europe, but ordinary Russians’ belief that they had a functioning system wouldn’t have crumbled as soon, if at all.
British journalist visiting Moscow, fails to hide reaction to disgusting cup of coffee.
Did this ever happen though, or was it a version of the old “on the way from the airport the taxi driver told me” routine?
I think Prop Joe I’d agree with a lot of what Phil says. The USSR gave a hell of a lot of support to struggling peoples around the world.
[...] have saved The WP November 15, 2009 Posted by Garibaldy in Workers' Party. trackback Having recently visited Planet Myers, and his version of The Workers’ Party’s relationship to the eastern European socialist [...]
I for my sins was involved with Polish Solidarity work. We could not get a single WP member to sign a petition. So much for an independent socialist position. I was nauseated by McGiolla praising Dubchek. He would not do it when Dubchek faced repression.
The above mention that domination is not imperialism would be amusing if it meant anything. I suppose it is like Blair’s affirmation the Britain has no selfish interest in Ireland.
In a democratic world political parties would have members in the mass media but they would not be allowed to intimidate and blacken their opponents. While I have no doubt about FF and its patronage machine’s ability to do that it does not excuse what the WP did.In fact the WP’s power base was in tune with a Southern Bourgeoisie who were sacred stiff of their little state being destabilised by the Northern conflict, hence the creation of an ersatz 26 Co nationalism. In fact it was a taste of what they would have done if they scored power.
And it is not just about the WP politics, the Kemmy people and Kemmy himself were known as fairminded people who did not witchhunt.
Perhaps Jim they thought that Solidarity was a reactionary organisation, with some extremely dodgy links to right wing religious nationalists and foreign intelligence agencies. Whatever would have given them that idea.
It was Patrick Mayhew who said there British had no selfish or strategic interest in Ireland IIRC.
As for 26 county nationalism, I’d say it was an instutitutional reality in the southern government and much of southern society well before the Troubles.
As for witchhunting. Have a look at the behaviour of the trade unions regarding WP candidates in the 1980s or the possibility of getting a job in the state or EU funded community sector over huge swathes of the north without the right connections to the right political party or organisation (and I’m talking about both nationalism and unionism here) and see how far you get. Nevermind the cronyism in the southern state. It seems that there might be a wood for the trees problem here.
I think I want to see the CLR make more of this ” missing library file” business, because it’s brilliant. Has anybody written to Mr Myers expressing concern about it and wondering if there is still scope for an enquiry?
I wonder-did any Irish party pick up the Beijing franchise after
the CPI (ML) took up the pro-Tirana position in the late
1970s ?
IIRC there was some communication with the WP, wasn’t there?
And there are cynical souls who suggest that NK’s closest regional ally, or more, is the PRC (actually some very cynical souls believe that it’s in the PRCs interest to have someone close to it in the neighbourhood who acts somewhat off the beaten track for various reasons).
It was not just Solidarity but vervy dissident movement in the Eastern bloc. This includes the Czech reformist communists who they retrospectivally damned. The truth is that they slavishly followed the twists and turns of Moscow for what turned out to be fools gold.
The later right turn by Solidarity was to some degree because of the failure of the so-called western left to offer support.
As for links. I am tempted to say so what. Most liberation movements are not fussy abouit who offers support. One that I know off withered on the vine because to refused military aid from a religious group.If I was a member of Solidarity I would object to taking it. But you can be too purist. I suppose the Garland supprt will make sure that noone who is not crysal pure will be asked.
When I look at the alliance fromed by the Officials against the Republicans in the North I see some strange bed follows. There was an awful joint interview with Sullian and I think Carson the former Unionist mayor.
This applies not just to teh Officials. I remember people on the Trades Council calling the Ballymun flats unacceptable while waxing lyrical about the same type of accomodation in East Berlin.
If you can put down the mass support of Polish workers for Solidarity to the CIA, the Pope, foreign intelligence agencies etc and label them a ‘reactionary organisation’ how do you explain their rapid rise and the fact that they could mobilise huge sections of the Polish working class? ‘Socialism’ in Poland must have had fairly weak roots if it needed martial law to save it after 30 years.
Billy,
That’s an interesting extrapolation going far beyond what I actually said. I never sought to account for Solidarity’s mass support. I did suggest some reasons as to why Jim might have had problems getting WP members to sign solidarity petitions for them.
Jim,
You certainly can be too purist when it comes to taking support. Or seeking to building alliances. But once again, the idea that The WP followed Moscow’s policy slavishly runs up against the reality of serious disagreements over interpretations of the Irish situation, which after all was and is The WP’s prime focus.
I meant to say earlier – this
Twenty years on, Czechoslovakia had fewer graduates than Nepal
is a surprising claim. Does anybody know where Myers gets it from, and whether or not it’s true?
Out of his own backside, most likely.
Well maybe, but you’d like to actually know that. It’s actually the sort of thing you’d expect to read as one of Harry Hutton’s Killer Facts, except that I’m fairly sure that Harry’s facts are true.