On The 39^th Anniversary Of The Fall Of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)-Vietnam At The End-An Uncounted Causality Of War- The Never-Ending Vietnam War Story

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sometimes a picture is in fact better than one thousand words. In this case the famous, or infamous depending on one’s view, photograph of the last American “refugees” being evacuated from the American Embassy in Saigon (now, mercifully, Ho Chi Minh City) tells more about that episode of American imperial hubris that most books. Recently I reviewed Frank Snepp’s book about Vietnam at the end of the war, Indecent Interval , where I noted “as is the case with this little gem of a book, ex- CIA man Frank Snepp’s insider account of that fall from the American side, it is nice to have some serious analytical companionship to that photo. Moreover, a book that gives numerous details about what happened to who in those last days in a little over five hundred pages. Naming names about who the good guys and bad guys really were (from the American imperial perspective). Especially now, as two or three later generations only see Vietnam through the hoary eyes of old veterans, both military and radical anti-war, from that period like me (a veteran in both senses) to tell the tale.”

And such histories, memoirs and remembrances help to get a fix on that Vietnam episode in the lives of many of the young in that time. Sometimes though the story of war, about what happened before the whole edifice came crashing down, can be told another way, in a more personal way. Who knows in one hundred years the story below may be the more important story.

THERE IS NO WALL IN WASHINGTON FOR KENNY-BUT, MAYBE THERE SHOULD BE

This space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. Let me tell the tale.

Recently I returned, while on some unrelated business, to the neighborhood where I grew up. The neighborhood is one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950's, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. While there I happened upon an old neighbor who recognized me despite the fact that I had not seen her for at least thirty years. Since she had grown up and lived there continuously, taking over the family house, I inquired about the fate of various people that I had grown up with. She, as is usually the case in such circumstances, had a wealth of information but one story in particular cut me to the quick. I asked about a boy named Kenny who was a couple of years younger than I was but who I was very close to until my teenage years. Kenny used to tag along with my crowd until, as teenagers will do, we made it clear that he was no longer welcome being ‘too young’ to hang around with us older boys. Sound familiar?

The long and the short of it is that he found other friends of his own age to hang with, one in particular, from down the street named Jimmy. I had only a nodding acquaintance with both thereafter. As happened more often than not during the 1960’s in working class neighborhoods all over the country, especially with kids who were not academically inclined, when Jimmy came of age he faced the draft or the alternative of ‘volunteering’ for military service. He enlisted. Kenny for a number of valid medical reasons was 4-F (unqualified for military service). Of course, you know what is coming. Jimmy was sent to Vietnam where he was killed in 1968 at the age of 20. His name is one of the 58,000 plus that are etched on that Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. His story ends there. Unfortunately, Kenny’s just begins.

Kenny took Jimmy’s death hard. Harder than one can even imagine. The early details are rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I make no pretense of having adequate knowledge about the causes of mental illnesses but someone I trust has told me that such a traumatic event as Jimmy’s death can trigger the condition in young adults. In any case, the institutionalizations inevitably began. And later the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.

Certainly not a happy story. Perhaps, aside from the specific details, not even an unusual one in modern times. Nevertheless I now count Kenny as one of the uncounted casualties of war. Along with those physically wounded soldiers who can back from Vietnam service unable to cope with their own demons and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. And those who for other reasons could no adjust and found themselves on the streets, in the half way shelters or the V. A. hospitals. And also those grieving parents and other loved ones whose lives were shattered and broken by the loss of their children. There is no wall in Washington for them. But, maybe there should be. As for poor Kenny from the old neighborhood. Rest In Peace.

             

***The Beats The Beat-Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur

 

 

Here is how the adventure all began-criss-crossing, okay hitch-hiking(look it up if you are unaware of this honorable if now dangerous mode of travel), tramping, hobo camps, jungles, railroad trestles, awful stews and weak wines, the great American night highway, drinking, swilling really, wines (weak too), whiskeys (when in the dough), low-rent beers when cash was low, although never real hobo Thunderbirds and sternos, no, always just short of that instant madness, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, king of the unfiltered western night chain, smoking mad reefers, roughing up some sheets with some stray chick, rutting off in some side road ditch if sheets were hard to come by, switching off with karma sutra babes if the feeling was right. Yeah, that was Jack Kerouac’s world, Jack’s late 1940s be-bop world, the world that he wrote about in On The Road, the one that made a generation drool for the open road, for freedom.

But let’s suppose (which it had) that that free and open road had happened over a decade before Jeanbon set the late 1950s night afire and he tired, drunk, depressed and cramped after three years of being beat’s king fellahin world beat he just wanted to chuck it all, just wanted to drink himself into oblivion. Well, then you would get Jack’s famous drowned in sorrow, hubris and drink classic, Big Sur, in which he attempted to make one grand final slash at word-smithery to hail the new world he had coined. And one half century later director Michael Polish would come by and adapt those words, those maybe, probably, very possibility, non-cinematically possible words into a film sketch.

Now the plot, book or film, is really nothing. Jack, in twenty-one conditions of tired of the real world, his real beat world, drunk, stupor drunk, decided to chill himself out in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s cabin at Big Sur. And so among the splendors of that section of California hard against the Pacific Coast Highway and the Pacific Ocean he dwelled, for a while. But Jack was fundamentally a social animal, wrote out of a hardened social fist, could only survive by mixing words with others and so he escaped back up the coast to Frisco town to hold forth with  the modern incantation of Dean Moriarty, the very real Neal Cassady. And so they talked, they partied, they exchanged women, they bantered and befuddled each other and all around them in one last hell-broth attempt to rekindle those ancient transcontinental flames that ignited their youth. But shades of forty (the age, brother the age) were hovering overhead and so the mood of life on the rim of the world was broken. The beat night shattered to caricature and faux beatness. As Kerouac’s mantra writer-hero Thomas Wolfe named his eminent novel-you can’t go home again- can’t go home again to an idea who time had passed. And so too, in the end, this film is strictly for Kerouac beat generation-be-bop search for the great American West night aficionados. Enough said. 

***On The 75th Anniversary Year Of The Dismal Conclusion Of The Spanish Civil War- All Honor to Those Who Fought On The Republican Side- In Honor Of The Working Class Militants In The Spanish Civil War

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I am re-posting an entry commemorating the anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War when there were many possible outcomes short of defeat and suppression by the victorious Franco regime. The dismal end to the revolution brings forth many lessons but the heroic struggles of the rank and file militants should still be recognized as such. As should the big lessons to be learned. To aid that effort there is no better source than Leon Trotsky’s Spain: The Last Warning for a general overview. That essay is part his collection of essays and writings on Spain-The Lessons of the Spanish Revolution-1931-1939 appended below.             

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

In Honor Of The Working Class Militants In The Spanish Civil War- An Anniversary, Of Sorts

I have noted in other posts that some of our working-class anniversaries like the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and the establishment of the Communist International are worthy of yearly commemoration. So, let us say, the 94th anniversary of the Russian revolution while awkward as a milestone is nevertheless, because of its world-historic importance (both in its establishment and its demise), an appropriate yearly commemoration. Others, like the Russian Revolution of 1905 are worthy of the more traditional five, ten and multiples observations. I have also noted previously my dismay (although that may be too strong a word) at the rise of odd-ball year anniversaries (30th, for example) and rise in the number of mundane occasions for such celebrations although I am not immune to that fever myself. Here, as the headline notes, I am observing a traditional milestone. However, the event itself, that I am observing has far less historic importance (actually far, far less importance) than as an occasion to make some point about the Spanish Civil War. The 50th anniversary designation is to commemorate the first time that I seriously studied the “lessons” of the Spanish Civil War. And the form that that study took was as the subject my very first high school term paper in 9th grade Civics class. I can hear the air being let out of the tires now. But hear me out on this one.

I make no pretense that I can zero in on when I first became interested in the subject of the Spanish Civil War but I was driven by two things in that direction- the general hatred of fascism as transmitted by family and others, the other, and this one is less precise as to origin, was a devotion to the fighters in the American-led Abraham Lincoln battalion of the 15th Brigade of the International Brigades. I believe it may have been hearing Pete Seeger doing a version of Viva La Quince Brigada but I am just not sure. In any case by the spring of 1961 I was knee-deep in studying the subject, including time after school up at the North Adamsville branch of the town’s Thomas Crane Public Library. My first stop, I remember, was looking through the Encyclopedia Americana for the entry on the Spanish Civil War for sources and then turning to the card catalogue. For those not familiar with those ancient forms of research the Encyclopedia was like the online Wikipedia today (except no collective editing, for good or evil, at a touch) and the card catalogue was just a paper version on, well, 3X5 cards, of the computerized systems in most libraries today. But enough of this history of research back in the Dark Ages because what this entry is about is the lessons of that event.

I have noted before, although here too I cannot remember all the details of the genesis of the notion, that on the subject of the Spanish Civil War I have been “haunted” (and still am) by the fact of the lost by the Republican side when in July and August of 1936 (and for about a year later as well) victory against Franco’s brutal counter-revolutionary forces seemed assured. In a sense Spain, and the various stages of my interpretation of events there, represents kind of a foundation stone for my political perspectives as I gained more understanding of the possibilities. I have, more recently, characterized 1930s Spain as the last serious chance to create a companion to the original Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and so we had best look at its lesson closely, very closely.

Of course as a 9th grade political neophyte I was not even close to making that kind of observation just mentioned. I distinctly recall, and it was reflected in my liberal politics at that time, that the center of my argument on that term paper was the perfidy of the Western democracies in not coming to the aid of the Spanish republicans and further in not allowing the republicans to get arms from them or other sources, other than the Soviet Union. Mainly I was incensed that the British and French did not do more except cave in to Hitler when he called a tune. Now that was pretty raw stuff, pretty raw analysis, although probably not bad coming from that perspective. But depending on outside forces to save your bacon (or revolution) is always tricky and so as I moved leftward in my own political perspective I spent more time looking at the internal political dynamics driving the revolution. For an extremely long time I was under the spell (the proto-Stalinist derived spell) as articulated by the majority of the pro-republican organizations.- it was first necessary to win the war against Franco and then the revolution, presumably socialist, would be pursued under which all manner of good things like workers control of production, land to the tiller, some justice on the various national questions (Catalonia, Basque country) could take place, co-operative and collective government established, etc.

As I moved further leftward, leftward not just politically but also organizationally away from left-liberal and social democratic operations, and began to study more closely radical and revolutionary movements for social change I began to chaff under that war-revolution dichotomy and look more closely as the policies of the various organization within the republican camp. That was rather more eye-opening than not. The gist of it was that all the major organizations were working at cross purposes but most importantly they were putting brakes on the continuation of a revolutionary thrust in Spain. An so in the final analysis, although this was hardest to finally see in the cases of the CGT-FAI and POUM organizations and some individual militants, it was the failure to seek revolutionary solutions that would have galvanized the masses (or could have, rather than after 1937 left them indifferent, mainly, to the republican cause).

What was lacking? Obviously since even opponents agree there was a revolutionary situation in that period a party willing to go right to the end to achieve its goals, a Bolshevik-style party. Such things, as we are now painfully aware of, make all the different. And it is that little pearl of wisdom that makes this anniversary entry worth thinking about for the future.

********

The Lessons Of The Spanish Civil War- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky

 

 

BOOK REVIEW

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.

Revised-June 19, 2006

In Honor Of The 98^th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take Three  

 

 

A word on the Easter Uprising

In the old Irish working-class neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such memories of heroic “boyos”  (and “girlos” not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment. 

The easy part of analyzing the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the “shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings on national liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

********
Sean Flynn could still taste that acrid smell of smoke in his lungs long after the last flicker of battle, long after they had known that they had made major miscalculations about the enemy, about the savagery of dear Mother England when she wanted to keep her little child Ireland close to her bosom. He remembered the hard fighting, the loses of game comrades when the British pulled the hammer down, while the Dublin crowds in particular, watched in stony silence (or maybe and this is the insidious nature of the oppressor, the effect the oppressor has on the psyche of the oppressed, with some secret desire to see the “boyos” lose and return to normalcy). He would never forget his own flight to the north where he hid out for many days until the coast was clear. That escape had been a close thing since he had carried a small wound from the rear-guard fight around their, the British, General Post Office in Dublin (he would never call that institution, even after independence anything but their building). And he would never forget the lessons that he had learned about what a serious struggle for national liberation entailed.

Mostly though, and that smoke in his lungs was constant reminder, he would always remember how the bloody British, the most civilized nation on Earth to hear the paid historians tell the story, thought nothing of burning down their jewel colonial capital city to the ground rather than to let Ireland breath free and make its own mistakes. That had been the major error in the thinking of the various leader even of the lost lamented martyr James Connolly; thinking that the English the throes of war in Europe would not scramble whatever was necessary to suppress the uprising including that needless burning of the town. Surely there had been other miscalculations and mistakes; not having a coordinated plan, not abandoning the uprising temporarily when a serious consensus could not be met on the timing of the rising; of going with a few, too few, men expecting the population to rise up once the spark had been ignited, various tactical military blunders which only added to the tragic outcome and so on. But in the end the biggest mistake was to underestimate the capacity of the British to display the same kind of savagery and stupidity as they had in trench-filled Europe or in previous places of native uprisings in Africa, Asia and India.

Just then though Sean, a little cough in his throat, maybe really a lump, thought about the brave lads that he had fought with then who had gone to meet their maker, including his older brother Seamus who snuck him into the Citizens’ Army to begin with when he was just a lad. There was Ian O’Riley who fell early to an advanced British guard when they tried to storm the front door by force, Seamus Barry killed by a sniper’s bullet, stout-hearted Liam Murphy who faced down a British patrol and paid with his life for that deed, and of course, his old friend Bucko Bailey who stayed behind drawing fire as the last remnant, including one Sean Flynn, made their passage out of the firestorm that had become Dublin. But most of all his missed the “Chief,” James Connolly, who, wounded and all, was strapped to a chair and executed by those bloody British bastards. They would long rue the day when they let Connolly near lethal weapons which he learned how to handle when he was in their Army as a lad, and they would longer still rue the day when they shot a brave man like a dog. Chocky Ar La.    

               

In Honor Of The 98^th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take Two 

 

 

A word on the Easter Uprising

In the old Irish working-class neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such memories of heroic “boyos”  (and “girlos” not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment. 

The easy part of analyzing the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the “shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.

 

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings on national liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

********
Funny, Sean Flynn thought, about how words and phrases can capture a moment, capture an Irish poetic moment, of which in the benighted history of this benighted isle there were few and far between. He had been reading, really re-reading, William Butler Yeats’ homage to the men of Easter 1916, his men (although he had been a mere slip of a boy, if a tall manly looking boy then), and about that powerful refrain that ended a few verses -“a terrible beauty was born.” Yes, Sean thought, that phrase fit the occasion to a tee, fit those working men like himself and his brother, Seamus, who gave their all those bloody April days to free Ireland from the English yoke. Yes, funny too how an Anglo-Irishman, a bloody heathen if you really thought about it, captured the spirit of those times, of those times when men, a few men , had to step up and be counted. Ordinary working men mostly, the ones from his Irish Citizens’ Army, the one Jimmy Connolly (the late lamented martyred James Connolly to most) put together to defend the neighborhoods against the bloody reprisals after the big 1914 strike. The others too, too few others in Dublin no question what with all the confusion, mainly poets and students caught up in some professor’s exaltations.

Sean remembered, distinctly remembered, how nervous he had been waiting, eternally waiting for the sign of the uprising to take place-he knew for sure it would not be like some Wolfe Tone thing, or the rising of the moon. Not this time not when the Irish finally had the British at a disadvantage. That big war in Europe was actually to their benefit. Oh no, not at first when everybody, even hot-headed Irishmen if one could believe that, was ready to give his or her all for the bloody King of England against the damn Huns. No, rather later once everybody knew that England was so desperate to beat the Huns in Europe with everything they had that a small military encounter with whatever remnants the British left behind to garrison the Irish colony could be disposed of with ease and a free Ireland delivered at little cost. The question that made Sean nervous, made many a man nervous, was when. As 1915 slipped into 1916 those nerves only got more frayed since there were constant rumors that the war in Europe would soon be over and a chance to gain the upper hand would be lost.       

Finally, finally word filtered down to the “boyos” that the Irish Citizens’ Army (meaning James Connolly above all others) would join with the Irish Volunteers (Patrick Pearse’s operation, among others) to declare a republic and stand and fight. Naturally there were more delays as the chieftains (now including the previously non-committal Irish Republican Brotherhood) argued about the necessity, the validity, and then the timing of a rising. (All this not known until later after the smoke had cleared and the survivors could take stock of who, and who did not, do what, who did, and did not, show up, and what else went wrong.) Then that Easter week came and the order to arm came. And all arms to head to Dublin, to the strategic General Post Office (their, the bloody English’s post office). Sean got there just in time to hear the Proclamation read and posted. The battle was on and suddenly all of Sean’s nervousness about being exposed, about not being a military man, about being shy around guns evaporated.                

   

In Honor Of The 98^th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take One 

A word on the Easter Uprising

In the old Irish working-class neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such memories of heroic “boyos”  (and “girlos” not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment. 

The easy part of analyzing the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the “shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings on national liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

**************

Sean Flynn had a smile, an ironic smile, on his usually sullen face after he had just read William Butler Yeats’ latest poetic offering on behalf of the heroic Irish freedom-fighters of that glorious few days in April of 1916, Easter,1916.  Mind you ordinarily Sean Flynn had no truck with the outpourings of the bloody Anglo-Irish, those who had been oppressing the Irish, his Irish, since Cromwell’s time, and before. Yeats was different, had a sense of the tragic past even though some times when he wrote his mystical hysterical stuff that left him cold. But the Easter poem was different, was different in its utter solemnity and respect and also utterly difference in that it heralded the new day coming-the time of the terrible beauty born. And with those words on his lips Sean went into deep remembering of those 1916 days when he fought along with the others, many now gone, in that forlorn General Post Office. (Sean, by the way, while not a poet in the land of poets could disclaim with the best of them and that sonorous skill had gotten him into many a maiden’s bed, a few married women’s too.)

He remembered back to when the late lamented martyred Jimmy Connolly (not everybody called him, was allowed to call him, “Jimmy” only those who had gone through some battles with him could) first made the call to form the Irish Citizens’ Army to defend that terrible strike back in 1914 or so (after Jim Larkin left for parts unknown when the word got out the bloody British wanted his hide) and he had snuck into the ranks although only fifteen. Had snuck in for being a little tall for his age and snuck in because his brother, Seamus, had been a stalwart in that strike. Yes, if anybody was asking, that Army was made up of working-men and only working men until the hard battles of Easter forced a reorganization with the remnants of the Irish Volunteers. Jimmy said every working man under his command had to be a little vigilant about working with the poets and dreamers, the petty bourgeois nationalists he called them who made up the Volunteer units and who would still have them eating potatoes and stepping out on the bogs if they had control. Still Jimmy said that there were too few in Ireland just then, just before the big war in Europe flamed out of control in 1914, to not unite where they could be united with those who fiercely resisted the encroachments of John Bull’s tyranny. And in the event Jimmy had been right, had called the tune well, except Sean still did not feel that those poets and dreamers “boyos” could be trusted now with independent now a sure thing.

Sean remembered how proud he was to go out on those very bogs that he hated, hated thinking about how every bloody Englishman with two pence called him and his “the bogs,” to their faces in order to surreptitiously march and drill for the big day that would be coming, the day when Ireland would be free to breath its own air, make its own mistakes. And so he marched, although he hated to march and was constantly out of step. And so he learned how to hold a rifle, although he was shy around weapons, was not comfortable with the idea of killing a man, even a bloody Englishman (although when the time came he gave a good account of himself, as good as any man there). And so he thrilled when at pub all the lasses, although militia membership was a secret, an open secret, would gather round him and well, flirt with him (and let him have his way with them) and totally ignore any Irishman who was not true to the cause. Ah, those were the days but Sean also remembered how he longed to get into action, longed to have that showdown he had been prepared for when that bloody war in Europe broke out and it looked Ireland would never be free…        

      

Songwriter's Corner- Spain 1936- The Irish Connection
In Honor Of The 98^th Anniversary Of the Easter Uprising
 

 

A word on the Easter Uprising

In the old Irish working-class neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such memories of heroic “boyos”  (and “girlos” not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment.  

The easy part of analyzing the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the “shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings on national liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

Peter Paul Markin Commentary

I have spilled no small amount of ink, and gladly, writing about the heroic military role of those Americans who fought in the American-led Abraham Lincoln Battalion of 15th International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The song "Viva La Quince Brigada" can apply to those of other nationalities who fought bravely for the Republican side in that conflict. Here's a take from the Irish perspective. Note the name Frank Ryan included here, a real hero of that operation.

Viva La Quince Brigada
(Christy Moore)

Ten years before I saw the light of morning

A comradeship of heroes was laid.

From every corner of the world came sailing

The Fifteenth International Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people.

To try and stem the rising Fascist tide

Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy,

Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding

As the battle for Madrid it thundered on.

Truth and love against the force af evil,

Brotherhood against the Fascist clan.

Vive La Quince Brigada!

"No Paseran" the pledge that made them fight.

"Adelante" was the cry around the hillside.

Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hillard was a Church of Ireland pastor;

From Killarney across the Pyrenees ho came.

From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother.

Side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods, aged seventeen, died in Cordoba.

With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun.

From Dublin to the Villa del Rio

Where he fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco.

Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.

Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers

Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The word came from Maynooth: 'Support the Fascists.'

The men of cloth failed yet again

When the bishops blessed the blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire

As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan.

Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too.

Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar.

Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Doyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly.

Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls.

Jack Nally, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy,

Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.

Written in 1983

Copyright Christy Moore

apr97

Here are a couple more Yeats classics.

 

 

 

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

 

ON A POLITICAL PRISONER

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

HE that but little patience knew,

From childhood on, had now so much

A grey gull lost its fear and flew

Down to her cell and there alit,

And there endured her fingers' touch

And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing

Recall the years before her mind

Became a bitter, an abstract thing,

Her thought some popular enmity:

Blind and leader of the blind

Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride

Under Ben Bulben to the meet,

The beauty of her country-side

With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,

She seemed to have grown clean and sweet

Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced in the air

When first it sprang out of the nest

Upon some lofty rock to stare

Upon the cloudy canopy,

While under its storm-beaten breast

Cried out the hollows of the sea.

"On a Political Prisoner" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.