In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take Two

In Honor Of The 100^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.

********

Here is a little commemorative piece based on the exploits of Frankie Riley from the old neighborhood grand-uncle’s, Sean Flynn, who gave a good account of himself when the time for fighting came:

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 100th Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising, 1916-Sean Flynn’s Fight-Take Two

In Honor Of The 100^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.

********

Here is a little commemorative piece based on the exploits of Frankie Riley from the old neighborhood grand-uncle’s, Sean Flynn, who gave a good account of himself when the time for fighting came:

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.                

5/1 - May Day on Boston Common - Resist Deportations!-Join The Resistance 

4/25/2017 10:11 AM

John

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Should a classmate be imprisoned and deported if her parents arrived in the
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Please join us on May Day, International Workers Day, Monday, May 1 at 5:00
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The government in Washington has launched a generalized assault on our
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The time is now to Resist the Deportations!

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and xenophobia that continues today in the US. An injury to one is an injury
to all! Let us take our fight to the centers of power.

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In Boston- Join the Mass Protest Against Trump this May 1st!-Join The Resistance

In Boston- Join the Mass Protest Against Trump this May 1st!-Join The Resistance 

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An Encore-Remembrances Of Things Past-With Jeff Higgins’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

An Encore-Remembrances Of Things Past-With Jeff Higgins’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

There was always something, some damn thing to remind Jeff Higgins, Class of 1964, a fateful year in his life and not just because that was the year that he graduated from North Quincy High School down in outer edge of the Southeastern corner of Massachusetts. He had recently, well, let's call it 2014 because who knows when some iterant reader might read this and because that as will be pointed in a second has significant for why Jeff Higgins thought that it was "one damn thing after another" when dealing with that class issue. If you did the math quickly in your head while I was pointing to the significance you would know that year represented the fiftieth anniversary of the his graduation from high school, then as now if less so a milestone on the way to serious-minded adulthood, and furthermore had  gone through something of a serious traumatic experience which left him numb every time something came up about that year, some remembrance.

If you knew Jeff in 1964, and even if did not you knew somebody like Jeff since every high school class had  a Jeff case and moreover his experience was not that uncommon, then you know form whence I speak. Hey, let's say you didn't know him back then in 1964 but only in  2014 that would tell you the same tale, with his three messy divorces and several affairs from flings to some more serious relationships along with scads of children and grandchildren now from the marriages not the affairs. Guess what you would know that it was about a woman, always about a woman, he eternally afflicted as old as he was from coming of age time to coming to the end-times.

So about a woman this time, this eternally afflicted time, named Elizabeth Drury whom  he had had a brief puff of air affair with in that same 2014 but which had seemingly vanished in his dust of memory until he went up in the attic to clean up some stuff. (By the way Elizabeth not Liz, which would show a certain informality, a certain good sport and not standing on ceremony or Betty, a nickname which conveyed continued childhood in those days as old as a woman might be, so no way she was not anything but a proper Elizabeth-type, who held maybe Queen Elizabeth I, you know the so-called Virgin Queen, the one who ruled England for a long time and had more lovers than you could shake a stick at but all we knew then was that she was the Virgin Queen, as her model, even in high school.) 


Yeah finally getting rid of most of stuff which had been gathering dust, maybe mold for years, in anticipation of selling his house and moving to a more manageable condo, down-sizing they call it in the real estate trade, and found a faded tattered copy of his class’ remembrance card. You know those time vault cards that card companies like Hallmark, the source of this one, put out so that people, or this case the whole class by some tabulations, can put down favorite films, people, records, who was President, and other momentous events from some important year like a high school graduation to be looked at in later years and ahhed over.
That yellowed sheet brought back not just memories of that faded long ago year but of Elizabeth in the not so faded past. So, yes, it was always some damn thing, always some damn woman thing.      

Maybe we had better take you back to the beginning though, back to how the year 1964 and the woman Elizabeth Drury had been giving one Jeffery Higgins late of North Quincy nothing but pains. Jeff had been for many, many years agnostic about attending class reunions, had early on after graduation decided that he needed to show his back to the whole high school experience which was a flat-out zero once he thought about every indignity and hurt he had suffered for one reason or another, and to show that same back to the town, a small hick town anyway which needed to be fled to see the big old world.

A lot of that teenage angst having to do with his humble beginnings as a son of a “chiseler,” not meant as a nice term, a father who worked in the then depleting and now depleted granite quarries when there was work for which the town was then famous and which represented the low-end of North Quincy society. The low-end which others in the town including his fellow classmates in high school who were as socially class conscious as any Mayfair swells made him feel like a nobody and a nothing for no known reason except that he was the son of a chiseler which after all he could not help. Of course those social exclusions played themselves out under the veil of his not dressing cool, living off the leavings of his older brothers, living off of Bargain Center rejected materials not even cool when purchased, you know, white shirts with stripes when that was not cool, black chinos with cuffs like some farmer, ditto, dinky Thom McAn shoes with buckles for Chrissake, just as his younger brothers lived off his in that tight budget world of the desperate working poor, of his not having money for dates even with fellow bogger’s daughters, and hanging corner dough-less, girl-less corners with fellow odd-ball bogger outcasts. So Jeff had no trouble drifting away from that milieu, had no trouble putting dust on his shoes to get out and head west when the doings out west were drawing every wayward youth to the flame, to the summers of love.

And there things stood in Jeff’s North Quincy consciousness for many years until maybe 2012, 2013 when very conscious that a hallmark 50^th class reunion would be in the works and with more time on his hands as he had cut back on the day to day operation of his small law practice in Cambridge he decided that he would check out the preparations, and perhaps offer his help to organize the event. He had received notification of his class’ fortieth reunion in 2004 (which he had dismissed out of hand only wondering how the reunion committee had gotten his address for while he was not hiding from anything or anyone he was also not out there publicly since he did not have clients other than other lawyers whom he wrote motions, briefs, appeals and the like for, until he realized that as a member of the Massachusetts bar he would have that kind of information on his very publicly-accessible bar profile page) so via the marvels of modern day technology through the Internet he was able to get hold of Donna Marlowe (married name Rossi) who had set up a Facebook page to advertise the event.

That connection led to Jeff drafting himself onto the reunion committee and lead directly to the big bang of pain that he would subsequently feel. Naturally in a world filled with social media and networking those from the class who either knew Donna or the other members of the committee or were Internet savvy joined the class’ Facebook page and then were directed to a class website (as he found out later his generation unlike later ones was on the borderline of entering the “information superhighway” and so not all classmates, those still alive anyway, were savvy that way). On that website set up by tech savvy Donna (she had worked in the computer industry at IBM during her working career) each classmate who joined the site had the ability to put up a personal profile next to their class photograph like he had done on many other such sites and that is where Jeff had seen Elizabeth Drury’s profile and a flood of memories and blushes.            

In high school Jeff had been smitten by Elizabeth, daughter of a couple of school teachers who worked in the upscale Marshfield school system  and therefore were stationed well above the chiselers of the town. But in things of the heart things like class distinctions, especially in democratically-etched America, are forgotten, maybe not rightly or fully forgotten when the deal goes down but there is enough of façade to throw one off if one gets feeling a certain way, gets the love bug, and sometime in the  genes makes one foolhardy. That had almost happened to Jeff in Elizabeth's case, except his corner boy Jack Callahan had put him wise, had kept him from one more teenage angst hurt.

Jeff and Elizabeth had had several classes together senior year and sat across from each other in English class and since both loved literature and were school-recognized as such they had certain interests in common. So they talked, talked in what Jeff thought was very friendly and somewhat flirty manner (or as he thought later after the youthful lame had burned out and he drifted west maybe he just hoped that was the case) and he had "formed an intention" (that is the way he said it the night he related the story to me so forgive the legal claptrap way he said it) to ask her out even if only to Doc’s Drugstore for an after school soda and a listen to the latest platters on Doc’s jukebox which had all the good stuff that kids were dancing to in those days. He figured from there he could work up to a real date. But sometimes the bumps and bruises of the chiseler life left one with a little sense and so before making attempts at such a conquest Jeff consulted with Jack Callahan to see if Elizabeth was “spoken for” (Jeff’s term if you can believe that like this was some 17th century Pilgrim forebears time).


See Jack, a star football player even if he was also a chiseler's son got something of an exemption from the rigid routine of the social structure of the senior class just by being able to run through defensive lines on any given granite grey autumn afternoon and so had excellent “intelligence” on the whole school system’s social network, in other words who was, or was not, spoken for. (By the way that “grapevine” any high school grapevine, maybe middle school too would put the poor technicians at the CIA and the spooks at NSA to shame with the accuracy of the information. It had to be that resourceful and accurate otherwise fists would fly.) The word on Elizabeth, forget it, off-limits, an “ice queen.” So Jeff saved himself plenty of anguish and he moved on with his small little high school life.

Seeing Elizabeth's name and profile though that many years later made him curious, made him wonder what had happened to her and since he was now again “single” he decided he would write a private e-mail to her profile page something which the website was set up to perform and which the reunion committee was recommending the still standing alumnus to do. That “single” a condition that he now considered the best course after three shifts of alimony, child support and college tuitions made him realize that it was infinitely cheaper to just live with a woman and be done with it.

Jeff wrote a short message asking whether she remembered him and she replied that she very well did remember him and their “great” (her term) conversations about Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton. That short message and reply “sparked” something and they began a flurry of e-mails giving outlines of their subsequent history, including the still important one to Jeff whether she was “spoken for.” She was not having had two divorces although no kids in her career as a professor at the State University.


Somehow these messages led Jeff to tell her about his talk with Jack Callahan. And she laughed not at the “intelligence” which was correct but not for the reasons that Jack gave (her father was an abusive “asshole,” her term for her standoffishness and reputation as an “ice queen”). She laughed because despite her being flirty when they talked in English class, at least that was what she thought she was attempting to do because she certainly was interested when they would talk Jeff had never asked her out and then one day just stopped talking to her for no known reason. Damn.                    

They say, or at least Thomas Wolfe did in the title of one of his novels-you can’t go home again but neither Jeff nor Elizabeth after that last exchange of e-mails about the fateful missing chance back in senior year would heed the message. They decided to meet in Cambridge one night to see if that unspoken truth had any substance. They did meet, got along great, had many stories to exchange and it turned out many of the same interests (except golf a sport which relaxed Jeff when he was all wound up but which Elizabeth’s second husband had tried to teach her to no avail). And so their little affair started, started with great big bursts of flames but wound up after a few months smoldering out and being blown away like so much dust in the wind once Elizabeth started talking about marriage. Jeff was willing to listen to living together but his own strange marital orbit had made him very strongly again any more marriages. So this pair could not go home again, not at all, and after some acrimonious moments they parted.           

Jeff knew that was the best course, knew he had to break it off but it still hurt enough that any reference to 1964 made him sad. As he took a look at the sentiments expressed in that tattered yellowed document he had a moment reprieve as he ahh-ed over the information presented. Had he really forgotten that there was no Vice President then since there was no Vice-Presidential succession when Lyndon Johnson became President after the assassination of home state Irish Jack Kennedy. That My Fair Lady was a  popular Broadway show then as now. That the Beatles had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s Show and done a film, that Chapel of Love had been a hit that year as well. That 1964 was the year the Mustang that he would have died for came out into a candid  world. That gas was only about thirty cent a gallon, and that another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, married one Richard Burton for the first time (although not the last). And on that sour note he put the yellowed tattered document he had accidently come across in the trash pile with other tattered documents. He would remember things past in his own way. 

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Unpublished Articles Of Interest-On two essays by Trotsky:An introduction by Ken Tarbuck

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
********
This document is the introduction by the late Ken Tarbuck to a pamphlet he published in 1994 containing the first English translations of two important Trotsky documents – Trade Unions and Their Future Role (the first draft of Trotsky’s theses on the unions submitted to the plenum of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party on 9 November 1920) and The Role and Tasks of Trade Unions (the final form of the theses submitted to the Tenth Congress on 25 December 1920). Both documents were subsequently republished in Al Richardson (ed.), In Defence of the Russian revolution: A Selection of Bolshevik Writings, 1917-1923. The translation by Tom Scott was from a 1921 collection published in Petrograd in 1921 under the title The Party and the Trade Unions. It came into the possession of the late Louis Sinclair (to whom we owe an enormous debt for his compilation of the most complete Trotsky bibliography imagineable), who passed it to Ken Tarbuck.

On two essays by Trotsky:
An introduction by Ken Tarbuck

INTRODUCTION

The two essays presented here by Trotsky hark back to the year 1920, and have not – so far we know – been published in English in full before. If only for that reason it would have been worth while to make them available to a wider audience. However, there are other and more compelling reasons to study these two documents. Before examining these other reasons it is necessary to indicate how and why, and in what circumstances Trotsky wrote these two items.


WAR, CIVIL WAR AND INTERVENTION
The year 1920 was the one in which the outcome of the civil war in Russia was put beyond doubt. On all fronts the counter-revolutionary White and interventionist forces had been decisively repulsed. The forces of Kolchak in Siberia had been broken and routed, Denikin’s ‘Volunteer Army’ in the south had been driven back towards the Crimea and Yudenich had been defeated in the North-West. 1920 and 1921 were to see the remnants of the counter-revolution mopped up and completely eliminated. Even the war with Poland in 1920 had been finally brought to an end, even if not completely satisfactorily. By 1920 the Red Army had 5 million people incorporated in its ranks, this from a force of Red Guards of a few thousands in early 1918.

It is incontestable that the one person who was most responsible for the creation of this huge Red Army was Leon Trotsky. It had been an Herculean task to forge this army and lead it to victory, and Trotsky had been equal to all the tasks such an undertaking imposed. If Trotsky had died in 1921 or 1922 it is also certain that he would have gone down in Soviet and other history as a charismatic figure of historical achievements. Only Lazare Carnot in the French revolution can be said to have carried out such a comparable undertaking, with the levée en masse, and the victory at Valmy. Carnot earned the name ‘The Organiser of Victory’ just as Trotsky did more than a century later.

It was in this period that Trotsky undoubtedly also developed a penchant for ‘administrative solutions’ to the problems threatening to engulf the fledgeling Soviet Republic. Nor was Trotsky alone in this, the whole Bolshevik Party developed a commandist attitude which it never threw off. However, during the civil war Trotsky had emerged as the ‘trouble shooter’ of the Politburo and this was to have profound consequences for his subsequent political career.


1920-21 THE NADIR OF THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY
If 1920 saw the victory in sight for the Red Army is also presaged the total disintegration of Russian economy and society. This indeed was the conundrum of the period, a revolution which had ostensibly been carried through to alleviate the hunger and deprivations of Russia’s masses had resulted in a worsening of their material conditions on a colossal scale. Such a result was neither foreseen nor wanted when the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, but it was most definitely the case.

The two revolutions of 1917 had been the product of the appalling death tolls, hunger and want imposed by the slaughter of the war which had begun in 1914. Famine conditions already stalked the cities and industries of Russia by the winter of 1916/17 and these combined with the centuries old Tsarist autocracy produced a social explosion which brought the whole edifice crashing down.

The civil war which began in the summer of 1918 further aggravated and accentuated all of the economic problems which had produced these revolutions. This civil war was far more destructive than the war with Germany had been, since it encompassed the whole of the Russian empire. Moreover the civil war was fought cruelly and ferociously on a scale not seen before by all the participants. And it was fuelled by foreign intervention on a scale also not seen before. In fact it is doubtful that the Russian civil war would have lasted more than a few months had not the Governments of Britain, France, Japan and the USA not financed, armed and provisioned the White armies, and at various times put their own troops into the field, nearly 160,000 foreign troops were injected into this war.

The net result of this carnage was that by 1920 only 10 per cent of the coal and steel of pre-war days was being produced, and around 25 percent of consumer goods. Food was so short in the Soviet held areas that workers would sometimes faint at their machines from hunger. All the major centres of population were drained, as people fled to the countryside in search of food. The catastrophe that befell Russia between 1914 and 1921 had never before been equalled in modern times. In 1921 cannibalism had appeared in the Ukraine.

The system of ‘War Communism’ that had evolved in the Soviet Republic had indeed enabled it to survive, equip the Red Army and eventually triumph. However, this was bought at enormous cost. ‘War Communism’ was not in any real sense a method of producing goods, it was more a means of rationing and gathering together the remaining products left over from the previous period. Food had been obtained from the peasantry by means of the prohibition of private trading and requisitioning of grain by armed detachments sent out from the towns. In the process the peasants had been alienated and they had reduced their sowing. Production in town and country had been put on a downward spiral which seemed to have only one end – the mutual destruction of all social groups.

At one point in 1920 it was pointed out to the Politburo that with a few months all trains would stop running in the country. The destruction of engines and rolling stock was far, far exceeding the rate of repair. Trotsky produced a graph indicating the precise date of the forecast halting of all trains. In the event he was given the job of finding a solution (along with running the army) and this he did, by putting all the railway workers under martial law, removing the railway workers trade union leaders and the imposition of penalties for failure and rewards for success.

It should be mentioned that in February 1920 Trotsky had attempted to warn the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of the catastrophe facing the country in terms of food supplies and had suggested a Tax in kind and allowing the peasants to sell their surplus on a revived market. This was rejected, almost out of hand, and the policies of ‘War Communism’ continued with until Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy (NEP) in March 1921. By then the catastrophe was upon them and the sailors at Kronstadt had revolted. The Bolsheviks only survived by the skin of their teeth.

However, when Trotsky’s proposals had been rejected in February 1920 he strenuously sought ways to avoid the threatening catastrophe within the confines of the received wisdom of ‘War Communism’. It is against this sombre background that one has to read Trotsky’s texts produced here. The resultant heated debate within the ranks of the Bolshevik Party came close to producing a split within its ranks. The debate ‘On the Trade Union Question’ lasted right upto the Bolshevik Congress in March 1921, but by the time it met the debate was already being overtaken by events. And in the event Trotsky’s proposals were rejected.


THE DICHOTOMY WITHIN TROTSKY’S POSITION
At first reading what strikes one about these texts is the somewhat strident disciplinarian tone of much of them. Trotsky seems to be projecting a complete militarisation of daily life. It is as though his experiences as Commissar for War and then Supremo of Transport had produced an almost tunnel vision on the immediate future for Russian workers. The tunnel would be hard work, draconian discipline, little immediate reward, deployed when and where the state dictated, it would long and arduous. The light at the end of the tunnel was Trotsky’s vision of socialism, and in 1920 it was faint and wavering, seeming to be a lifetime away.

Yet when one examines the texts more closely we find something curious. Whilst advocating the statification of the trade unions and militarisation of labour, we find at the same time Trotsky is suggesting that these same trade unions should be taking over the overall management of the economy, he is suggesting a process which would lead to managers being elected by the workers. It did not seem to occur to Trotsky that the two processes he was advocating were mutually exclusive. Trotsky seemed to be suggesting that the workers should, rather like medieval penitents, drive themselves forward by their voluntary flagellation. Such a procedure may well be acceptable to those imbued with an irrational religious mania, but hardly likely to recommend itself to ordinary work-a-day folk. If whipping is to be used it is always necessary for the whipper and the whipped to be two ‘people’. Self discipline cannot by its very nature be draconian, it must arise from an inner necessity. Trotsky’s proposals for the militarisation of labour were predicated on the lack of such inner motivation.

That is the first dichotomy. However, there is also another aspect of these texts that display certain dimensions of Trotsky’s personality. We have already mentioned Trotsky’s attempt in February 1920 to persuade the Central Committee to adopt a form of NEP. Such a suggestion meant that he had recognised the limits of compulsion when faced with the growing food crisis. Why then did he not recognise the same limits when it came to industrial production? It is as though Trotsky was flailing around desperately seeking a way out of the impending catastrophe without allowing himself time to consider all of the aspects of the problem. There is undoubtedly a rigour and logic to his texts, but confined to an already dead orthodoxy, i.e. ‘War Communism’.

Let us now consider a wider issue. Adolf Joffe in his suicide note of 1927 cajoled Trotsky for failing to stick to a correct position, particularly when he stood alone. How else can we interpret Trotsky’s abandonment of his ‘NEP’ proposals when he stood alone except in the light of Joffe’s stricture? Instead of sticking to his position, he dropped it and plunged headlong back into the follies of ‘War Communism’, and the result was these texts amongst others. The other major text of this period is, of course, Terrorism and Communism where Trotsky expounds at length all the arguments for the militarisation of labour.


THE IMPORTANCE OF 1920-21
Reading these present texts along with Terrorism and Communism one is presented with a picture of a Trotsky that breaths fire and brimstone, the scourge of the Trade Unions, the ‘shaker-up’ of the unions, the man prepared to break heads and bones in the quest for greater industrial production. Even more terrifying is the suggestion of treating ‘labour deserters’, i.e. workers who wanted to go back to their own homes, in the same fashion as military deserters, i.e. shoot them. Can this be the same man who a couple of years before had been giving speeches about building a ‘paradise on this earth’?

Because of the compelling need to defeat the counter-revolution and intervention all the available resources, both material and human, had been sucked up by the Commissariat of War. Trotsky loomed over Soviet Russia as the ‘organiser of victory’, now it appeared he wanted to organise the peace as though it were a military campaign. His very success as war leader placed a question mark over him when it came to peace. Bonapartism and its dangers was never far from the minds of the Bolsheviks, and to many of them Trotsky seemed to be the proto-Bonaparte. Such texts as these went some way to paint Trotsky in a certain light, few it seems caught the undertones of the trade unions taking over economic management, nearly all saw the militariser.

Is it any wonder then that during the mid-1920s many in the Bolshevik Party saw dangers coming from Trotsky, not from Stalin. A recent TV programme included an interview with a survivor of the 1920s who was active in the Bolshevik Party at that time. He stated very simply that ‘We saw only the danger from Trotsky, we hardly knew Stalin’. One cannot but ask, how much did Trotsky contribute to his own political downfall by his years as Commissar for War and such writings as those in this pamphlet? How far is it possible to disengage the Trotsky of the 1930s, with his calls for Soviet democracy, Soviet parties, the right to form factions etc. from the Trotsky who wrote these texts?

It is within these texts that we obtain an insight into another side of Trotsky. The Trotsky handed down to us by tradition – mainly stemming from the ortho-Trots – is of the defender of workers rights, the fighter for democracy against the encroaching Stalinist bureaucracy. Yet these texts could quite easily be taken for parables of the Stalinist ’socialism in one country’ that was to come. One has the uneasy feeling that if Stalin kept his head down during the ‘trade union controversy’ of 1920, at the same time he quietly pocketed Trotsky’s text for future reference.

Trotsky’s ideas in these texts indicate the end result of ‘statism’ taken to its nth degree. It produced no ‘Paradise on this Earth’, rather the nightmare of Stalinism. Having once been rebuffed on these ideas Trotsky slowly but surely began to shake off this nightmare vision. They do, however, demonstrate how once one adopts certain methods they begin to develop a life of their own, taking over and bending even the strongest of people. NEP was finally adopted, and Russia began to pull itself away from the edge of the abyss, and thus the conditions which gave rise to such ideas began to fade into the background, at least for Trotsky, but not it seems for all the Bolsheviks.

This is not the place to explore many of the wider issues raised by these texts and the events of 1920/21. That examination belongs to a more detailed historical discussion. However, I hope the reader will find much in these texts to give them food for thought.

Ken Tarbuck
26th June 1993.


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Below are a number of works that will be of use to readers wishing to follow up a number of the points made above.

Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, Leon Trotsky, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1961.

Social Democracy and the Wars of Intervention: Russia 1918-1921, Leon Trotsky, New Park Publications 1975.

My Life, Leon Trotsky, Grossett & Dunlop 1960.

The Prophet Armed:Trotsky 1879-1921, Isaac Deutscher, OUP 1954.

The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, R.V.Daniels, Harvard University Press 1960. See the chapter on the 1920/21 opposition.

The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1921, E.H.Carr, Three Volumes, Penguin 1966.

Memoirs of a Revolutionary, Victor Serge, OUP (Paperback) 1967.

Alexandra Kollontai: A Biography, Cathy Porter, Virago 1980. This is particularly interesting on the trade union debate of 1920/21.

Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War, W.Bruce Lincoln, Simon & Schuster 1989. Lincoln is by no means a supporter of the Bolshevik revolution yet his scholarly recital of the horrors of this conflict is genuinely moving. If the Bolsheviks do not emerge as saints, their opponents appear as grotesque butchers.

Nearly all of these works have excellent bibliographies.


I should also mention two interesting videos now made available by the opening of Soviet archives.

The Russian Civil War and Railways of Russia. Both are available from W.H. Smith (exclusively). Both vividly portray the material losses inflicted upon Russia by the civil war. Perhaps they bring home more graphically the human and material damage of the conflict than a reading of books can.