Irish left-wing parties and USSR.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I've been wondering recently what opinion the many far-left parties in Ireland had of the Soviet bloc during the cold war. For example would the Workers Party, or Miliant Labour have been supporters of soviet commmunism? I've been trying to find this out and cant get information on any of them apart from the SWP who I am aware were opposed to the USSR, regarding it as not being properly socialist.

OhNoYouDidn't

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

I've been wondering recently what opinion the many far-left parties in Ireland had of the Soviet bloc during the cold war. For example would the Workers Party, or Miliant Labour have been supporters of soviet commmunism? I've been trying to find this out and cant get information on any of them apart from the SWP who I am aware were opposed to the USSR, regarding it as not being properly socialist.

The Workers Party were very pro Russia and worked very hard to try and become the Kremlin's preffered party in Ireland over the CPI.

Militant Labour supported Russia to a point, but believed it to be a perversion of communist theory but felt it could be reformed.

The SWP actively supported the end of communism / fall of the wall as they saw Stalinism as a total anathema to communist ideals

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Its not a good thing that the man who will probably be our next tanaiste was once a big fan of the soviets is it?

OhNoYouDidn't

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

Its not a good thing that the man who will probably be our next tanaiste was once a big fan of the soviets is it?

It was 30 years ago and he led the faction that split into social democracy in DL.

Think about the Sticks was everyone was in them at some point. Eoghan Harris ffs - how far have his politics moved in the same time?

I would highly recommend this book on the subject

Namabillion

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

Its not a good thing that the man who will probably be our next tanaiste was once a big fan of the soviets is it?

Or Taoiseach

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I really know very little about Official Sinn Fein or the Workers Party.. They had faded from prominence by the time I was born. I might give that book a look.

OhNoYouDidn't

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

I really know very little about Official Sinn Fein or the Workers Party.. They had faded from prominence by the time I was born. I might give that book a look.

Do. Its well written and researched and their journey from defending the Falls in 71 while the Provo's hid to refusing to back political status is fascinating.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Bob Z

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Couldnt this be proved or disproved by a handwriting expert?

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Bob Z wrote: »

Couldnt this be proved or disproved by a handwriting expert?

Handwriting tests arent all that accurate.

Bob Z

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

Handwriting tests arent all that accurate.

I thought they were. They accepted in Criminal Courts though aren't They? Unlike Lie detecter test results

silkworm53

Soviet Russia was the fulcrum around which the International Left revolved.
Irish leftists were no different.
Western capitalism and representative democracy was the target of the Soviets - the freedoms and living standards enjoyed by citizens of the United States and much of Western Europe made a mockery of Marxist rhetoric.
The age old conflict between Ireland and Britain was an obvious Achilles heel of the NATO alliance.

The Soviets supplied arms to the IRA through intermediaries such as Gaddaffi whose Libyan regime was a client state of the Soviets.
The Soviets gave arms, training, intelligence and funding to European leftist terrorist groups such as Action Directe, the Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, ETA and the Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine all of whom had both a hard-left political ideology as well as a narrow hard-line nationalist outlook.
The Provisional IRA, Official IRA and INLA were all assisted too.
People like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen in the U.S. were also taking order from Moscow.
Terrorists from these organisations saw each other as brothers and sisters in a global struggle and trained together in Lebanon and Libyan camps.

As well as terrorist groups which were the tip of the spear, the Soviet financed and organised the network of fellow travellers - the front political organisations that changed their names regularly and pretended that they had separate memberships, the newspapers, protest movements, student organisations and much more.

The leftist movements incorporated a wide range of people who did not on the face of it appear to have a connection.

Journalists wrote critical articles about capitalism, NATO, imperialism, social justice issues, the Third World. Community activists and agitators organised local protests, sit ins, demonstrations and riots. Spokespersons were schooled in the media so they could give polish appearances on television. Book and journal publishers produced academic material for student indoctrination by lecturers and academics who used their charisma to win over campuses and turn students into potential foot-soldiers in the revolution.

In the Official movement in Ireland - radicalized young people who are now respectable middle-aged doctors, solicitors, civil servants, editors went for weekends away for political indoctrination and field stripping of automatic weapons and military training when they were college kids who flirted with violent Irish socialist republicanism.

The same kind of thing happened in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the US as the more hard core psychotics of the angry students gravitated toward violence - hijacking airliners, kidnap and murder, assassination, bombings and hunger strikes in prison.

The 1981 Maze Hunger Strikes borrowed their iconography heavily from Baader-Meinhof terrorists in West German prisons who staged dirty protests, hunger strikers and suicides to get sympathy for their cause.

While these radical movements all eventually evaporated as revolutionaries became mature responsible middle-aged and they embraced the bourgeois lifestyles they hated so much in their youth, their sympathies remain dormant.

The opposition to the Iraq War, the hostility to the Bush administration, the support for Palestinian 'militants,' the whole-scale denial of the threat from Islamist terrorism, the mistaken sympathy for the human rights of Muslim terrorist suspects in Gitmo and their opposition to the torture in order to obtain information about lethal terrorist plots, reflects the hard-line leftist pasts of many who are now leading members of the political, academic, media and economic establishment.

Many of the leading politicians, professors, property developers, business people and celebrities in Ireland have a murky past in the socialist republican movement.

Bob Z

silkworm53 wrote: »

Soviet Russia was the fulcrum around which the International Left revolved.
Irish leftists were no different.
Western capitalism and representative democracy was the target of the Soviets - the freedoms and living standards enjoyed by citizens of the United States and much of Western Europe made a mockery of Marxist rhetoric.
The age old conflict between Ireland and Britain was an obvious Achilles heel of the NATO alliance.

The Soviets supplied arms to the IRA through intermediaries such as Gaddaffi whose Libyan regime was a client state of the Soviets.
The Soviets gave arms, training, intelligence and funding to European leftist terrorist groups such as Action Directe, the Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, ETA and the Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine all of whom had both a hard-left political ideology as well as a narrow hard-line nationalist outlook.
The Provisional IRA, Official IRA and INLA were all assisted too.
People like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen in the U.S. were also taking order from Moscow.
Terrorists from these organisations saw each other as brothers and sisters in a global struggle and trained together in Lebanon and Libyan camps.

As well as terrorist groups which were the tip of the spear, the Soviet financed and organised the network of fellow travellers - the front political organisations that changed their names regularly and pretended that they had separate memberships, the newspapers, protest movements, student organisations and much more.

The leftist movements incorporated a wide range of people who did not on the face of it appear to have a connection.

Journalists wrote critical articles about capitalism, NATO, imperialism, social justice issues, the Third World. Community activists and agitators organised local protests, sit ins, demonstrations and riots. Spokespersons were schooled in the media so they could give polish appearances on television. Book and journal publishers produced academic material for student indoctrination by lecturers and academics who used their charisma to win over campuses and turn students into potential foot-soldiers in the revolution.

In the Official movement in Ireland - radicalized young people who are now respectable middle-aged doctors, solicitors, civil servants, editors went for weekends away for political indoctrination and field stripping of automatic weapons and military training when they were college kids who flirted with violent Irish socialist republicanism.

The same kind of thing happened in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the US as the more hard core psychotics of the angry students gravitated toward violence - hijacking airliners, kidnap and murder, assassination, bombings and hunger strikes in prison.

The 1981 Maze Hunger Strikes borrowed their iconography heavily from Baader-Meinhof terrorists in West German prisons who staged dirty protests, hunger strikers and suicides to get sympathy for their cause.

While these radical movements all eventually evaporated as revolutionaries became mature responsible middle-aged and they embraced the bourgeois lifestyles they hated so much in their youth, their sympathies remain dormant.

The opposition to the Iraq War, the hostility to the Bush administration, the support for Palestinian 'militants,' the whole-scale denial of the threat from Islamist terrorism, the mistaken sympathy for the human rights of Muslim terrorist suspects in Gitmo and their opposition to the torture in order to obtain information about lethal terrorist plots, reflects the hard-line leftist pasts of many who are now leading members of the political, academic, media and economic establishment.

Many of the leading politicians, professors, property developers, business people and celebrities in Ireland have a murky past in the socialist republican movement.

Reds under the bed eh?

silkworm53

Bob Z wrote: »

Reds under the bed eh?

All of what I said is backed up by fact.

Read Michael Burleigh's excellent book 'Blood And Terror' - he charts among other things the rise of left-wing terrorism around the world in the late 1960's and early 1970's before it's demise in the late 1980's and early 1990's as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Read the book already mentioned in this thread 'The Lost Revolution' which charts the history of the hard-left socialist republican movement which morphed with the Labour Party.
Sinn Fein - formerly the poor relation of the Provos - is now full participant in democratic politics North and South apart from the symbolic policy of absention from the House of Commons.
In time Sinn Fein will either merge with the Labour Party or become a left wing fringe of a fusion of the FF and FG parties if it fails to survive on it's own as an independent party with middle class support.
Even so it pretends to hold onto it's old ideology - ceremonies for dead hunger strikers and 'volunteers' killed in barely remembered SAS ambushes.
There are echoes of FF's anti-imperialist past in much of their rhetoric and pagents - they still glorify Kilmichael and Crossbarry and Soloheadbeg - although it is hand and glove with the rich and powerful. FF would never like to talk about past associations with Lenin or Stalin.
FG do not like talking about the Blueshirts and their links with Mussolini or Franco.
Similarly the Labour Party hierarchy - many of whom were once espoused violent socialist revolution, were fans of Mao and Castro - are now fully part of a middle class party. They might pontificate on Shannon being used as a transit point for US troops, they might protest against Israel or some other shrine to the hard left.
They don't like being reminded they supported the violent overthrow of the Irish state, rubbing out the bourgeois and creating a workers utopia and becoming a satelite state of the USSR.

junder

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

I've been wondering recently what opinion the many far-left parties in Ireland had of the Soviet bloc during the cold war. For example would the Workers Party, or Miliant Labour have been supporters of soviet commmunism? I've been trying to find this out and cant get information on any of them apart from the SWP who I am aware were opposed to the USSR, regarding it as not being properly socialist.

I have a mate who is workers party, he'd a actually lived in Russia for several years pre-glasnost so yer he was very much pro soviet, used to argue with him all the time about that, to me it was tantamount to supporting nazism,

FTA69

silkworm53 wrote: »

Soviet Russia was the fulcrum around which the International Left revolved.
Irish leftists were no different.
Western capitalism and representative democracy was the target of the Soviets - the freedoms and living standards enjoyed by citizens of the United States and much of Western Europe made a mockery of Marxist rhetoric.
The age old conflict between Ireland and Britain was an obvious Achilles heel of the NATO alliance.

The Soviets supplied arms to the IRA through intermediaries such as Gaddaffi whose Libyan regime was a client state of the Soviets.
The Soviets gave arms, training, intelligence and funding to European leftist terrorist groups such as Action Directe, the Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, ETA and the Popular Front For The Liberation Of Palestine all of whom had both a hard-left political ideology as well as a narrow hard-line nationalist outlook.
The Provisional IRA, Official IRA and INLA were all assisted too.
People like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen in the U.S. were also taking order from Moscow.
Terrorists from these organisations saw each other as brothers and sisters in a global struggle and trained together in Lebanon and Libyan camps.

As well as terrorist groups which were the tip of the spear, the Soviet financed and organised the network of fellow travellers - the front political organisations that changed their names regularly and pretended that they had separate memberships, the newspapers, protest movements, student organisations and much more.

The leftist movements incorporated a wide range of people who did not on the face of it appear to have a connection.

Journalists wrote critical articles about capitalism, NATO, imperialism, social justice issues, the Third World. Community activists and agitators organised local protests, sit ins, demonstrations and riots. Spokespersons were schooled in the media so they could give polish appearances on television. Book and journal publishers produced academic material for student indoctrination by lecturers and academics who used their charisma to win over campuses and turn students into potential foot-soldiers in the revolution.

In the Official movement in Ireland - radicalized young people who are now respectable middle-aged doctors, solicitors, civil servants, editors went for weekends away for political indoctrination and field stripping of automatic weapons and military training when they were college kids who flirted with violent Irish socialist republicanism.

The same kind of thing happened in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the US as the more hard core psychotics of the angry students gravitated toward violence - hijacking airliners, kidnap and murder, assassination, bombings and hunger strikes in prison.

The 1981 Maze Hunger Strikes borrowed their iconography heavily from Baader-Meinhof terrorists in West German prisons who staged dirty protests, hunger strikers and suicides to get sympathy for their cause.

While these radical movements all eventually evaporated as revolutionaries became mature responsible middle-aged and they embraced the bourgeois lifestyles they hated so much in their youth, their sympathies remain dormant.

The opposition to the Iraq War, the hostility to the Bush administration, the support for Palestinian 'militants,' the whole-scale denial of the threat from Islamist terrorism, the mistaken sympathy for the human rights of Muslim terrorist suspects in Gitmo and their opposition to the torture in order to obtain information about lethal terrorist plots, reflects the hard-line leftist pasts of many who are now leading members of the political, academic, media and economic establishment.

Many of the leading politicians, professors, property developers, business people and celebrities in Ireland have a murky past in the socialist republican movement.

Spoof. On numerous different levels.

silkworm53

FTA69 wrote: »

Spoof. On numerous different levels.

Could you please elaborate? If anything I have said is inaccurate please point it out.
You don't know much about modern Irish history if you ignore that fact Ireland fell between two stools - NATO and the USSR. The pro-Soviet faction which constituted much of the socialist republican movement saw Moscow as it's natural leadership.

Bob Z

silkworm53 wrote: »

Could you please elaborate? If anything I have said is inaccurate please point it out.
You don't know much about modern Irish history if you ignore that fact Ireland fell between two stools - NATO and the USSR. The pro-Soviet faction which constituted much of the socialist republican movement saw Moscow as it's natural leadership.

I don't know if avtually belief your own post. Your saying that every left of centre, republican, student group etc in Ireland are linked?

I don't believe that any more than i believe every right ring roup is linked.

In fact from what i can see Socialist groups are usually bickering, falling out and splitting.

One group or orgaiazation might take ideas or inspiriation from another group but that doesnt mean they are linked. John Hume took ideas from Martion Luther King.I think Martin Luther King took ideas from Ghandi Does that mean these 3 people were all in one gang?

silkworm53

Bob Z wrote: »

I don't know if avtually belief your own post. Your saying that every left of centre, republican, student group etc in Ireland are linked?

I don't believe that any more than i believe every right ring roup is linked.

In fact from what i can see Socialist groups are usually bickering, falling out and splitting.

One group or orgaiazation might take ideas or inspiriation from another group but that doesnt mean they are linked. John Hume took ideas from Martion Luther King.I think Martin Luther King took ideas from Ghandi Does that mean these 3 people were all in one gang?

The Soviets successfully infiltrated leftist groups in Ireland.
The Official Sinn Fein movement which later became the Worker's Party, the Communist Party of Ireland and a range of other extreme left socialist republican groupings were openly supportive of the Soviet Union and global communism. A wide range of protest groups and demonstrations were fronts for these communist organisations. The Workers Party maintained links to the Official IRA who were heavily involved in subversive criminal activity - bank robberies, smuggling rackets, vigilantism, murder and extorting drug dealers well into the late 1980's.
Members of the movement travelled to the Soviet Union and other communist states for training.
Again as I suggested go read a history book.

Bob Z

silkworm53 wrote: »

Again as I suggested go read a history book.

Which history book are you reading?

silkworm53

Bob Z wrote: »

Which history book are you reading?

In all good bookshops friendo.;)

FTA69

The Soviets supplied arms to the IRA through intermediaries such as Gaddaffi

The Provisionals were never linked to the USSR, they considered themselves a national liberation organisation as opposed to a Marxist-Leninist "vanguard" (unlike the Sticks.) While there may have been a couple of people within Sinn Féin and the IRA who were sympathetic to the USSR they would have been a small minority, they would even have been a minority amongst those who would have been far left in their politics.

The arms shipments from Ghadaffi in the early 1970s and mid 1980s were not part of some elaborate Soviet plot, rather they were the results of Ghadaffi himself pursuing his own agenda. Any Provisional contact with the Eastern Bloc was generally quite limited and often focussed around the personal connections of some senior IRA figures.

People like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen in the U.S. were also taking order from Moscow

This is also wrong. Initially the Black Panthers were a multi-tendencied organisation which eventually went down a Marxist line. Even so that Marxism ended up being of a more Maoist hue rather than pro-Soviet. While they may have taken ideological inspiration from the socialist states they certainly weren't puppets who followed "orders" from them.

Basically your post attempts to portray any leftist politics in Ireland (and anywhere else) as simply Soviet conspiracies as opposed to genuine movements which arose because of national liberation struggles or simple opposition to capitalism.

As a poster above said, it's a case of "Reds under the Bed" and it's pure crap to be honest.

Bob Z

silkworm53 wrote: »

In all good bookshops friendo.;)

Did you write it?

silkworm53

FTA69 wrote: »

The Provisionals were never linked to the USSR, they considered themselves a national liberation organisation as opposed to a Marxist-Leninist "vanguard" (unlike the Sticks.) While there may have been a couple of people within Sinn Féin and the IRA who were sympathetic to the USSR they would have been a small minority, they would even have been a minority amongst those who would have been far left in their politics.

The arms shipments from Ghadaffi in the early 1970s and mid 1980s were not part of some elaborate Soviet plot, rather they were the results of Ghadaffi himself pursuing his own agenda. Any Provisional contact with the Eastern Bloc was generally quite limited and often focussed around the personal connections of some senior IRA figures.



This is also wrong. Initially the Black Panthers were a multi-tendencied organisation which eventually went down a Marxist line. Even so that Marxism ended up being of a more Maoist hue rather than pro-Soviet. While they may have taken ideological inspiration from the socialist states they certainly weren't puppets who followed "orders" from them.

Basically your post attempts to portray any leftist politics in Ireland (and anywhere else) as simply Soviet conspiracies as opposed to genuine movements which arose because of national liberation struggles or simple opposition to capitalism.

As a poster above said, it's a case of "Reds under the Bed" and it's pure crap to be honest.

The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament in the UK was a classic example of Soviet infiltration. The presence of U.S. Air Force bases with nuclear weapons in Britain and Western Europe prevented a Soviet invasion - the most powerful tank army the world has every seen was poised on the East German border read to charge for the Bay of Biscay.
The peacenik lunatics were calling for the West to disarm.
The RAF were attacking American bases and trying to murder senior American commanders in Germany.
The Provisional IRA also murdered RAF airmen and members of their families at British and European bases and kept British forces tied down fighting a guerrilla war.
The Irish leftist movements who were banging on about Sellafield were trying to discredit the nuclear industry and cripple the British economy.
In the same way today the Rossport protests are designed to halt Shell's gas project in Mayo - they are doing it behalf of Russian energy companies who want to keep Ireland dependent of their resources.
Gaddaffi was a fence for Eastern European manufactured weapons - Kalashnikov rifles taken from the weapons silos of the Russian and Communist block armies and sold onto rebel groups in Africa who were attacking pro-Western regimes that allowed Western mining and oil companies to operate in their countries.
Libya's Mediterranean location and proximity to South European made Libya a good hide out and training for Palestinian, Arab and European terrorists.
A slow-boat from Libya could also supply the IRA where vessels could meet Irish fishing vessels off the coast and transfer guns.

Einhard

silkworm53 wrote: »

...the mistaken sympathy for the human rights of Muslim terrorist suspects in Gitmo and their opposition to the torture in order to obtain information about lethal terrorist plots, reflects the hard-line leftist pasts of many who are now leading members of the political, academic, media and economic establishment.

I would have thought it reflected a basic humanity to be honest.

Bob Z

silkworm53 wrote: »

The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament in the UK was a classic example of Soviet infiltration. The presence of U.S. Air Force bases with nuclear weapons in Britain and Western Europe prevented a Soviet invasion - the most powerful tank army the world has every seen was poised on the East German border read to charge for the Bay of Biscay.
The peacenik lunatics were calling for the West to disarm.
The RAF were attacking American bases and trying to murder senior American commanders in Germany.
The Provisional IRA also murdered RAF airmen and members of their families at British and European bases and kept British forces tied down fighting a guerrilla war.
The Irish leftist movements who were banging on about Sellafield were trying to discredit the nuclear industry and cripple the British economy.
In the same way today the Rossport protests are designed to halt Shell's gas project in Mayo - they are doing it behalf of Russian energy companies who want to keep Ireland dependent of their resources.
Gaddaffi was a fence for Eastern European manufactured weapons - Kalashnikov rifles taken from the weapons silos of the Russian and Communist block armies and sold onto rebel groups in Africa who were attacking pro-Western regimes that allowed Western mining and oil companies to operate in their countries.
Libya's Mediterranean location and proximity to South European made Libya a good hide out and training for Palestinian, Arab and European terrorists.
A slow-boat from Libya could also supply the IRA where vessels could meet Irish fishing vessels off the coast and transfer guns.

I don't think any intelligenges groups or that all powerful. Be it the CIA or the KGB

In fact groups like cnd, black panther, communist party probably had more agents from their own country in the midst of them


It was said of the american communist party that if every fbi agent left them they would have no one at all

Some of the links you make are very tenuous. By your logic i could say you are working on behalf of the CIA!

DublinWriter

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

I've been wondering recently what opinion the many far-left parties in Ireland had of the Soviet bloc during the cold war.

Somewhere between 1986 and 1988 I remember reading one of Michael D. Higgins' columns in Hot Press were he described a recent visit to Moscow.

The article stuck in my mind ever-since because of its fawning over the Soviet system of government in gushing platitudes of naive admiration. One particular sentence I remember went "touching town at Moscow I felt like I was coming home to the warm glow of Socialism".

I really wish someone would unearth it today. It was sick-making then, even then, not knowing the full story of what was happening behind the iron-curtain.

Holybejaysus

FTA69 wrote: »

Spoof. On numerous different levels.

Not a spoof, actually. Here is proof from the horses mouth-Yuri Bezmenov, former KGB propaganda officer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpODYhnPEo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj0Id3BLFco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLsi0Ialvxk

The interesting thing is that had the Soviets succeeded, those Workers Party members and Socialists would have been put up against a wall and shot, having served their purpose as useful idiots.

silkworm53

Einhard wrote: »

I would have thought it reflected a basic humanity to be honest.

But they never once protested against Islamist suicide bombings, they never once protested once against the brutality of the Iranian regime, they never once protested against the Sudanese genocide in Darfur, they never once protested against heinous massacres in Beslan, Madrid, London, Moscow, Mumbai and elsewhere. They never once protested in support of Buddhist monks who led a peaceful uprising in Myanmar only to be gunned down by the Burmese military. They never once protested against the Chinese government's crackdown on the Tibetan people.

Instead the Left protest for the rights of Muslim terrorist scum who seek to overthrow our democracy and human rights and stone adulterers and murder homosexuals, Jews and all apostates, the Left protest against Israel defending itself from barbarian savages who seek to conquer Jerusalem and butcher the Jewish people, the Left protested against the liberation of Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam, the Left protested against U.S. troops fighting the Taliban savages and they protest against any measure whatsoever to fight against jihadists bent on future 9/11's.
That is the depths to which the international left including the Irish Left has sunk.

They have no basic humanity. They don't even know the meaning of the word.

Bob Z

silkworm53 wrote: »

But they never once protested against Islamist suicide bombings, they never once protested once against the brutality of the Iranian regime, they never once protested against the Sudanese genocide in Darfur, they never once protested against heinous massacres in Beslan, Madrid, London, Moscow, Mumbai and elsewhere. They never once protested in support of Buddhist monks who led a peaceful uprising in Myanmar only to be gunned down by the Burmese military. They never once protested against the Chinese government's crackdown on the Tibetan people.

Instead the Left protest for the rights of Muslim terrorist scum who seek to overthrow our democracy and human rights and stone adulterers and murder homosexuals, Jews and all apostates, the Left protest against Israel defending itself from barbarian savages who seek to conquer Jerusalem and butcher the Jewish people, the Left protested against the liberation of Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam, the Left protested against U.S. troops fighting the Taliban savages and they protest against any measure whatsoever to fight against jihadists bent on future 9/11's.
That is the depths to which the international left including the Irish Left has sunk.

They have no basic humanity. They don't even know the meaning of the word.

er yes they did they protest against the taliban and Hussein when the west were supporting them

silkworm53

Bob Z wrote: »

er yes they did they protest against the taliban and Hussein when the west were supporting them

And then when the West did something about Saddam and the Taliban - overthrowing them and bring freedom and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan - the Left opposed it citing Iraq and Afghan sovereignty and 'international law'.
A big crock of BS.

sensibleken

I know that new books in temple bar used to be the headquaters of the communist party and their drink was subsidised by the russian government

sensibleken

Bob Z wrote: »

John Hume took ideas from Martion Luther King.I think Martin Luther King took ideas from Ghandi Does that mean these 3 people were all in one gang?

Ghandi was played by ben kinsley
who was in AI directed by stephen spielberg
who directed catch me if you can starring tom hanks
who was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon

Boo-yeah!

silkworm53

sensibleken wrote: »

Ghandi was played by ben kinsley
who was in AI directed by stephen spielberg
who directed catch me if you can starring tom hanks
who was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon

Kevin Bacon starred in The River Wild with Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep starred in The Deer Hunter with Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro directed The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon
Matt Damon starred in The Departed with Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen also starred in Ghandi.

Boo-yeah!

OhNoYouDidn't

Silkworm, what came first? These movements or the alleged Soviet support?

What I'm asking is did the Russians create the 'Ra?

FTA69

silkworm53 wrote: »

The Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament in the UK was a classic example of Soviet infiltration.

No it wasn't. You're talking nonsense.

The Provisional IRA also murdered RAF airmen and members of their families at British and European bases and kept British forces tied down fighting a guerrilla war.

Yeah, because the IRA needed encouragement from the Soviets to attack Brits. :rolleyes:

In the same way today the Rossport protests are designed to halt Shell's gas project in Mayo - they are doing it behalf of Russian energy companies who want to keep Ireland dependent of their resources.

No they aren't. You're talking nonsense. If there was any doubt about thoroughly wrong and misinformed you are that's gone now.

silkworm53

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Silkworm, what came first? These movements or the alleged Soviet support?

What I'm asking is did the Russians create the 'Ra?

The movements were inspired by socialist revolution and were infiltrated subsequently by the Soviets.
When the Soviet Union came apart at the seams, the funding, support and popularity of radical and violent socialist movements also collapsed.
The Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in 1994 after stuttering on after the Soviet Empire fell to pieces in 1991.
Today former Irish revolutionaries have either become legit business people and democratic politicians or else have gone from committing bank robberies, drug dealing, smuggling cigarettes, booze and diesel to fund the Cause to doing it now purely for profit.
The Workers Party overnight abandoned their Marxist-Leninist ideology and became a pinko liberal party before merging with the Labour Party.
Eoin Harris who once dreamed of becoming Moscow's puppet is now a FF senator and Sindo columnist.
It is no accident that Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 when the ANC lost their Soviet support as communism crumbled.
The ANC gave up their ambition to violently overthrow white rule and instead went down a peaceful political path.
It is no accident that RAF activity ended when the Berlin Wall came down and Germany unified.
The Italian Red Brigades evaporated in the early 1990's and former socialist revolutionaries were reduced to doing hits for the Mafia.
Brian Keenan and other hostages were released from Beirut when Soviet funds for Arab revolutionaries dried up.
The Basque ETA movement is now a poor shadow of itself.

Marxist revolutionaries are reduced to apologizing for Islamic terrorism as reaction to so-called Western imperialism or telling us how cuddly Castro or Kim Jong Il really are or claiming that Iran or Hugo Chavez are not as bad we are told they are.

Spearbearer

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Eamon Gilmore was a fundraiser for The Worker's Party, but his fundraising methods were legitimate :


However, the question surely arises if he was aware of other fundraising methods.

Maurice Hayes sums it up best in his review of "The Lost Revolution" :

"It is not that the Sinn Fein/Workers' Party/Democratic Left transition was entirely bloodless either. There was still an army, even if masquerading as Group B, which some, at least, of the senior politicians knew all about, when forging banknotes was a cottage industry, and cash in transit was being liberated for the cause.
If others were blissfully ignorant, they might, as one Belfast activist tartly put it, have asked themselves where the money was coming from." (http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/peeling-back-the-truth-about-the-stickies-1909920.html).

ISAW

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

It was 30 years ago and he led the faction that split into social democracy in DL.

Think about the Sticks was everyone was in them at some point. Eoghan Harris ffs - how far have his politics moved in the same time?

I would highly recommend this book on the subject

Mussolini as I recall was originally a member of the communist party.
The thing about official sinn Fein and Gilmore is he is not asked about his feelings on marxism. Obviously it seems he has abandoned them since his woife made more than a half million on inflated property but he does not state what his personal position is . Similar to the KLabour Party. They have loads of "policy doccuments" but none of them actually have loads of detail as regards numbers or figures and little is stated about their feeling on marxism. It isn't just Gilmore by the way. Practically the entire leadership are old trots as far as I know.

Spearbearer

ISAW wrote: »

Mussolini as I recall was originally a member of the communist party.
The thing about official sinn Fein and Gilmore is he is not asked about his feelings on marxism. Obviously it seems he has abandoned them since his woife made more than a half million on inflated property but he does not state what his personal position is . Similar to the KLabour Party. They have loads of "policy doccuments" but none of them actually have loads of detail as regards numbers or figures and little is stated about their feeling on marxism. It isn't just Gilmore by the way. Practically the entire leadership are old trots as far as I know.

Gilmore's view of capitalism in the late 1980s: "Capitalism feeds on exploitation, greed and waste. It cannot provide a better life" (http://irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/new-agenda-post-workers-party-pre-democratic-left-gilmore-letter/)
He is still bashing capitalism today, although in a more roundabout way by talking of "crony capitalism". In my view, he holds the same view of capitalism today as he did when he outlined the above in that 1980s leaflet. The quickest summary of the Worker's Party philosophy when Gilmore was a member is described in a newspaper article discussing the extradition troubles of Sean Garland:

"...the headquarters of the Workers’ Party, the rump of the old IRA that turned away from physical force and embraced Soviet-style communism... The party, which clings to the belief that an Irish revolution will unite Protestant and Roman Catholic workers and overthrow capitalism..." Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5661978.ece

ISAW

silkworm53 wrote: »

The movements were inspired by socialist revolution and were infiltrated subsequently by the Soviets.
When the Soviet Union came apart at the seams, the funding, support and popularity of radical and violent socialist movements also collapsed.
The Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in 1994 after stuttering on after the Soviet Empire fell to pieces in 1991.

Your analysis seem ignorant of the difference between the socialist Officials and the Republician Provisionals. russia was not puppeting it! It predates the October revolution!

***********begin explaination of left/republican split and illegalities of armed action*******

The Republican alternative was an alternative to replacing Leinster House
which the IRA did not recognise with a 32 county socialist republic. this I
believe was a SF policy at least until 1986 when the RSF split developed
over the issue. I concede that they stopped attacking Leinster house and
"going to war" with the Gardai ( mind you they disregarded their own
standing orders on several policies - see point 5 below) but they still did
not recognise the State or Oireachtas (thought they now do so and SF sit in
Dáil Eireann) and they killed Gardai Army and civilians and had a subversive
private Army.

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/tables/Status.html
It lists Irish army and Gardai among the dead

Source: Irish Field
http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/polisci/faculty/bios/Pubs/oleary.FDR.pdf

1. the military struggle of the IRA to bring about a 32 county State by
force of arms had been unsuccessful.

p 223
This capsule history is, at first glance, one
of comprehensive military, political, and

strategic failure for the IRA. It went to war against the government of the
Irish Free

State (1922-23), against the government of Great Britain in 1939, and
against the

Northern Ireland government in 1956. It was defeated in all three instances,
and had

acknowledged each defeat, and by the early 1960s appeared to have a
rendezvous with a coroner.

2. That the Aims of Irish people governing themselves had been achieved in
the south culminating in the 1937 constitution moulded by ex SF Republicans
who had adopted constitutional politics rather than a military campaign.

... p 224

But failure was not the whole story. The IRA's founding agenda had been

substantively realized in the South.23 All southern governments from 1922
had

former senior IRA men in their ministerial ranks. With the notable exception
of Kevin

O'Higgins, most were republicans with kindred beliefs to those of the IRA.24

[/ quote]

3. That the IRA and SF element who did not accept 2. did not accept the will
of the majority or the Dail.

They progressively addressed its constitutional agenda, which was neither
insane nor

unprincipled, even if it was dogmatic, and even if it refused the right of a
majority to

be wrong on the constitutional status of the state. However, resentment did
lead the IRA into increasingly bizarre ideological deductions. The deputies
of the rump

Second Dáil who had taken the anti-Treaty side, and who had withdrawn from

participation in the 'partitionist' Dáil Éireann, continued to meet until
the late

1930s as if they were the valid parliament of Ireland. This, in turn, meant
that the

IRA's mandate stemmed from the last all-Ireland parliament - one that was

increasingly, as time passed, demographically as well as chronologically

removed from the current preferences of the people of Ireland, North and
South. true inheritor of the mandate of the last valid Dáil (and thereby the
valid government of the Republic of Ireland).

4. That this SF policy (which has been claimed to be a MYTH ) continued
long after the 1937 constitution and the IRA maintained their denial of the
Dáil. And that SF didnt change this policy (claimed to be a myth) themselves
until at least 1986!

[ quote]
...In 1969, he [Tom maguire] decided that the mandate belonged

with the Provisional IRA, and in 1986 that it belonged with those who
rejected the

decision of Sinn Féin to recognize the legitimacy of the Dublin parliament.
On his

death Maguire handed the baton on to Michael Flannery.26

p 226
That said, the Provisionals were founded by 'republican' fundamentalists,
men who had fought in the failed 1956-62 campaign, such as Ruairí Ó

Brádaigh, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Seán Mac Stiofáin, and Joe Cahill, and who
believed

in the republican traditions, i.e. in rejecting the Treaty's institutions,
and undoing

partition by force.35

5. That in spite of revisionist claims that SF or the IRA recognised
the 1937 constitution and that their standing orders forbit any killing in
the south (I have given several instances of the IRA killing civilians Army
Gardai and kidnapping ) the IRA in any case did not follow their own
standing orders.

...p 227

Presently many of its serving volunteers freely supply journalists with
extensive

information about intra-IRA debates, apparently in violation of IRA General

Army Order No. 3, 'No member . shall make any statement either verbally or
in

writing to the press or mass media without General Headquarters
permission'.39

********************[end explanation]************

Today former Irish revolutionaries have either become legit business people and democratic politicians or else have gone from committing bank robberies, drug dealing, smuggling cigarettes, booze and diesel to fund the Cause to doing it now purely for profit.
The Workers Party overnight abandoned their Marxist-Leninist ideology and became a pinko liberal party before merging with the Labour Party.
Eoin Harris who once dreamed of becoming Moscow's puppet is now a FF senator and Sindo columnist.

AFAIK he has been in every party but the greens! And I dont even think he votes!

It is no accident that Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 when the ANC lost their Soviet support as communism crumbled.
The ANC gave up their ambition to violently overthrow white rule and instead went down a peaceful political path.
It is no accident that RAF activity ended when the Berlin Wall came down and Germany unified.
The Italian Red Brigades evaporated in the early 1990's and former socialist revolutionaries were reduced to doing hits for the Mafia.
Brian Keenan and other hostages were released from Beirut when Soviet funds for Arab revolutionaries dried up.
The Basque ETA movement is now a poor shadow of itself.

the fact that the US and USSR supported people because of an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy does not mean that the opposing cold war factions created these groups!

Marxist revolutionaries are reduced to apologizing for Islamic terrorism as reaction to so-called Western imperialism or telling us how cuddly Castro or Kim Jong Il really are or claiming that Iran or Hugo Chavez are not as bad we are told they are.

How is Hugo chaves "bad"???

Het-Field

ISAW wrote: »

Your analysis seem ignorant of the difference between the socialist Officials and the Republician Provisionals. russia was not puppeting it! It predates the October revolution!

***********begin explaination of left/republican split and illegalities of armed action*******



2. That the Aims of Irish people governing themselves had been achieved in
the south culminating in the 1937 constitution moulded by ex SF Republicans
who had adopted constitutional politics rather than a military campaign.



********************[end explanation]************


AFAIK he has been in every party but the greens! And I dont even think he votes!



the fact that the US and USSR supported people because of an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy does not mean that the opposing cold war factions created these groups!



How is Hugo chaves "bad"???

When the oil runs out, and the media stops being fettered, it will all become clear.

ISAW

Het-Field wrote: »

When the oil runs out, and the media stops being fettered, it will all become clear.

That's waffle!
If you are claiming Chaves is part of some conspiracy where is your evidence?
i suppose next you will be claiming the world is coming to an end and all will become clear.
Why should we believe your unsupported scurrilous opinion?

Het-Field

ISAW wrote: »

That's waffle!
If you are claiming Chaves is part of some conspiracy where is your evidence?
i suppose next you will be claiming the world is coming to an end and all will become clear.
Why should we believe your unsupported scurrilous opinion?

I suppose dedicated groups like Human Rights Watch etc are nobodies who are just talking waffle.

"Scurrilous". Thats a laugh.