A disgraceful piece of television!

Curly Judge

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

1. All civil wars are vicious and bloody.

No argument with you there, but in addition this war was also unnecessary

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

2. The Provisional Government were a right-wing, reactionary, repressive regime that engaged in the widespread use of torture and murder during the civil war..

Not in the beginning they weren't. Collins gave them every chance to evacuate the Four Courts. They decided not to and he acted. Perhaps you would like to suggest what he should have done?

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

The claim that they had no choice doesn't hold water. If they claimed the legitimacy of an elected democratic government then the onus was on them to conform to democratic norms in relation to the treatment of prisoners (irrespective of whether they were regarded as political prisioners or criminals).

The government were hardly a wet week in power FFS.
If they had a chance to become a mature government and get all the trapping of state up and running things might have been different.
A case could be made that, in acting as they did and bringing the civil war to a relatively swift end, they saved the lives of those who would have been killed had it continued. Not to mention those who would undoubtedly have been killed if the Brits had reentered the game,as Churchill had wanted.

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

3. A large scale class war was underway running in conjunction with the civil war that posed a major threat to the Provisional government..

Large scale class war? I don't think so!

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

4. The Provisional government used officially organised fascist gangs in the form of the 600 strong Special Infantry Corps and the unofficial fascists of the Farmers Freedom Force to suppress widespread strike action by workers in 1922 and 1923 (republican forces also suppressed strikes in 1922). The Free State troops were also used to suppress the Munster Soviets in the summer of 1922..

What, in the name of all that's wonderful, were the labour party doing going around organising strikes in a country which was just trying to get on it's feet? Traitorous bastards!

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

5. The actions of the government in murdering republican prisioners were two-fold - first to suppress the anti-treaty forces through widespread murder and intimidation - and secondly - to suppress the anti-treaty movement before it became part of (and subservient to) the more powerful workers movement in 1922/23. Indeed many within the Nationalist movement (both wings) were more concerned with defeating 'Bolshevism' than independence during this period.

Most governments in Western Europe were afraid of communism back then after the Russian Revolution. Most governments opposed it and thank god they did and saved us from the the obscenities that followed in eastern Europe.

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

6. It is incorrect to claim that a majority of the population supported the Treaty. A more accurate assessment would be that the majority of the population voted for an end to the violence and war. Furthermore - while the LP was nominally supportive of the Treaty - many of the LP TDs elected in 1922 supported the anti-Treaty side - these TDs were primarily rank-and-file trade union activists who were leading strikes around the country. The LP only stood 18 candidates and got 17 elected with significant votes (the losing candidate lost by 13 votes). If the LP had run candidates in every constituency (and more than one candidate in many) they would likely have been at least the second biggest party in the state..

The majority of the people in the 26 counties for the treaty. End of story!
Saying that, "If the LP had run candidates in every constituency" is a bit like saying, "If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle"!

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

The normal pro- and anti-Treaty narrative of this period needs to be challanged - and is increasingly being challanged as research into the workers movement of the period uncovers increasing evidence that the labour movement was significantly more powerful and influential that has previously been discussed and debated.

The truth is that left wing politics in ireland has always been a minority sport and hopefully, always will be.

Jolly Red Giant

Curly - you really should try and leave your political prejudices at the door when you want to make a contribution on a history forum

Curly Judge wrote: »

Not in the beginning they weren't. Collins gave them every chance to evacuate the Four Courts. They decided not to and he acted. Perhaps you would like to suggest what he should have done?

The OP on this thread was addressing the murder of republican prisoners and that is the issue I was addressing.

As for Collins - I would suggest that he should not have represented the interests of the Irish establishment and not signed the Treaty - then again given his own political outlook he was always going to do this.

Curly Judge wrote: »

The government were hardly a wet week in power FFS.

Boo hoo - there is always an excuse - Just like after the Easter Rising, the establishment elites were baying for blood.

Curly Judge wrote: »

If they had a chance to become a mature government and get all the trapping of state up and running things might have been different.

If my auntie had balls she'd have been my uncle

Curly Judge wrote: »

A case could be made that, in acting as they did and bringing the civil war to a relatively swift end, they saved the lives of those who would have been killed had it continued.

Well you could try - but you wouldn't be successful. There was never a possibility of the anti-Treaty forces winning the civil war once they attempted to engage in the limited tactic of guerrilla warfare and rejected involvement in the social movement in existence at the time.

Curly Judge wrote: »

Not to mention those who would undoubtedly have been killed if the Brits had reentered the game,as Churchill had wanted.

Two issues here -
1. That is to assume that the Brits would actually have restarted the war and risked a social explosion in Britain in opposition to such a war as was happening right throughout Europe at this time
2. That the Brits would have been able to sustain such a war in the face of a rising social explosion in Ireland and general strikes by the labour movement.

Curly Judge wrote: »

Large scale class war? I don't think so!

Letting your political prejudices getting in the way of historical evidence again

Curly Judge wrote: »

What, in the name of all that's wonderful, were the labour party doing going around organising strikes in a country which was just trying to get on it's feet? Traitorous bastards!

Defending the interests of workers who were being subjected to job and wage cuts being imposed by the bosses who were backing the Treaty.

Curly Judge wrote: »

Most governments in Western Europe were afraid of communism back then after the Russian Revolution. Most governments opposed it and thank god they did and saved us from the the obscenities that followed in eastern Europe.

And led to the establishment of fascist regimes around Europe that caused WW2 and the deaths of tens of millions.

Curly Judge wrote: »

The majority of the people in the 26 counties for the treaty. End of story!

Evidence? - were you in the polling booth with every individual asking them who they were voting for and why?

Curly Judge wrote: »

Saying that, "If the LP had run candidates in every constituency" is a bit like saying, "If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle"!

I stole your line - however, it is relevant in the way I use it - not in this case.
The Nationalist leadership split into two factions attempted to fix the 1922 election - and then had a row. No voting took place in several constituencies because of this stitch-up
The LP won more than 30% of the seats in the 1920 local elections and their support was higher in 1922. The LP stood 18 candidates in 13 constituencies. In these 13 constituencies alone the LP won sufficient votes to win at least 5 more seats. There were several other constituencies where the LP won seats in 1923 where the LP didn't run in 1922. At a minimum the LP should have won in excess of 30 seats in 1922 if they had made a decision to run sufficient candidates, from both the pro- and anti-Treaty factions -and in all likelihood would have generated sufficient electoral momentum to win even more than that.

Curly Judge wrote: »

The truth is that left wing politics in ireland has always been a minority sport and hopefully, always will be.

The truth is that the Irish working class have a tradition of militancy and support for the left - the fact that the LP (and trade union) leadership have spent a century coat-tailing Irish nationalism and the ruling elites has emasculated the labour movement and continues to do so

feargale

Balaclava1991 wrote: »

The shooting of the four leading republicans was a reprisal and was nothing less than cold blooded murder.
However the fact remains a clear majority had voted in the 1922 general election which immediately preceded the outbreak of the Civil for either Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin or other political parties that supported the 1921 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
The die-hard Republicans may well have been in control of the majority of the IRA but they most certainly did not have the support of the majority of the Irish people in the 26 counties.
De Valera was the political leader of the Republicans but he found himself an isolated figure as Liam Lynch became military leader of the Anti-Treaty IRA.
It was clear as day when the Civil War began that the National Army were far better organized and far better armed and by the end of the Civil War their position was to improve as their numbers swelled to the tens of thousands.
The Anti-Treaty goals were unclear and amounted to nihilistic despair rather than any real vision of uniting Nationalism, overturning the Treaty and achieving a 32 county Republic.
By the end of the Civil War some of the Republican fugitives still on the loose were living like tramps as people who once offered them sanctuary during the fight against the British closed their doors to them because they were sick of the fighting.
Liam Lynch was to die a lonely death on a Tipperary mountain side and many of the most talented Irish Republicans were put up against a wall and shot by execution squads.
The execution of 77 Republicans and the summary executions of many others including men blown up by mines in Co. Kerry wuas the result of a dangerous clique of proto-fascist Free State uofficers going on a bloodthirsty power trip.
When Dev and the Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil in the late 1920s they achieved far more than the die-hard militarists and by 1932 were in power while the Free State leaders faced political oblivion.
The Civil War was utterly pointless - Republican militarism was self-defeating and the Free State executions of Republicans created a poisonous division between Irish nationalists that persists to this very day - and it played right into the hands of the British and the Unionists who were laughing while they consolidated control over the six counties.
The real victims of the Irish Civil War were the minority Catholic population of Northern Ireland who were abandoned to a sectarian gerrymander state while the Southern republicans fought like two bald men fighting over a comb.

I thinkbthisbis the first balanced appraisal of Irish history and politics 1916-2013 that I have seen in Boards. Well done, Balaclava.