Re: upheavals in England, 1640 - 1848

[Adam Rose <adam@xxxxxxxx>]

Gary writes:
>
> "Are Adam and I having a spat?" I ask myself.  My ever present paranoia
> suggests "yes!"

No.

> But this could not be.

Indeed.

>
> What may be at work here is my closetted Nationalism and general
> anti-Englishness.  It is true that  I have been for some time wishing I  had
> the opportunity to attack English Marxists for their neglect of Ireland.

Well, I think there are, or rather have been, two mistaken trends in relation
to Ireland on the British left. One is to glorify the IRA, as if they were
fighting for socialism. This leaves those people who do this unable to comment
sensibly when the IRA does something completely counter productive, as they
have this Saturday, by blowing up the centre of Manchester and leaving 200
people injured. The other is two pretend that simply calling for working class
unity, while treating the paramilitaries on either side as equally sectarian,
is going to solve anything. So to lump all English Marxists together, is,
I think wrong.

>
> Now Adam and I  are having a bit of a barney about English Marxists.  I have
> been struck by how English English Marxists are.  For example the recent
> obituary piece on E. P. Thompson in NLR almost made me retch.  He had of
> course to be in his garden etc reeking of roses and Englishness.
>

I immensly enjoy E.P.Thompson's work. The real smell of real relationships
between people and classes comes through his work. But there is also the
smell of his Red Rose Reformism. The particular character of his reformism
IS peculiarly English.  For instance , his description of the gradual 
development
of class consciousness sits uneasily with the rioting, insurrectionary
tradition which Peter Limbaugh puts more emphasis on.

>
> More to the point Adam's remarks about the links between the Irish and the
> English movements being broken owing to the anti-working class politics of
> the Young Irelanders, neglects to put the blame where it squarely belongs
> not with the victims but with the racist and sectarian English working class
> movement.
>

Well, if we're talking about 1848, the problem was simply that the Chartist
movement was defeated. It simply wasn't true that that movement was racist
and sectarian - it was anti racist and internationalist, and had Black + Irish
people playing leading roles in it.

Of course if we're talking about the majority of the Labour movement after 1848,
everything you say is quite correct, with exceptions, and those exceptions are
important. The revolutionary tradition, visible in the late 1880's and 1890's,
and again with the CP, were consistently internationalist.

There have always been chauvanist and internationalist trends in the British 
working
class ( and the English working class in particular ). To neglect either trend 
is
a one sided presentation.

>
> I have of course my own quarrels with and criticisms of the various strands
> of Irish nationalism, but they have been pitted against one of the most
> brutal of the world's master races- the English.  that is worth recalling.
>

It's as unreasonable to describe the English as a master race as it is to
describe the Germans in the same way. Germans ran the concentration camps,
and Germans were the first people sent to them. This IS anti English 
nationalism.
There are, after all, nearly as many republicans in England as there are in
Australia

Adam.



Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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