Denouncing traitors and Round Heads was Re.: On Loving Oliver was Re:Jagger/Richards and Greenway on The English Revolution

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris,

So you agree with the Round Head from Toowomba.  Shame on you!  And your
Celtic ancestry just makes your crime worse.  After the Revolution you had
better hide for a week or so.

What is at issue here is not simply the scale of Cromwell's crimes.  You
say he is a dyspeptic disciplinarian.  In my youth I stored up much bad
karma by being something of a dyspeptic disciplinarian when I taught in
Belfast.  Trust me, I never massacred anyone, nor did I set historical
precedents for the racist based murder of another people.  So Comrade your
metaphor falls down.  Nor can it be made to work by dragging in a butcher
like Tamburlaine.  Or maybe you and that Round Head Bradley are working
here on a sliding scale of butchery?

Is it something like: - 'Only 3000 (parole violators) killed at Drogheda -
Why that's chicken feed.  Besides people have been slaughtering the Irish
for years.  In any case think of Leopold; now there was a real killer.
Cromwell is a pussy cat compared to him.'

Let me be clear that I am not advancing a theory of the uniqueness of the
Irish experience. I am rather pointing out a historical continuity in
British policy in Ireland.  Cromwell has to be understood in terms of his
role within a continuity which established the domination and exploitation
of Ireland by the British. The Irish have long regarded Cromwell as one of
the most brutal proponents of the British overlordism.  Now revisionists
have popped up to tell us that he was not all that bad really.  The
historical conjuncture should provide Marxists with the basis of both an
understanding and a critique of such revisionism.

warm regards

Gary







At 01:33  23/09/00 -0700, you wrote:
>I am afraid I agree with Alan, Brother Gary:
>Despite my heritage and lasting loathing,
>Oliver Cromwell's atrocity record was nothing special
>--in the context of genocidal maniacs.
>Just recall the brilliant creativity of Tamerlaine's
>pyramid of 10,000 bleeding skulls outside Delhi,
>or the Conquistadors' romps through Hispaniola,
>or King Leopold X's entrepreneurial genius in the Congo...
>Cromwell was a dyspeptic disciplinarian by contrast.
>At least he was a Christian...
>like the Crusaders...
>If there is a heaven, and a hell,
>forgive them, Lardy O'Lard,
>they know knot what they're due.
>
>yours in this world,
>Celtic Chris (Brady)