Trotsky excerpt

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou Paulsen, in his fine polemic against Xxxx L, posted a generally very
good quote from Trotsky.  Although I fully agree with the main point
Trotsky is making, he also makes an error of fact, which is rather serious.
Trotsky says:

>We do not and never have put all wars on the same plane.  Marx and Engels
>supported the revolutionary struggle of the Irish against Great Britain, of
>the Poles against the Czar, even though in these two nationalist wars the
>leaders were, for the most part, members of the bourgeoisie and even at
>times of the feudal aristocracy .. at all events, Catholic reactionaries.


In Ireland *none* of the leaders of the revolutionary struggle in Marx and
Engels' time were Catholics, let alone "Catholic reactionaries".  All of
the leaders were Protestants and, by and large, had progressive social
views.

Indeed, Irish republicanism was founded in the 1790s pretty much
exclusively by Protestant radicals, most notably Wolfe Tone.  There was not
one single Catholic among the 28 original founders of the United Irish
movement.  The Protestant radicals who founded Irish republicanism were
supporters of the French revolution and drew into their movement sections
of the Catholic masses by championing Catholic emancipation and fighting
for Irish independence.

All of the republican leaders throughout the 1800s were Protestants -
Emmet, Lalor, Mitchell, Davitt, even the founder of cultural nationalism
(Davis).  It wasn't until the early 1900s that Catholics started to take
the leadership of the republican movement, although even then there were
plenty of Protestants still involved.

Even among the bourgeois 'constitutional' elements of nineteenth century
Irish neo-nationalism, most were Protestants too (eg, Butt, Parnell).  Only
one was Catholic, O'Connell.  I call these elements neo-nationalist,
because they didn't fight for Irish independence, much less for the
combination of independence and social change which characterised the
republicans.

Trotsky got better after his awful article on the 1916 Rising.  By the
early years of the Third International, he was writing manifestos saying
that British sociaists who failed to support the struggle for Irish freedom
against Britain deserved to be branded with infamy if not with a bullet.
This suggests that Trotsky might have shot Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe and
the other leaders of Militant.

However, the above Trotsky quote indicates that, even later, his grasp of
Irish history and the make-up of the republican movement remained rather
wanting.

Philip Ferguson






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