It is published on the ISJ site, a British website :
“International Socialism is associated with the [British] Socialist Workers Party, but articles express the opinions of individual authors unless otherwise stated. We welcome proposals for articles and reviews for International Socialism..”
A resident of Great Britain advises these posters are appearing in an English city. The correspondent observes “Someone is sailing very close to the wind with electoral law even if it is an accurate account of what he said. This is the latest and biggest of a series of these that have popped up locally.”
Has anyone seen these posters in other parts of the British state, including the bit styled “Northern Ireland”. I am guessing the posters would be popular in Scotland and Wales. They could catch on!
A correspondent wondered “And of course it’s not what he said!” – so the blog team looked it up.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said there would be “huge difficulties” with his party going into government with Sinn Féin, but did not rule out the possibility of such a coalition after the next election.
Irish Times December 26 2023
Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG), two tweedledum and tweedledee capitalist parties, have controlled every government running the southern 26 county bit of partitioned Ireland since a 1921 Treaty was signed with the former occupying power, Britain. A carnival of reaction followed on both sides of the Irish border.
Faced with a false choice between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the only rational policy for the left was and is : no coalition, on principle, with any right-wing party.
This article comes with a strong recommendation from Joan McKiernan :
“This terrific article should be widely circulated….
“I must say that with all the classes I had long ago in the IS (International Socialists) on the Russian Revolution, I have no recollection of discussions of Ukraine. So the author’s discussion of that history is important for all of us involved in supporting Ukraine now.”
Paul Le Blanc is launching a new book in Dublin on Tuesday November 7 (the anniversary of the October revolution) in the New Theatre, behind Connolly Books in Temple Bar. Doors open at 7pm, with Paul Le Blanc giving a short talk on Lenin’s politics and theories starting at 7:30. This will be followed by an interview including opportunity for some questions from the crowd.
Paul Le Blanc reviews a critical thread of Marxist theory and history on the right of national self-determination, and the question of Ukraine, concluding that revolutionaries today need to defend the current resistance to the Russian invasion including its rights to seek arms.
In his critique of ultra-left sectarianism, Lenin denounced a tendency to present quotes from Marx as the basis for settling on a tactical orientation to guide us through the complexities of our own time. He insisted that “what is most important, that which constitutes the very gist, the living soul, of Marxism” is “a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.” That is certainly the case when we are considering realities so complex as the Russian-Ukrainian War.
I have attempted such a “concrete analysis of a concrete situation” in an 8900-word article entitled “Making Sense of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine” for the online publication Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. In the final 2400 words of the article, I seek to relate the larger analysis of the invasion to previous Marxist theory and lessons from revolutionary history. I urge readers to consult the first 6500 words of the larger article. At the same time, I am hopeful that my review here of some of the relevant history and theory will be useful for those working to sort things out regarding these momentous developments.
Several public representatives and supporters of the Irish left-wing party People Before Profit (PBP) attack the Dublin Government’s Double Standards over two major 2023 genocidal wars : Israel’s Genocidal Assault on the Palestinian People and Russia’s Genocidal Invasion of Ukraine.
For example Paul Murphy TD (Dublin South-West) declares on his Facebook page :
“Since Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the right of an occupied nation to defend itself has been widely recognised.
Now as Israel begins to unleash hell on Gaza and governments prepare to excuse Israeli war crimes, it’s clear that right doesn’t apply to Palestinians. Why not?”
Big problem here : Paul and and others on the left are throwing a dangerous political boomerang : instead of using exactly the same principled framework for supporting Ukraine and Palestine, they operate double standards. When they add denunciation of mass media inconsistency, the government, the European Union, in supporting Ukraine while opposing Palestine, we witness inconsistency in reverse from the left, supporting Palestine while opposing Ukraine.
John Meehan October 10 2023
Aden Shaheen, a Palestinian living in Britain, offers a far better policy.
In this interview, Adeeb Shaheen shares his perspectives on the ongoing war in Ukraine. As someone who has experienced life under military occupation, he draws parallels between Israel’s actions in Palestine and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, speaking to the suffering of civilians under aggression from a more powerful military force. Interview by Fred Leplat.
Fred Leplat – Adeeb, you describe yourself as a Ukrainian Palestinian and you are now in Britain. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and why you are now in Britain today?
I was born in Palestine and lived there until the Israeli occupation administration expelled my father to Jordan in 1968 for his activities against the occupation. My mother took us, her children, and left for Jordan to join him. I finished school in 1976 and set off for the Soviet Union to study electrical engineering. After finishing my studies, I went back to Jordan, worked there for a couple of years, and then moved to live in Palestine with my wife and son. In Palestine, I took part in the first Intifada and the resistance movement. In 1990, I was arrested by the Israeli occupants and sent to prison for four years. After jail, I resumed my life in Palestine, where the Palestinian Authority began to operate the civilian life of the Palestinians on the occupied Palestinian land. After two years of the second Intifada, I left my home town of Nablus with my family and moved to live in Jordan. It was difficult there as well. In September 2003, I received a job offer from an international trading company to work in its branch in Ukraine. I moved there with my family to Ukraine, to Kharkiv, where I finished my studies when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union. I worked there and had a normal life there until February 24, 2022. Putin’s war against Ukraine forced us to leave for Poland, then for the UK.
We wish to thank Dick Nichols, European Editor of the Australian Magazine Green Left Weekly, who drew our attention to an important article on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, written by the well-known Marxist scholar and historian Paul Le Blanc.
The author takes the side of Ukraine Against Russia :
I favour the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and victory for Ukrainian self-determination.
I oppose imperialism in all its forms – including Putin’s invasion and NATO.
I oppose capitalism and favour its replacement with the genuine political and economic democracy of socialism everywhere: the United States, Ukraine, Russia etc.
A momentous development has drawn my attention away from the unfolding climate catastrophe on which I have been riveted. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a major factor fragmenting the left-wing forces I hoped would become a major force in the revolutionary struggle for climate justice and human survival. Recently, I have met Russians and Ukrainians — and others from Brazil, Argentina and the United States — who have all made it clear to me that I cannot avoid dealing with this issue.1
In this article, I will attempt to do three things:
Review what some on the left assert either in favour of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or against the Ukrainian response;
Review Russian and Ukrainian realities and views on the war; and
Touch on essential aspects of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion (including where the weapons come from).
In the footnotes I offer sources that have influenced my analysis and that I believe may be useful for those seeking to make sense of these realities. But I owe it to readers to indicate my own position from the outset. This is my bottom-line:
Paul Murphy TD (Dublin South-West, People Before Profit) has issued a deeply mistaken public response, consistent with his party’s previously stated opposition to any military anti-imperialist solidarity action in support of the Ukrainian masses’ fight against a genocidal Russian invasion. Source :
Remember when Micheal Martin called us puppets of Putin?
That was because I was asking for guarantee that Irish soldiers would only be involved in de-mining training.
In light of today's news that they are providing weapons training, his outburst makes a lot more sense. pic.twitter.com/xUK3c4yRwf
This is a grim PBP Left-Evasionist chapter, part of the shocking story: failure to show anti-imperialist solidarity with the masses of Ukraine who are resisting a genocidal Russian invasion.
On July 29 2023 the PBP helped to organise a well-supported anti-racist rally in Dún Laoghaire, a town which proudly hosts a magnificent statue honouring the Irish anti-imperialist gun-runner and human rights activist Roger Casement.
PBP speakers drew attention to the many reasons we honour Casement today : but they overlooked a vital fact : this Easter 1916 rebel imported weapons from Kaiser Wilhelm’s German Empire in order to strike a blow against the then mighty British Empire.
The Irish President Michael D Higgins is publicly opposing Dublin government attempts to soften deep public opposition to participation in the imperialist military alliance, NATO.
Speaking at length in a Sunday Business Post interview (June 18 2023) the Irish Head of State (a largely ceremonial post) concisely summarised the main issue :
Ireland’s foreign policy was one of “positive neutrality, and it can be defined very simply as Ireland’s right to belong to any group that it chooses in relation to non-militaristic international policy… If you interfere with that, there’s no difference between you and Lithuania and Latvia.”
Irish Times Online, June 18 2023
Set against the background of Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Higgins has upset the right-wing Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Greens + Gombeens coalition government (FFFGGG). Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin set up a public “consultative” forum examining Irish foreign policy – which is designed to push the Irish state closer to NATO.
To his credit, unlike many left-wing public representatives in Ireland, President Higgins unambiguously sides with the masses of Ukraine against the genocidal Russian invasion.
Supporting, unambiguously, the right of Ukraine to defeat the genocidal Russian invasion with weapons supplied by NATO, does not mean supporting membership of NATO or its aims. Irish Citizens’ Army (ICA) commander James Connolly was a leader of the Easter 1916 Rising – using weapons supplied by the German war-mongers who were at war with the ancient enemy of Irish Independence, British Imperialism. The ICA proudly promoted a famous banner at Liberty Hall, headquarters of the Irish Transport and Geneeral Workers’ Union (ITGWU) : “We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland”.
President Higgins is out of step with current Irish establishment thinking on such matters. He made derogatory throwaway remarks about the chairperson of the Dublin government’s consultative forum, and its chosen experts. :
Michael D highlighted the composition of the panels at the forum saying they include “the admirals, the generals, the air force, the rest of it” as well as “the formerly neutral countries who are now joining Nato”.
The President made comments about the forum chairperson British Empire Dame Louise Richardson, and then offered a very qualified apology :
[I think this is best categorised as a Michael D Classic : A Non-Apology Apology]
President Michael D Higgins has apologised for any offence he caused by making a “throwaway remark” about the chair of the Government’s Consultative Forum on International Security Policy being a Dame of the British Empire (DBE).
A clarification issued by his office on Monday said President Higgins referred to Prof Louise Richardson of Oxford University and her “very large letter DBE” in a casual manner during the course of a long interview, which was published in the Business Post on Sunday.
The references to the DBE were received in some in some quarters as the President disparaging the objectivity of the Waterford-born academic, in advance of her chairing the forum.
The statement from Áras an Uachtaráin referred to President Higgins looking through a copy of the programme for the forum at the time of the interview. It said he was referring casually to the fact that almost every reference to Prof Richardson in the programme was in a bold typeface, with DBE in capital letters after her name.
Irish Times Online, June 18 2023
This spat is unlikely to benefit the Dublin government. The public pressure against the British Empire Dame Richardson should continue. We offer two further items of evidence meaning Dame Richardson should immediately withdraw from the role given to her by the forelock-tugging Dublin Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin.
Dame of the British Empire Richardson opposed the campaign of H-Block/Armagh political status prisoners, backing the terrorist policy of the Thatcher British Government
When a protestor left a sign on the doors of Oxford’s University Church reading ‘Rhodes, You’re Next’, there was little doubt that the monumental Black Lives Matter movement, sweeping the world after the death of George Floyd, would next be turning its attention to the statue of the imperialist figure adorning Oriel College’s entrance arch. With the pulling down of a statue of Edward Colston in Bristol only days earlier, a fresh series of protests, beginning on Tuesday 9th June, sought removal of the controversial monument of Cecil Rhodes, fuelled by the 19th century mining magnate’s association with colonialism and racism on multiple accounts. On the 12th June, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, released an open letter that reached no binary view about Rhodes’ legacy, though did warn against “hiding our history” and indicated little accord to the aims of the protestors. Her statement was also later criticised by fourteen dons at the University who wrote that it was “inappropriate” of Professor Richardson to “ventriloquise” the anti-apartheid leader, Nelson Mandela, by using his words to defend a colonial-era statue. (1)
British Empire Dame Louise Richardson Must Go Now!
On Monday April 24 2023 a serious incident occurred outside the family home of Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit, Dublin South-West) and his partner Jess Spear.
Fair play to Seán Crowe TD (Sinn Féin), a constituency colleague of Paul Murphy, who issued a strong solidarity statement. All other left wing deputies, elected representatives, activists etc should endorse Crowe’s statement. That is a minimum. Paul and his partner Jess Spear must be unconditionally supported, and the left should move forward, openly organising and marginalising far-right anti-civilization thugs.
Paul Murphy TD and General Election 2020 team; Seán Crowe TD speaks to the media; far-right anti-civilization thugs outside Paul Murphy’s house
Statement Issued by Seán Crowe TD (Sinn Féin, Dublin South-West) :
April 24 2023 at 8pm – Far-Right protesters in Ireland’s capital city Dublin protested outside the house of an elected member of the Dáil (parliament), the People Before Profit Deputy Paul Murphy. This is a sinister escalation. Solidarity with Paul Murphy TD and his partner Jess Spear.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 