Daniel Davies points to an interesting development on the anti war front. It’s the Third Camp manifesto, set up in opposition to the Euston manifesto. He also points to where Marc Mulholland got to. It seems he’s been co-opted on to the team at Crooked Timber too.
This reads as if a mad picaresque tale. Myers as first a reporter for RTÉ and then as a freelance journalist with no real experience, finds himself wandering into savagery as he hastens north as the Troubles explode. A soldier dies next to him; he witnesses an IRA ambush; he sees children shot to death [...] read our review »
Coming up to the Halloween holiday, some people might be frightened of the idea of Voices from the Grave – but for others, the chance to hear an oral history of the Troubles from the mouths of two (in)famous protagonists, PUP leader and former UVF member David Ervine, and Brendan “The Dark” Hughes, is not [...] read our review »
Paddy Mc Alister, a Belfast volunteer in Spain, wrote a pamphlet on his time in Spain published by The Workers’ Party in 1975 or 1976, but no sign of it online.
Garibaldy: Remember that this was democracy versus fascism, and the democracies stood by, in what was effectively an atittude of friendly neturrality to Franco.
The Democracy vs Fascism choice vanished almost as soon as the war started. By the end of the war the Republican side was shooting each other, over whether Anarchists or Communists were going to lead the Republican side into defeat. Should the US and Britain have intervened to impose democracy on Spain?
Britain and France (the US was isolationist at the time) could easily have intervened. But they chose not to. The argument about the end of the war is somewhat missing the point as had they intervened when the fascist powers did it might never have got that far.
Garibaldy: But they chose not to.
I asked if they *should* have intervened. Intervention is a bit of a hot topic, these days, with Afghanistan and Iraq and all. Is there a general rule you would endorse?
Generally people shouldn’t invade other people’s countries. But where a bunch of fascist countries have invaded another one, then I don’t see the problem
Garibaldy: But where a bunch of fascist countries have invaded another one, then I don’t see the problem
But Fascism wasn’t nearly so unfashionable before WW2. Still, maybe Britain, and the US (and Ireland?) should have intervened.
Is Fascist intervention the only trigger for acceptable intervention? – how about Communist intervention as a trigger (all those Cubans in Africa…), or internal oppression, or genocide? Are there any cases or regimes in the world *right now* where you would advocate intervention by armed force? Is there no-one worse than Franco? And if so, who should actually intervene?