Soviet na hÉireann
For those that missed it, TG4’s documentary Soviet na hÉireann is currently online. (click Faisnéis – Cartlann on the left then select the programme)
Descrided by the station
Soviet na hÉireann explores that heady post World War 1 era when Ireland stood on the brink of a Soviet socialist revolution which would have utterly altered the course of its history
The documentary explores the extent of socialism during the period that went far beyond the more widely known Limerick Soviet
Sounds fascinating and something I’d very much enjoy watching, can you provide a link to the actual programme rather than the TV channel’s default website?
Harry,
I can’t directly link but on the main website follow my instuctions above and you’ll get the programme.
I should have said, it has English subtitles.
And I should have read your instructions in the brackets, thanks I’ll check it out.
Whoops! It crashes Firefox on my computer (admittedly a rather old one), I’ll have to try using my lap top instead.
Mark McGregor ,
Thanks for the link . A not so well known aspect of the War of Independence . I had a quick look see and will watch it all maybe this evening or tomorrow . Just as well they provide the english subtitles . My Irish is ‘rusty’
In retrospect the UK would never have countenanced a ‘Soviet Ireland ‘ in 1919 . There would have been huge opposition also from the RC and other Churches and instead of a ‘socialist’ Ireland we’d have had more likeley a Fascist Spain model – imo . IIRC Dev had a tough enough job facing that possibilty down 16 years later approx.
SF prior to the split represented mainly the middle and lower middle class ‘rising ‘ bourgeoisie even if Connolly himslef was an exception to the rule .There were of course at the time attempts at creating German ‘soviets’ and also in other countries in the aftrmath of the great ‘slaughter’.
Theoretically as per Marx – Britain , Germany and the USA should have been the first countries to ‘embrace ‘ the new communist world . In practice it was Russia -probably because the majority of rural Russians were ‘serfs ‘ under Tsarist rule and this left the concentrated ‘urban ‘ poor with an advantage after the Russian surrender to the Germans in 1917 . By the tie the Tsarists could rouse the White Russian ‘rural ‘ support the Reds had taken power and the Tsar executed .
Ireland’s cities in 1918 were the poorest and most deprived in the UK ,but there was a political middle class and there was a numerous rural farming class which having fought for so long to win what they had won, were not going to see their gains carved up by an Irish Soviet or for that matter a British Soviet .
Thanks again -I’ll have a look and reply later with any final ‘thoughts ‘ on this interesting episode in Irish history
“Soviet na hÉireann explores that heady post World War 1 era when Ireland stood on the brink of a Soviet socialist revolution which would have utterly altered the course of its history”
Slight exaggeration there. Limerick Soviet aside. Ireland was way to conservative to go soviet.
SF prior to the split represented mainly the middle and lower middle class ‘rising ‘ bourgeoisie even if Connolly himslef was an exception to the rule .
As far as I remember from my History A-Level, Connolly wasn’t a member of Sinn Fein in 1916; it was admitedly a long time ago, is my memory playing tricks?
Interesting link, although I tend to agree with NP, Irish society south of the border simply wouldn’t have been allowed revolution at that time- the church hierarchy expressedly forbade it.
NP,
‘Ireland was way to conservative to go soviet.
And still is . Labour and SF together can hardly make up 20% of the vote . They may do slightly better up to 30% if we have a very severe recession . But it would take a ‘famine ‘ or complete collapse of the economy to bring out Red Revolution and I don’t see either as possibilities . After this crisis Americans appear to be reviewing their collective attitude to ‘socialism ‘
Even so I don’t envisage ‘The West is Red’ ever being sung from the steps of the White House
The Forgotten Revolution – A great online book about the Limerick Soviet
Oops! Here’s the link – http://www.limericksoviet.com/Book.html
It was quite a good program. The vintage footage was fascinating. Adding that women were sold into sexual slavery (to horny bachelor farmers) as a result of the policy of the right-wing nationalists (Cosgrave et al) the program was so critical of was a nice touch. It’s utter tosh of course, but a nice touch regardless.
Please. The people, most IRA aside, were too scared of their local bishops and priests to even consider anything close to a “red revolution”.
Didn’t the red flag fly over the GPO for a few days in 1923, put there by Liam O’Flaherty??
Watch it….ah sure everyone was doing it at the time, that and facism!
Why are people who run along with the crowd so like sheep?
BAAAAaaaaaaaaaa!
I watched it….ah sure everyone was doing it at the time, that and facism!
Why are people who run along with the crowd so like sheep?
BAAAAaaaaaaaaaa!
can’t find the link but I’ll look again, think it was a bit early for facism though Greagoir (what is it with you and Flashman and your fixation with facism,everythings facist, everyones facist)
The programme repeatedly and explicitly blames the Labour leaders for failing to put class before country. Fair enough.
The whole mantra of the radical movement in the revolutionary period was: first, independence: then the worker’s republic. That derives from the explicit message of the 1916 Declaration. Accept that, and all else follows.
It could be argued any failure of the Labour leadership was because of a prevailing lack of confidence. The essential problem was the movement was divided. In large part that stems from the execution of James Connolly, and the departure of Big Jim Larkin for the US. If we want to load the odium, for allowing the vacuum to persist, onto one individual, it should be Walter Carpenter, of the Socialist Party of Ireland, and later General Secretary of the CPI. He supported Labour’s abstention in the 1918 Election on the grounds:
Similarly, on the issue of a general strike to support the Limerick Soviet:
The problem was the SPI was a construct from Connolly’s syndicalism, with its basis in Socialism made Easy. It remained little more than a Workers’ Education Association; and certainly not the template for a revolutionary cadre.
What was missing was a dynamic leader.
In the absence of a Connolly or a Larkin, if we seek the Iskra, the Spark who conceivably could, just could have ignited the whole inferno, one candidate was John Hedley (Seán O’Hagan), organising for the Socialist International in Belfast. He was, inevitably, arrested and, when released, flitted off to Munster before the pogroms destroyed the radical movement and any hope of a power base in Belfast.
Meanwhile, in Dublin, Roddy Connolly and Seán McLoughlin were not men enough for the job (Connolly’s effort at a national programme, The Growth of our Party is testimony to that). The Irish TUC lost any real radicalism when Cathal O’Shannon and O’Brian were purged in October 1921 and Liam O’Flaherty was put to silence in January 1922.
Above all, the TG4 programme showed up how the 1916 Revolution was subverted and betrayed by all, repeat all those who survived beyond 1922. Then the decline into a conservative theocracy was inevitable. And after that there remained only Ireland’s latest Leader:
“Above all, the TG4 programme showed up how the 1916 Revolution was subverted and betrayed by all, repeat all those who survived beyond 1922.”
On the contrary, the right to self-determination that was asserted in 1916 could only ever have been betrayed by those who sought to enslave the people within the backward and repugnant ideology of Marxism and its slighter spawn, socialism, thereby violating the principle of self-determination by denying the people the right to freely determine their own political, social and economic beliefs and to elect their own government accordingly. Self-determination means the freedom to determine, not a system that is predetermined and imposed on others without consent.
Yawn. On a point of fact, socialism predates Marxism, and is not its spawn.
True, modern socialism is the spawn of many syphilitic fathers.
An enjoyable hour’s entertainment about a largely forgotten aspect of the Irish War of Independence even if they did rather breathlessly adopt the Ken Loach position of giving the Reds a greater role in the struggle than realistically they deserved or could ever possibly hope to have attained.
I particularly enjoyed the Knocklong Soviet Creamery in County Limerick (even if in the dramatisation it appeared to be the same creamery and creamery workers who were later expelled by the Free State forces in Wexford, a touch of the Loach’s there) but such events were ultimately incidental to the main campaign which was a struggle of the sons of the Irish Catholic middle class and small and medium sized farmers to take power in their native land.
Creating Soviets had no part in such a fundamentally conservative “revolution”. As to the creation of “white guards” by the farmers of Waterford to protect themselves against Soviet agitators, well when one considers the genocidal horrors inflicted on the farmers of Russia by the Soviets in the 1920′s can you blame the farmers?
At the end of the day, post Civil War Ireland for all its faults was a hell of a lot better place than post Revolutionary Ukraine.
Can’t say I’m sorry Reds got such a hard time of it.
Permit me to break the Sluggerdom norm and stick to the point, rather than getting my personal prejudiced rocks off.
Clearly, I saw a very different programme to many others. I watched the development of a clear thesis:
There are enough gross simplifications in that prologue to make even Harry Flashman wince (lesser intellects than his would be wholly shameless), but the essential thrust of the rhetorical questions is valid.
The answers must be “yes”: there must have been a better alternative to the townland prejudices of Fianna Fáil and gombeen mindset of Cosgrave’s Cumann. On the other hand, although an alliance of urban and rural workers could, just could, have averted the mediocre, bourgeois, chauvinist, near-theocratic republic we got, clearly outsiders would never have tolerated “socialism in one island”.
To persist with “what if” a moment longer, if the programme implied there was a better road untravelled, it ignored the up-side of what did emerge. For all the faults of the 1937 de Valera settlement (which was the bottom-line of the revolutionary period), we avoided the worst outcome, one which was devoutly wished by many on the Right and around de Valera: a transplanting of the Salazar model to the 26 counties.
A simple soul like myself would have thought that catholicism could be a fellow traveller with socialism or at least co-exist but as I understand it in the real world catholism always in the end felt threatened by socialism.
When the catholic church is threatened it has pretty much always done what is best for the institution and worried about its followers afterwards.I suppose it would have to be said it historically at least was good at that.
Not having much knowledge of the protestant tradition it would be interesting to hear how protestantism has interacted with socialism.
“catholism always in the end felt threatened by socialism.”
The hundreds of burnt out and desecrated churches and legions of murdered, tortured and imprisoned clergy, that have always followed a Red revolution as night follows day, rather indicates that the Catholic Church knows exactly the nature of the beast.
So the attacks on churches have had nothing to do with the attitude of churches to the old regime, and their integral parts within it in places like C18th France, Russia, Spain etc.
reply to Harry Flashman.
I suppose if you are competing for the same followers then the opposition sometimes “has to be taken care of.”
The Red revolutionaries, be they in France, Russia, Spain, China or anywhere else have always loathed the Catholic Church and have always relished the opportunity to murder their members whereever they found them.
I am no apologist for the Catholic church but I can see why Catholics might feel a bit nervous when the Reds start sharpening their bayonets.
Big Catholic church in Russia was there Harry? And how did the various churches feel about them? Maybe the hostility didn’t all run one way.
OK split hairs why doncha? So in Russia it was the Orthodox priests who got murdered and not Catholics, the point remains the same.
If you are a follower of Christianity and don’t wish to be ruled by atheistic megalomaniacal tyrants with a fondness for genocide and mass slaughter then be very careful when the Reds start organising in your neighbourhood.
You and your family will soon be filling mass graves.
No, Harry followers of Christianity were not attacked (with the possible exception of China where they were viewed, often correctly, as agents of imperialism). What was attacked in Russia, France and Spain was an extremely powerful and reactionary institution that seized a large proportion of the produce of their work from the people, and acted as an arm of the state, preaching on behalf or reactionary and oppressive central governments and aristocracies. That bled the people dry. But of course while privileges were stripped there was little violence until the churches got themselves involved in military counter-revolution. But let’s ignore the facts.
malcolm redfellow ,
”Permit me to break the Sluggerdom norm and stick to the point’
You could start a trend here
..the essential thrust of the rhetorical questions is valid.
It is but only if ‘events ‘ in Ireland at the time are viewed through a wider perspective than the island itself and through a longer historical setting going back to at least the mid 19th century . Once one starts ‘What ifing ‘ and scenario postulating then one has to look at not just the possible upside but also the potential downside .
‘On the other hand, although an alliance of urban and rural workers could, just could, have averted the mediocre, bourgeois, chauvinist, near-theocratic republic we got, clearly outsiders would never have tolerated “socialism in one island”.
Indeed . Britain would no more have accepted a communist island to her west in 1923 than she would today . To those who shout what about respecting ‘national sovereignty ‘ my reply would be yes what about it then ?
Might would have been proved right . I suspect many of the more conservative nationalist leaders in SF would have had enough political nous to have understood that .
‘For all the faults of the 1937 de Valera settlement (which was the bottom-line of the revolutionary period), we avoided the worst outcome, one which was devoutly wished by many on the Right and around de Valera: a transplanting of the Salazar model to the 26 counties. ‘
Dev was regarded as a Red for most of the 1920′s and only proved himself to be ‘acceptable ‘ to the RC Church in the 1930′s post the 1932 election .
While it is true that the labour leadership post Connolly was weak it can be seen in retrospect to have been just as well . Had the ‘soviets’ under Labour dominated been under a strong leader with nationwide appeal we could have had a worse civil war than the one we eventually ended up with ?
The RC Church plus the Irish ‘kulaks ‘ and the rising middle class would have fought a ‘rearguard’ action’ and the country would have been destabilised to the point at which Britain would probably have been ‘welcomed ‘ back in to restore order .
To envision a ‘Soviet ‘ victory in the Ireland of the 1920′s as being politically possible one would have to ‘revise’ the history of the previous century and imagine another Ireland in the 1920′s as opposed to the actual one which people on all sides had to deal with .
That imagining would have to absent the 19th century famine and would posit an island population of 10 million people with 85% living at bare subsistence level poverty in rural areas and in urban slums the major cities .
A mass ‘peasant/worker ‘ uprising in those circumstances might well have succeeded if it were led by the likes of a Connolly or an ‘Irish ‘ Lenin at least for a temporary period .
Assuming such a revolution had succeeded would our successful ‘revolutionaries ‘ have moderated their ‘socialism ‘ if the ‘theory ‘ was not working out in practice ? Would they have ‘eradicated’ the ‘kulaks ‘ as the Russians did and create a home grown ‘famine ‘ ?
I suspect that our ‘soviet ‘ revolution would have been very shortlived and would have left us with even a larger body count .
The Reds do not like the Catholic church?
I thought that was Linfield.
Maeve
Linfield are known as the bluemen I believe so a football faux pas there.
“What was attacked in Russia, France and Spain was an extremely powerful and reactionary institution that seized a large proportion of the produce of their work from the people, and acted as an arm of the state, preaching on behalf or reactionary and oppressive central governments and aristocracies.”
Maybe that is what the Reds said they were attacking, the end result was that thousands of people who wished to observe their religion and hold on to their property ended up being slaughtered and starved by the millions.
Hitler may well have only wanted to extirpate the plutocratic class of parasitical bloodsuckers who were bleeding the decent Germans dry but the end result was the same.
Millions of innocent people who objected to a fanatical regime were murdered for the crime of wishing to retain their religion and their families’ property.
TurdTroll alert!I find it hard to imagine less fertile soil for a revolutionary socialist uprising than Ireland in 1916. The British government, Unionists, the Churches, and conservative Irish nationalists would have united to put it down.
Ah Malcolm – not so very well expressed but Harry’s intent was irony I’m certain.
“Troll alert!” ??
Go fuck yourself Redfellow, I’m posting here on a more consistent basis and longer than you have, you’re the fucking troll.
And no dewi it wasn’t irony, unless it has escaped your notice Communists have filled more concentration camps, jails, torture chambers and mass graves than the Nazis ever did.
I happen to think that liquidating millions of peasants who don’t subscribe to the virtues of International Socialism is every bit as horrific and as objectionable as liquidating millions of Jews who don’t subscribe to the virtues of National Socialism.
Stalin and Mao make Hitler look like a tuppence ha’penny operator yet some people still seem to believe the vile philosophy of the two former genocidal lunatics was in some way morally superior to that of the latter and would have been perfectly happy to see the same Red thugs that massacred millions in the Ukraine and China take power in Ireland.
For pointing out such inconvenient facts I get called a troll by a pompous twit who can barely make more than one post a month.
To be appended to Harry Flashman @ 01:55 AM:
I devoted a whole nanosecond there wondering which of the recent statements of our “School-house bully, with [his] shouts and great action” [Tom Brown's Schooldays, Part 1, Chapter 5] can be verified from reality rather than blind assertion, and also which, if any, are relevant to the thread. To aid recollection, this was about the rise of radical activism in the Irish revolutionary period.
In the era of which we should be talking, comparisons with Stalinist Russia, or Nazi Germany, or Francoist Spain (all of which I am prepared to debate, factually, relevantly and therefore elsewhere) are inappropriate.
We should not be stooping to the level of the visiting journo at Kinshasa, looking for the cheap sensation, calling out: “Any nuns here who’ve been raped?” Nor should we exaggerate the scale of events in Ireland: the casualties throughout the Civil War period (which is effectively the period under discussion) were 800 Free Staters and about 400 republicans [see David FitzPatrick: The Two Irelands, 1912-1939]. As Ferriter indicates, this tallies with the Registrar General’s official return of 1,150 violent deaths in 1922-23.
Now back to the issue.
The TG4 programme correctly identified a major element in the social problems of that moment:
The Saorstát government was acutely aware of that: there is a memorandum from a senior civil servant to the Cabinet (dated 26 September 1923) warning of the social consequences of 50,000 demobilized soldiers and the release of 11,000 detainees.
Those consequences were not just political discontent: the Garda recorded 260 armed robberies and 119 armed raids in the second half of 1923. The government fully recognised this was criminal rather than political activity. So we got the 1923 Public Safety Act, and renewed impetus to restore policing (by September 1923 only 530 of the 870 police stations had been restored).
By January 1924, Cosgrave’s government felt on top of things: Cosgrave himself took a relaxed view; and proposed an amnesty for crimes committed in the civil war. It was left to Kevin O’Higgins (surprise! surprise!) to be the hard man:
O’Higgins identified “these areas” as Cork and Tipperary, Mayo, Clare, Sligo and Leitrim.
Now, is there a chance that we can forgo the mindless abuse, and argue our propositions, preferably with resort to the occasional snippet of factual evidence?
A long winded piece of shite Malcolm.
Take back your charge that I am a “troll”, or even more offensively a “turd”, and I can debate you.
Until such time as you do so you take your witless twittering and shove it up your arse; I have nothing to say to you until you respect a fellow poster and don’t fling outrageous personal insults against me and allegations which you well know to be untrue.
The choice is yours.
Harry Flashman @ 09:37 AM:
So, implicitly, you accept the thesis that the programme was:
and
but
Furthermore, you explicitly deny that you tried to divert a thread into irrelevant hysterics about
Which would, of course, be irrelevant trolling?
Harry Flashman ‘
The ‘Reds’ did’nt take power in Ireland and as Malcolm Redfellow and Sean Fear above pointed out it was never much of a possibility for many reasons.
Hitler and Stalin had nothing to do with the Munster ‘Soviets’ .
Just finished watching the programme. Such a load of nonsense, however much we might wish it to be true. Certainly it did a good job of excavating a great deal of the social radicalism that was widespread in the island after WWI (and before, though I can understand for time reasons not going into that more, but something ought to have been said). But it seemed to me it was mixing Soviet up with trade union activity to give a greater appearance of strength and coherence than was actually warranted. And describing the First Dáil as in pursuit of a socialist republic was silly.
The programme was right to point out the importance of strikes to the struggle for independence, but provided no analysis as to how the Labour movement might actually have become the leading force in the country, how it might have dealt with the Ulster question, and how it might have avoided the civil war – as opposed to a civil war of a different type.
Essentially this was an ultra-leftist/Trotskyist analysis of what should have been in the period, with little reference to the facts on the ground. This is most especially clear in relation to Ulster. I also wonder why there was no reference to the continued activities of the Irish Citizens’ Army during this period, when at least one unit in Dublin retained its separate identity while acting under IRA orders. Joe Higgins has really good Irish, but he seemed an odd choice for this. Surely someone from the republican left would have been more appropriate.
I don’t mind counter-factual history, but some grasp of reality is needed. Though again the programme should be praised for its work in bringing the level of labour discontent and activism to the public’s attention.
Malcolm says a leader was missing. I think rather a disciplined and effective committed socialist party was missing.
Here’s a relevant wrinkle, derived from Tom Garvin [1922: the Birth of Irish Democracy] which might go some way to amplifying both the local tensions in Limerick (and, perhaps, also elsewhere) and the friction between “official” Labour and the radical upsurge.
One consequence of the War of Independence was that British subventions to the county authorities ceased: first, in July 1920, to those controlled by Sinn Féin; then, after the Treaty, to all. This rendered many county councils effectively bankrupt. The Dáil’s response (and there were other factors, mainly over partisan control) was to seek to eliminate the county councils.
The most obvious effect was further deterioration of rural roads. Then, sooo unlike now, roadwork amounted to outdoor poor relief … traditionally regarded as a form of charity or as a political ‘fix’ rather than as a real job. [Garvin, page 84].
Moreover, and notably so in Limerick, most of the road workers were direct labour, and unionised. Typically, they were paid 40 shillings/£2 per week, a cause of friction with unemployed, landless labourers. A further level of tension emerged when it was proposed to cut this wage (to 35 shillings/£1.75): the unions noted that no parallel cut was proposed for the council officials. Garvin’s comment is:
A further factor was the mutual distrust between Dublin (either Imperial or Treatyite) and the countryside. Ernest Blythe is and was generally regarded as one of the competent Free State ministers — might Harry applaud his later connection with the Blueshirts? Blythe had good grounds for and was unabashed in his contempt for the local government over which he ministered (see footnote). Again I borrow this from a neat aperçu by Garvin:
This acknowledges an essential (and even admirable) parochialism: it doesn’t matter where one is in the island of Ireland, whether one is unionist or nationalist, in matters lay or ecclesiatic, there is a deeply-engrained distrust of central authority. The central authority is there to be provide the means: locally, we deny that central bureaucracy the right to tell us “how” or “what”.
_____________________
In the spirit of seeking to uplift the academic tone around here, I repeat my previous ploy of having a footnote:
Garvin has a story, well worth the repetition, about Lisburn-born Blythe and:
_____________________
So, Harry Flashman @ 09:37 AM, “long-winded”? Perhaps. But like the supplier of the chopped horse-manure for mulching my borders, I like to offer full-value and useful “shite”. But, as you point out, the choice is mine. And that of other readers and contributors, some of whom seem to prefer well-intended debate to arrogant bluster.
“No, Harry followers of Christianity were not attacked (with the possible exception of China where they were viewed, often correctly, as agents of imperialism). What was attacked in Russia, France and Spain was an extremely powerful and reactionary institution that seized a large proportion of the produce of their work from the people, and acted as an arm of the state, preaching on behalf or reactionary and oppressive central governments and aristocracies. That bled the people dry. But of course while privileges were stripped there was little violence until the churches got themselves involved in military counter-revolution. [b]But let’s ignore the facts.[/b]”
Well you certainly seem to be. Utter tosh.
Care to elaborate?
We are heading down several disparate rabbit-holes here, while other avenues of relevance and importance are neglected. I am particularly intrigued by three (forgive my glossing here):
Each of those is deserving of detailed debate and scrutiny, and has some relevance to the thread.
I cannot see why we are pursuing the false hare started by Harry Flashman @ 1:35 AM over the “genocidal horrors inflicted on the farmers of Russia by the Soviets in the 1920s”. Stalin’s coercions in the Urals and Siberia occurred in 1927-8: the full-blown collectivisation of agriculture was decreed in January 1930. That hardly could inspire or justify the “White Guards” of Waterford in 1923.
Let me stick with that last issue for this post.
There was an agrarian conflict festering below the surface of the Civil War. Sinn Féin in Kerry had, legitimately, been trying to buy out land-owners before the Civil War. During the Civil War, as Bill Kissane [The Politics of the Civil War, page 161] notes:
On 23 April 1923, the minister of agriculture was bringing to cabinet fears about a ‘Back to the Land Association’. All of that precedes the strike by Waterford agricultural workers from 17 May, quickly broken when the army pushed farmers’ convoys through the picket lines. Even though de Valera had declared the ceasefire (30th April), the government, with some justification, saw what was happening in Waterford and elsewhere as a challenge to its authority. That also relates to my earlier point on the proposal to abolish the rural districts, and limit the functions of the counties.
All of this was part of the narrative that Irish society was threatened: the topic exploited ferociously by the Treatyites throughout 1923, especially at the August election.
On the demobbed soldiers bit, I meant to say I thought this was over-hyped. Certainly Tom Barry and others were ex-soldiers, but there is little evidence that they were a major factor in either republican or labour agitation. And if you believe Peter Hart, they were targets rather than seen as potential recruits.
The White Guards should be seen both as part of the massive outbreak of right-wing paramilitarism in Europe post-WWI and the history of class conflict between farmers and labourers in Ireland. To some extent, this was old conflict under slightly new labels.
Greenflag I never said that Hitler and Stalin had anything to do with the Munster Soviet and I can’t see why you suggest I did.
I pointed out that Communists have not exactly got a very pleasant record when it comes to dealing with farmers and peasants who object to the Communists stealing their property and trying to enslave them and this fact is attested to by historical record and the tens of millions of men, women and children whose long murdered corpses still fill the mass graves from Ukraine to China and on into Cambodia.
To which I made the not unremarkable observation that Waterford farmers were therefore justified in forming self defence organisations against the nascent threat of a Red Terror in exactly the same way as blacks or Jews would be perfectly justified in organising themselves in defence of their families and freedom if they heard that fascists were organising in their neighbourhood. It’s really quite a simple concept but one which so many posters here seem incapable of grasping.
As to [b]Redfellow[/b], I have always treated him with courtesy and respect when debating him, he seems incapable of responding in kind and has proven himself to be a churlish lout who not only can’t defend his own arguments without resorting to ignorant name calling and offensive insults but more importantly is clearly clueless as to what the actual meaning of the term “troll” is in the context of internet debates.
He’s a twit and until such times as he learns good manners and common decency I will waste no more time on his pointless, longwinded, bloviating prattle.