Enemy Within by Roger Cottrell
You can’t blame a chap for writing something and not making it available elsewhere – particularly if he has a nightly blog to write. Below is the letter I have just written to the IRISH EXAMINER in a shameless attempt to promote ENEMY WITHIN: I made it clear it was also being posted on this blog. I will be blogging ‘properly’ again tomorrow.
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Dear Editor,
I read with bemusement the attack on Cork Socialist Party Councillor Mick Barry (whom I know quite well) in THE IRISH EXAMINER of August 21, 2008 by Pat Corkery and with much greater alarm the letter by Desmond FitzGerald from Canary Wharf in London, no less. As Desmond FitzGerald’s letter is the more serious I will start with this first.
According to Fitzgerald, any ethnic Russian living in Georgia or any former part of the USSR should be repatriated to Russia in what is quite starkly an advocacy of ethnic cleansing. What an outrageous suggestion! Is Mr. Fitzgerald aware of the history of this kind of reasoning in eastern Europe after World War One and (more recently) in the former Yugoslavia? From 1918 the Radeks in the Ukraine claimed that Soviet power in Red Ukraine was invalid because some of the workers who’d voted to align themselves to the Russian Federation were ethnic Russians. These Radeks were the same pro-white forces that massacred 30 000 Jews and have been venerated as heroes by the present nationalsit and capitalist-restorationist government in the Ukraine.
Pat Corkery has a point that some of the Left operate with double standards, where Russia is concerned, as against their more consistent opposition to US led policy in Iraq. In opposing the war in Iraq, Mick Barry is in fact one of the more principled of socialists because he doesn’t resort to the Brit bashing, Israeli bashing anti-Semitism of some of the Irish Left and doesn’t try and present either Saddam Hussein or al-Qaeda as freedom fighters. He does recognise an illegal Imperialist war in Iraq when he sees one. Although the strain of international Trotskyism that Mick belongs to (the CWI, deriving from the USEC) were always far too soft on Stalinism for my liking, I can’t see him supporting a Russian nationalist regime that has tried and failed to restore capitalism, endorsed gangsterism and decadent accumulation, as well as state sponsored murder and embarked on genocide in Chechnya and clearly has cynical motives in Osettia and Georgia. But what about the fact that NATO enlargement and this defence shield nonesense is cranking up the situation in the Caucasus and the fact that the Georgians attacked the ethnic Russians of Osettia, first?
During the war in the former Yusoslavia, the position of most surviving Trotskyist groups from the 1970s and 1980s was none too brilliant. My novel, ENEMY WITHIN, set during the miners strike, reveals that these days I’m non too big a fan of democratic centralist groups. Most of them fought shy of attacking Serbian fascism and genocide because they saw Serbia as a last bastion of the old Stalinist order that they had critically supported during the Cold War. The SWP even supported the UN arms embargo against Bosnia that disarmed the country in the face of 5 million Serbian soldiers and irregular killers under arms. The position of the Militant was not so crass but fell well short of the support for Bosnia that was required. It was reluctance to break with the Cold War certainties of the Fourth International’s Stalinised past that condemned most of these groups to oblivion.
But Croat fascists carried out atrocities in Mostar too and so, today, have the Georgian government! As for Desmond FitzGerald, is he suggesting that the Bangladeshi community of East london, where he lives (or even the Irish!) be reptariated? I hope not.
ROGER COTTRELL
I read with bemusement the attack on Cork Socialist Party Councillor Mick Barry (whom I know quite well) in THE IRISH EXAMINER of August 21, 2008 by Pat Corkery and with much greater alarm the letter by Desmond FitzGerald from Canary Wharf in London, no less. As Desmond FitzGerald’s letter is the more serious I will start with this first.
According to Fitzgerald, any ethnic Russian living in Georgia or any former part of the USSR should be repatriated to Russia in what is quite starkly an advocacy of ethnic cleansing. What an outrageous suggestion! Is Mr. Fitzgerald aware of the history of this kind of reasoning in eastern Europe after World War One and (more recently) in the former Yugoslavia? From 1918 the Radeks in the Ukraine claimed that Soviet power in Red Ukraine was invalid because some of the workers who’d voted to align themselves to the Russian Federation were ethnic Russians. These Radeks were the same pro-white forces that massacred 30 000 Jews and have been venerated as heroes by the present nationalsit and capitalist-restorationist government in the Ukraine.
Pat Corkery has a point that some of the Left operate with double standards, where Russia is concerned, as against their more consistent opposition to US led policy in Iraq. In opposing the war in Iraq, Mick Barry is in fact one of the more principled of socialists because he doesn’t resort to the Brit bashing, Israeli bashing anti-Semitism of some of the Irish Left and doesn’t try and present either Saddam Hussein or al-Qaeda as freedom fighters. He does recognise an illegal Imperialist war in Iraq when he sees one. Although the strain of international Trotskyism that Mick belongs to (the CWI, deriving from the USEC) were always far too soft on Stalinism for my liking, I can’t see him supporting a Russian nationalist regime that has tried and failed to restore capitalism, endorsed gangsterism and decadent accumulation, as well as state sponsored murder and embarked on genocide in Chechnya and clearly has cynical motives in Osettia and Georgia. But what about the fact that NATO enlargement and this defence shield nonesense is cranking up the situation in the Caucasus and the fact that the Georgians attacked the ethnic Russians of Osettia, first?
During the war in the former Yusoslavia, the position of most surviving Trotskyist groups from the 1970s and 1980s was none too brilliant. My novel, ENEMY WITHIN, set during the miners strike, reveals that these days I’m non too big a fan of democratic centralist groups. Most of them fought shy of attacking Serbian fascism and genocide because they saw Serbia as a last bastion of the old Stalinist order that they had critically supported during the Cold War. The SWP even supported the UN arms embargo against Bosnia that disarmed the country in the face of 5 million Serbian soldiers and irregular killers under arms. The position of the Militant was not so crass but fell well short of the support for Bosnia that was required. It was reluctance to break with the Cold War certainties of the Fourth International’s Stalinised past that condemned most of these groups to oblivion.
But Croat fascists carried out atrocities in Mostar too and so, today, have the Georgian government! As for Desmond FitzGerald, is he suggesting that the Bangladeshi community of East london, where he lives (or even the Irish!) be reptariated? I hope not.
ROGER COTTRELL
September 5th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
My my – well I feel I ought to defend myself. I understand quite well the history of the regions in Georgia and other places. The point being that in order to end wars at some point people have to accept the reality they live in regardless of whether they like it or not. The reality is that Georgia is an independent country. The reality is that those who claim to be ‘Russians’ first and just happen to be living in a place called Georgia ought to get a grip on reality.
They live in Georgia and there loyalty is to Georgia. If they love Russia so much then go live in Russia and be Russians but they can’t have it both ways.
I moved to London from Ireland to take advantage of various career and education opportunities and therefore I oew the UK some loyalty for the chances it has given me. If it gets to the point were I ever have to choose Ireland or the UK in some war and I choose Ireland while living in the UK then I think it is right that I leave the UK and move back home. If I choose the UK then it is clear that on some conscious level I have accepted that I am not Irish – in the sense that my loyalty is not to Ireland anymore even though I’ll always be ‘Irish’ per se.
It’s the same in the Middle East – pretending ISrael doesn’t exist – when it clearly does – is a case of the Palestinians deluding themselves and until they face the reality of Irael they’ll never get peace – be that peace part of a 2 state or 1 state agreement.
The IRA had to eventually accept the reality that part of Ulster is in the UK – whether they like it or not. Once they did that I think they found it far easier to pursue their agenda of a united island – not in my lifetime I shouldn’t think.
Roger loses the run of himself by trying to make out I advocate ethnic cleansing! It is that sort of ridiculous comment that causes the mess Georgia is now in.
Yours sincerely,
Desmond FitzGerald
September 9th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Just a point of information, Des – and two in fact. I have certainly NEVER disputed the right of Israel to exist at least within its 1967 borders and defend its citizens from terrorism. The fetish of so much of the left (rooted in the provisional dogmas of the Baku Conference of 1920 and the Stalinist method of the popular front) of blaming all of the problems in the middle east on Zionism is utter crap. It was secular Arab Nationalism, during its popular front wth Stalinsm, that smashed the Middle Eastern working class movement to atoms in a process that reached its highest, bloodiest and most disgusting form under the Iraqi Ba’ath. Islamic fundamentalism, based on the relationship of the bazaar merchant petty bourgeoisie to the mosque, was able to the fill the vacuum only after this process and (in particular) following the collapse of the Soviet Union with all its disastrous consequences for the international balancxe of class forces – no matter how reactionary Stalinism was!
As regards Northern Ireland I’m certainly not an IRA supporter or even a Republican. My own family are Irish Protestants (with a few heugenots, German Jews and Armenians thrwn in to make it interesting) and I support the Union with Britain completely. Howver, I also advocate a strong regional democracy in Northern Ireland, an all Irish dimension, long term representation of Northern Ireland in the Dail and (of course) a working class party with a socialist program to transgress all this tribal shit of Orange and Green. That said, it’s difficult to talk about forming a Labour Party in Northern Ireland when that in Britain is so reactionary and Thatcherite.
However, this doesn’t let YOU off the hook, Des, with your outrageous claim that people of Russian ethnicity who have lived in Osettia, etc., for centuries should be frced to “repatriate” to Russia. As I said before, I held o candle for Stalinism and a lot less for the passle of bourgeois restorationist gangsters and outright fascists presently running Russia. Putin and Medvedev are the scum of the earth! But the legitimate fears of ethnic Russians in the former Soviet Union, like those of Northern Ireland Protestants, Jews in Israel and throughout the region and the various ethnic minorities that make up the hitherto Tsarist and Ottoman Empires must be respected and accomodated as part of a wider settlement.