The idea that there were scores, or even hundreds of thousands, of committed Trotskyists, quietly awaiting their hero’s Second Coming, reincarnated as Jeremy Corbyn, is really mind-boggling. Corbyn has been in politics a long, long time, frightening nobody. I’ve met a few Trotskyists, one a damned good and constructive Union Branch Secretary, others impressive in their unquenchable faith, and a few totally devoid of any sense of fun. I can’t understand the phenomenon of Corbyn-ism except in despair at the moral vacuity of Blairism, the amoral cynicism of the Conservative Party, and the black hole posturing of the Liberal Democrats.
These remarks are prompted by the entry in Wikepedia on Piaras Beaslai, or Percy Beazley (1881-1965) who made his mark on our history, and in his telling of it. What amazed me was the claim that in his Irish Republican Brotherhood capacity he got Richard Mulcahy, Patrick Pearse and others to “infiltrate the Gaelic League” and oust its President, Douglas Hyde, from its Presidency.
Beaslai and Mulcahy were longstanding members of both the IRB and the League when, in 1915, they supported a motion at the League’s Ard Fheis which Hyde regarded as too nationalistic for him to stay as its President. He remained a member, however.By 1915 Pearse had been a member of the League for 19 years and for 12 years had been its journal’s Editor.He was only about a year and a half in the IRB when the resolution which Hyde objected to was passed.
Sean T O Ceallaigh, who was President of Ireland from 1945 to 1959, was like Beaslai and Mulcahy a longstanding member of both the Gaelic Leagueand the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1915. The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 determined the IRB on insurrection and “like steel in compressed concrete” it sought to concentrate all strands of national sentiment to serve a common purpose. O Ceallaigh, on instructions from Sean MacDiarmada, proposed the motion (with a heavy heart). Amends were made in 1938, when Hyde was made President of Ireland.
The idea of Beaslai, Mulcahy and Pearse as “entryists” in the Gaelic League is a nonsense, and anyone checking Wikipedia on any subject should seek corroboration for its claims.
As for myself, it seems that, unknowingly, I once was an “entryist” in Britain’s Labour Party. It happened like this. In 1970 the United Kingdom had a General Election. I was living in the constituency of Battersea South and when Labour started canvassing there I helped them, fearful of what the Tories would do in the North of Ireland if returned to power. I was not particularly impressed with the Labour Government’s handling of the crisis which had erupted a year and a bit before. Besides, my girlfriend believed that Tory and Bastard was one word, and has not lost that belief in the intervening 46 years.
I had come to England in 1964, intending to make my fortune and return home in a couple of years. I had not registered to vote, and, remembering that William Joyce, who had once carried a British passport, had been hanged for treason, was chary of compromising myself.
Anyhow, the Tories won the Election, the British Army enforced a murderous curfew on Belfast’s Falls Road, and Lord Brookborough’s son rode in triumph in a Landrover over the humiliated Croppies.
Jack Lynch, whom the Brits, led by Harold Wilson, had terrified into putting an honest Irish Army Officer, Captain James Kelly, together with his Cabinet colleagues Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, on trial for following Cabinet instruction, made some speech about not using force to end partition.
At a meeting of the local Labour Party, which I had not joined, I suggested that the party should press the Government to reply to the Irish Government, also ruling out the use of force on the issue in dispute, and have it settled in accordance with democratic principles.
This had no backers. Some said that my idea would result in a united Ireland, separate from Britain. Others said my suggestion was meaningless. Others bemoaned Britain’s withdrawal from India.
I had other things happening in my life, such as changing my job, getting married, begetting a son and buying a flat and the position in the North of Ireland flared into a war that lasted another 28 years.
But it seems I left a reputation as a Fenian Entryist in Battersea which emerged in the book “Things Can Only Get Better” by a young Blairista Smart Alec.
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