On August 14, 1979 Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of the Queen, together with his grandson and another young person were murdered in an act of terrorism. The IRA remotely detonated a bomb on the boat they were on. The country was in shock. As the BBC reported about Lord Mountbatten’s funeral, “Thousands lined the route of the procession and the memorial service at Westminster Abbey was attended by royalty, leaders and politicians from all over the world.” But this was not the view of the Trotskyist organisation, Workers Power. Below I copy a front page unsigned article written in an editorial style from their newspaper. Despite the fact that this act of terrorism occurred over 32 years ago, it is still truly sickening to read.
Don’t mourn Mountbatten
Workers Power, No. 8, September, 1979, p1.
LORD MOUNTBATTEN OF BURMA, at various times the First Sea Lord, Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia and Viceroy of India, was not merely a titled member of the parasitical Windsor Dynasty. Workers should know him for what he was – an intelligent and resourceful militant of British Imperialism in the long period of its decline from first to third or fourth rate power.
It is ironic that he fell a casualty of the latest war to which that dogged and bloody retreat gave rise. He died at the hands of forces seeking to liberate Ireland from the malign power that condemns’ Irish men, women and children to the persistent harra ssment of an army of occupation. To suffer SAS secret assassination squads, the imprisonment and torture of those seeking to protect their own people and to expel the oppressors.
It is, of course, part of the propaganda of successive British governments to criminalise these freedom fighters, to deny that there is war being fought in Ireland. So said their predecessors in India, Cyprus and Kenya.
As Marxists, and not nationalists, we have a different view of the tactics to be employed to end the oppression of Ireland. The killing of a retired ruling class militant, member of the royal family etc., will enrage the ruling class, but it will not injure or weaken it. Indeed, such actions, carried out by a highly secret military formation and unrelated to the mass action and involvement of the working class in both Northern and Southern Ireland, will provoke repression without preparing the forces to deal with [unclear].
The successful attack on the paratroops, whose regiment murdered fourteen unarmed civilians in Derry in 1972 is, however, doubly defensible. Only rabid pro·imperialists and their Fleet Street hirelings can condemn it.
Of course it is personally tragic for the friends and families of working class boys driven into the Army by unemployment and set to die in Ireland. But there is only one solution. Get the troops out NOW. ‘But’, scream the Labourite politicians as well as the Tories, ‘That would be a victory for the IRA.’ So it would be. It would be a victory for every working class person in Britain as well.
Trots are a heartless bunch.
Andrew, yes that is true. They have a different set of morals to most people. In Their Morals and Ours, Trotsky defended the mass killings of women and children.
On Memorial Day in NYC we have fleet week. I come from a Navy family so my brother and sister in law arrange for me to talk to some sailors about 9-11 and the earlier bombing of the WTC. I also take them to Wall Street and show them the site of the 1914 bombing that has never been solved.
The bombing today is believed to have been carried out by anarchists. I just purchased a book on the subject More Powerful Than Dynamite by Thai Jones. I am somewhat concerned about reading a book praised by Bill Ayers and Chomsky.
This history of terrorism in America is forgotten especially when discussing the deportations that came after these bombings. Wilson’s draconian limitations on speech are remembered.
Were there similar bombings in the UK circa 1914?
Contrary to their mythology, if Trotsky had won the power struggle with Stalin, the blood-letting would have continued. Perhaps not to the scale it was under Stalin, but as Michael points out Trotsky had compulsion to give intellectual cover for mass murder.
Trotsky and Stalin- two monsters from the same mother.
What confuses me about Trotsky is what did he do to warrant a cult following to the present.
We don’t hear about Titoists and Maoism is widespread only in locales. I read the Service book and don’t see enough to build a mythology upon.
Beakerkin, I think it is more that Trotsky represented a form of anti-Stalinist communism. It is a view that had Trotsky got in power rather than Stalin, that the Russian Revolution would have moved more into a Marxian utopia as opposed to the totalitarian monstrosity that it became under Stalin. Of course, in truth, as Andrew Murphy has pointed out, Trotsky was also a monster “from the same mother”, Lenin, as Stalin.
Unlike Tito, Mao, and other Communist leaders who had power, the results of their leadership can be seen. Trotsky’s followers are idealistic in the sense that that they have a view on what would have been achieved and what was possible had Trotsky taken over from Lenin. This can be extended to argue what is currently possible if they manage to overthrow parliamentary democracy. There is, you might realise, a flaw in this argument and that is this: we do have evidence of what Trotsky achieved while he did have power under Lenin during Bolshevik rule. It is not very pretty – and indeed, when one looks at the tactics and methods of the Cheka, very ugly. Trotsky’s supporters therefore make apologies for this period in time by blaming others, distorting or ignoring history.
On a smaller scale the same phenomenon is why Che still captures the imagination of those who believe rather than Fidel or Hugo. As Che realy never had power those who believe can paint whatever they wish from their hopes. The actual deeds of Che are ignored.
Yes, I did think the slogan on this t-shirt was making an effective point about such views.
That shirt is sheer comedic genius.
Assorted quotes from that wonderful humanitarian, Che
“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!”
The Cuban Revolution : Years of Promise (2005) by Teo A. Babun and Victor Andres Triay, p. 57
“What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”
Cuba, Or, The Pursuit of Freedom (1998 ) Hugh Thomas, p. 1417
“A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/2057498/As-Che-Guevara-gets-the-Hollywood-treatment-The-Sun-looks-at-the-darker-side-of-his-story.h
Yes, Communist leaders provided many chilling quotes. My friend Paul Bogdanor is a compiler of them.