Anarchist Black Cat

I know a good few Irish anarchists are reading 'Lost Revolution' at the moment which is a just published history of the Official IRA and the Workers Party. Its a very significant history of what was the most significant organistion on the Irish left for a couple of key decades so I thought it may make for a good discussion thread. We have at least one ex member on the board as well as ex members of some of the other orgs and I'll try and encourage some more participation if the thread takes off.

I'm about 340 pages in and there are 3 different mentions directly concerning anarchists
- the involvement of a unnamed anarchist group with OIRA in the forging of building site tax certificates (p230) which remained a significant source of income
- the Murrays who accidentally killed a cop which escaping after a fundraising operation and were sentenced to death, the sentence was commuted to life after a defence campaign and they ended up being the longest serving political prisoners in the south until their release in the 1990's. They are not identified as anarchists in the text, just as ex OIRA (p309, 330)
- current WSM member Alan MacS gets a mention on page 304 for his (1975?) resignation letter saying that the new policies were not compatible with his "libertarian communist views". Alan posts here sometimes.

I'm at p340 at the moment, if there are any other similar mentions I'll flag them here.

The book launch is blogged at http://anarchism.pageabode.com/andrewnf ... kers-party the audio at the end of the blog is quite a useful introduction to the text

I intend to do a review but quick impressions so far is that this is an exhaustive history although some key incidents have been (delibretely) skimmed over. The best example being the shooting dead of Seamus Costello (p347) which is covered in one paragraph without comment on the SFWP statement denying the shooting. Apparently an early review has criticised the lack of analysis in the book (Hanley referred to this in his talk at the launch and explained it on the grounds of 'how could me and Scott agree on anything'). So far this is just a very detailed telling of the story.

Anyway interested in the impressions of others who are reading the book, I know there are a lot of you out there

This book sounds really good, now I'm going to have to pay 31 bucks to pay for international shipping and the book on amazon. Hope it's worth it. Hopefully there are comments before I order so I can figure out if it's worth it.

Just passed p400.

One of the most interesting themes / tracks (apart from the horror of the various armed feuds in Belfast) is that around Eoghan Harris and the way he was able to use RIDD (supposedly the Industrial Department) as a secretive policy motor somewhat outside of party discipline (its membership was secret) to transform core policy and factionalise against those who opposed these changes. It's quite hard to understand how he was able to get away with this for so long except for the fact this his influence in RTE (State TV and Radio) was obviously of enormous value to the party plus he was for the most part pushing policy along a path he was winning most of the leadership to.

hmm correction to the OP - they return to the shooting of Costello in a lot more detail on pages 402-3 in a chapter on 'Group B' (what the OIRA became known as after 1976 or so if its existence was acknowledged at all).

just ordered my copy

It's a fascinating book. I'm just coming up to p. 500.

A couple of anecdotes that I marked:

p. 66 - In May 1968, IRA units destroyed buses and cars used to ferry strikebreakers during a bitter strike at the US owned EI plant in Shannon who were refusing to recognise the ITGWU.

p. 81 - A waffen - SS vetran Staf van Velthoven was a member of the Sinn Fein Pearse Cumann in Rathmines in 1968. (He was interviewed for Cathal O'Shannon's documentary "Ireland's Nazis" a year or two ago. Staf van Velthoven is still alive and lives in galway apparently)

p. 111 - Joseph Brady, Dublin IRA member "raised idea of stealing the Book of Kells" from TCD and holding it for ransom. He found no support so he decided to do it himself. On 24 March 1969, he broke into TCD and, unable to gain access to the Book of Kells, he stole the Brian Boru harp instead and demanded 20k ranson. In April, he was arrested while trying to collect the ransom. The harp was found in a sandpit in Wicklow. The IRA suspected he was a provocateur and he was picked up at gunpoint but managed to escape, though not before being shot twice. It transpired that Brady had been supplying information to the Garda Special Branch since 1967.

p. 121 - Account of Sinn Fein and Connolly Youth being attacked by FF members outside a public meeting in Sligo.

p. 142 - US actor Gene Kelly offered to make a financial donation to the IRA "as long as it was for arms"

p. 238 - Detailed account of the eviction of two empty four story buildings on Pembroke Road which were being occupied by homeless families supported by the Dublin Housing Action Committe in 1970. 100 Gardai were involved and it was the first time riot shields were used in the force's history.


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Any other stories that stood out?

I'd forgotten that - its seriously weird. In the doc did Staf claim to have seen the error of his ways or was he still an unrepentant Nazi? In either case the idea that in the 60's it was the army (OIRA) that was the section for the serious left politicos while the political org (Sinn Fein) was full of four green fields types was interesting.

p436 - The three newly elected WP TD's vote for Haughey as Taoiseach! Now hat puzzles me about the account is the fact that they find the doors to the Dail locked and have to gan entry by getting into the press gallery and climbing down into the Dail for the vote. I seem to remember at the time that the claim was that they were denied entry because they were not wearing ties - was that why the door was locked or was that some clever spin at the time? Also of interest here is that the decision that the TD's salaries were 'personal matters' (ie they didn't have to hand them over to the party) which seems pretty remarkable in the light of the extordinary sacrifices others were expected to make, in particular group B member caught on operations.

The Noel & Marie Murray case was quite serious. Our small international movement made a valient effort to garner support for the comrades. I think the comrades from "Black Flag" and the very loose Anarchist Black Cross, in cooperation with the Murray Defence Committee, were very much in the lead on this. Tough case for the comrades, tough times for anarchists accused of armed struggle.

Per chance, upon their release, what did they end up doing?

The sentencing was 'before my time' by over a decade but those involved in the campaign against that death sentence report it as being very intense with activists being regularly beaten by police etc and many on the left being afraid to even take part in protests because of the level of repression. As I understand it their release was conditional on them not resuming contact or activity - this could have put them back in jail. Over a decade has passed but I don't know if that has expired.

Re: yer man Van Velthoven - the Ireland's Nazi's documentary is up here (haven't watched it): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 672334180#

Also, a letter from Manus O'Riordan to the Indo which talks a bit about him is here: http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/feat ... 21709.html and the fallout (via Harris) is here http://www.indymedia.ie/article/81199

Doesn't really answer your question though Andrew.

Really looking forward to reading this book.

Thanks. As I recall -- a bit foggy now -- there were a couple/three periods to the campaign. The initial period after the arrest and into the trial/post trial prison/ the next period which is less clear to memory, but somewhow related to the appeal (and pre-release stuff). I think I still have our file "handy". But yeah, intense on many levels.

Just watched the Nazis doc. Yer man's story is basically:

As a Flemish Nationalist, joins a Flemish SS regiment, 1943 volunteers for an Elite SS Commando Regiment and becomes an explosives expert. Spring 1945 gets wounded during the retreat into Germany and captured by the yanks. Sent back to Belgium, gets 20 years for collaboration, manages to escape, gets smuggled out by Trappist monks and follows other Flemish Nazis to Ireland - he says on the basis that he could get asylum and "Ireland... IRA... I can learn something there". Once here he got "drawn into republican politics and become a prominent figure associated with protest in Ireland" (according to the Narrator).

He doesn't say whether he still has his Nazi views.

So again, not really answering the question. Oh well.

'Special activities' chapter - There are some really remarkable claims in this section which is basically on the OIRA in the north in the 1980s. In particular the suggestion (p540) that the OIRA were provided with British army helicopter photos of the people who killed the two corporals who drive into the funeral of those killed by Stone at Milltown so those involved could be identified. And the idea that the RUC ignored not only 'fundraising' but also drunk driving or that RUC Special Branch drank in sticky clubs (p538). I'm wondering how many at the launch the other night had read this far into the book!

It's a fascinating book. You are right that it presents itself primarily as a narrative rather than as an analysis, and that has both advantages and disadvantages. As a narrative, I don't think we'll get much better until quite a few people are in their graves and so past the temptation to bring libel proceedings.

The subject matters because, as AndrewF says, the Workers Party and its predecessors were the major hard left current in Ireland for a long time and they achieved a size and a level of mainstream success far greater than any of the rest of our organisations have managed. At it's height it had thousands of members and was outpolling the Labour Party in Dublin. It wasn't just a Dublin party though and indeed many of its most impressive bases were in much smaller places - it's first electoral breakthroughs were in places like Mallow in Cork and in Waterford City it became the largest party overall.

The first thing that struck me when reading the book was just how unstable the movement was, both organisationally and politically. In the 1980s it seemed from the outside to be a very stable organisation, much like many of the Moscow-line CPs elsewhere (I don't know that first hand, but that's my impression retrospectively). In fact that was a relatively brief interlude in a history which saw three major splits, many more minor ones, repeated and drastic changes in political outlook, and a host of submerged and secretive faction fights over a 25 year period.

The impression I get from the book is that there was almost a caste system of membership. Very different rules applied to the TDs, the party leadership, OIRA members, RIDD members and the ordinary punters in the branches. On a related point, it's interesting how the conspiratorial methods of Irish Republicanism remained ingrained, even after the politics associated with those methods had been entirely altered. The idea of trying to part-finance a political party through the activities of an armed wing is something well outside the mainstream of European Stalinism in that time period.

On the instability issue, it's interesting that the book portrays the organisation as very open to other political ideas up until the early to mid 1970s. There was a sort of "Stalinisation" at that point. Finally, I've always thought it odd that the Workers Party left so little behind. For such a big grouping, they haven't left much of a residue on the left.