Reviews of three recently read books

Recent books I have read are

1. What in me is dark? by Orlando Reade.

2. Jail Journal by John Mitchell, with an introduction by Arthur Griffith in 1913.

3. The Party !s Always Right, the untold story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism by Aidan Beatty.

The first examines the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost on political figures from Thomas Jefferson to Malcolm X and how bourgeois revolutionaries could proclaim all men to be equal, as the US Constitution framed by the Founding Fathers hypocritically did, while keeping and flogging black slaves and raping the females. Not to mention the appalling genocide of the native Americans. Some say the poem likens the fall of Satan and his deputy, Beelzebub, to the lost English Revolution, after the fall of Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the 1660 restoration of the monarchy, and thus identifies God as an oppressor. Of course such was Milton’s support for that revolution and its radical wing, the Diggers and Levellers, that he had to be very careful how he framed his epic poem. We studied it for the Leaving Cert in Ireland, though we did not examine what historical lessons it contained, of course.

The second was my first introduction to politics in the national school when a friend mentioned the story of the great Irish patriot John Mitchel who shunned the pacifism of Daniel O’Connell in favour of physical force republicanism, was deported to Van Demons land, escaped but ended up fighting for the slave owning south in the civil war and lost two sons in that ignoble struggle. The preface 1913 by Arthur Griffith, the founding leader of Sinn Fein in 1906, defends slavery because the bible does. Griffiths’ Sinn Fein was for a dual monarchy, Ireland to remain under the British empire with the monarch as head of an independent Ireland. Ireland was to become equal with all other imperialist counties of the time by getting its own black African colonies. This was the republican cause which he persuaded Michael Collins to adopt. Both died within a week of each other, defending the sell-out Treaty.

The last book is by Aidan Beatty and deals quite well with Healy’s sexism and misogyny, but has nothing on his very pronounced racism. On 28 November Thomas Scripps had quite a good article on the book [1] and he really does demolish the notion that the area of Galway that Healy grew up in was peaceful during the Tan War and the Civil War. However I did hear Healy boasting to a meeting that the Black and Tans had murdered his father, an outright lie.  As the piece argues correctly “The attack by Beatty goes well beyond Healy and the SEP.  It is an attack on the very concept of a party of the Leninist type being even a possibility, opting instead for what he sees, as a more plausible liberal democratic structure, in other words the bourgeois politics of the DSA and the steely working class resolve of the likes of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (sic).

In a subsequent Facebook debate the following comments were made: Dear Comrade Gerry Downing,

I’m a female fellow Trotskyist in Germany and attentively followed yesterday’s panel discussion on Healy and Healyism, i.e., the legacy the SEP defends, part of which, as I understand it, is their sheer contempt for the struggle against the sexualized forms of women’s oppression. I wanted to express my appreciation of your comments on this issue.

Comradely greetings, Karin Hilpisch

Davey Heller to GD: Was great to hear you call North out to his face on the SEP’s ongoing misogyny. The way he downplays the crimes of Healy as a “secondary “ issue is grotesque. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth. Whilst he acknowledges Healy’s sexualising abuse when pressed he constantly tries to rehabilitate Healy.

Karin Hilpisch I think you’re right, Davey.

The SEP seeks to rehabilitate Healy by claiming, not that certain allegations, among other things, of sex offences are untrue but that they are secondary, irrelevant, “distracting” from the real issues.

Notes

[1] WSWS Thomas Scripps 28 November 2024, Slander vs. biography: Aidan Beatty’s falsification of Gerry Healy’s family and childhood in a decade of rebellion and civil war

https://tinyurl.com/2s44zckv  ▲