Come Here To Me!

Jay Carax will be back from Manchester next week.

C. Desmond Greaves (1913-1988)

Earlier in the week, I came across this fascinating (private) letter from C.Desmond Greaves, editor of The Irish Democrat to Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britian (CPGB). Pollitt was asking his ‘comrade’ for information on the Irish Catholic community, their relation to the Church and the influence it has on their politics. Greaves was seen as an expert on the issue.

The letter was a part of a larger collection of files on the relationship between the CPGB, their Catholic members and debates on how they could best approach the Catholic Community.

It was five pages long, I found this to be the most relevant and interesting section:

“The division between English and Irish Catholics is very important. Though divided on class lines English Catholics are in the main better off. The great county for them is Lancashire where Irish Catholics also exist. I estimate 800,000 Catholics who are Irish or of Irish descent. These again vary and cannot be approached in one way only. Broadly speaking however the existence of an unsolved national problem among the Irish gives the possibility of splitting off this section as a democratic reserve. They consist of about a quarter of the total Catholic population and I would say they are a much larger proportion of the Catholics in the Labour Party.

The Irish are subdivided into ‘New’ and ‘Old’. The ‘new’ are 400,000  immigrants since 1924 when the U.S.A. refusing to accept immigrant, diverted the stream of vigorous young Irish to Britain. Those who came since the war (200,000) are a generation which as forgotten 1916 and is less bitterly  nationalistic, and more open to progressive ideas than the older ones. The Irish Democrat circulates almost exclusively among these newer sections of the ‘new’ Irish. Irish affairs are very much alive and they have a direct influence on Irish politics by going backwards and forwards, between the two countries.

The old Irish have lost all political interest in Ireland but a vague and  often embittered nationalism apart from the number in the L.P. (they mostly  vote Labour I think) have now little Irish left about them but religion. Thus the strength of the anti-partition league is largely a consequence of  the backing it receives from the church. Hence also the attempts being made to ban Communists out of it. We of the Irish CTTE have not solved the  problem of these older Irish. But we think a broad movement could be build round the Irish Democrat on the basis of demanding Democracy in Ireland (esp. The North) though the forms of organisation would have to be flexible  in the extreme; it would be a movement rather than an organisation. The content of the paper would have to be modified though not radically changed.

One asset in working amongst the Irish Catholics is the repeated struggles which all the nationalist leaders of Ireland had against the Catholic  Church, and Connolly’s ‘Labour, Nationality and Religion’ is a great asset too. I understand that Roddy Connolly would put no obstacles in our way if  we wished to republish it. Thus I think there are two main kinds of Democratic forces amongst the  Catholics … the working class, and the Irish. These are the reserves we want to get…”

Letter from C. Desmond Greaves to ‘Comrade’ Pollitt. 28 April 1948.
CP/IND/POLL/09/15

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National Front and members of the 'Squad' (who later went onto form AFA) clash at Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester in the late 1970s. Picture: No Retreat (Milo Books, 2003)

From 1985 – 1997, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) fought the British far-right to a bloody standstill. Not least in Manchester.

AFA, was initially set up by members of Red Action, the Direct Action Movement (predecessor of the Solidarity Federation, anarcho-syndicalist group) and independent left-wing activists. Workers’ Power, a Trotskyist group, joined AFA in 1989 but left in 1992.

Many of those involved in AFA were of second and third generation Irish. In Red Action’s case, it was joked that being of Irish stock was obligatory for membership. AFA also had a strong relationship with many republican flute bands in Britain as well different Irish Republican groups. (It also has to be said that a number of AFA’s leading militants including Patrick H. and Liam H.became involved in Irish Republican military organisations, the PIRA and INLA respectively)

It is a well-known and documented fact that the British far-right has always had strong links with Loyalist groups both in the six counties and in Britain. What is sometimes overlooked, understandably so as it causes much embarrassment, was that there was a small but not altogether trivial list of Englishmen of Irish Catholic descent who got heavily involved in far right, neo nazi and British nationalist politics.

These include Patrick Harrington (leading member of National Front (NF) in the 1980s), Martin Webster (Young Conservatives, National Socialist Movement and then NF rising to National Activities Organiser), Michael McLaughlin ( British Movement leader 1975 – 1983 who was shockingly son of an Irish republican and socialist who was a veteran of the International Brigades), Eddy Morrison (BM, NF and then British People’s Party) and John O’Brien (NF leader, early 1970s).

Hopefully later in the year I’ll have time to do some more research and write something up on the fascinating story of how scores of British born, Irish working-class males got heavily involved in both fascist and anti-fascist struggles in the 1930s, 1970s/1980s and now.

To learn more about the history of AFA and the political climate of the time, try Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action by Sean Birchaill (Freedom Press, 2010), No Retreat: The Secret War Between Britain’s Anti-Fascists and the Far-Right by Dave Hann and Steve Tilzey (Milo, 2003), Anti-Fascist Action: An Anarchist Perspective by an ex. Liverpool AFA member (Kate Sharpley Library, 2007),Bash the Fash : Anti-fascist recollections 1984-93 by K. Bullstreet (Kate Sharpley Library, 2001), Anti-Fascist by Martin Lux (Phoenix Press, 2006) and the Fighting Talk documentary (BBC, 1993).

The following are a couple of AFA based leaflets I found today:

Front 'Cable Street Beat' AFA leaflet. 1989.

Back cover. 'Cable Street Beat' AFA leaflet. 1989

AFA 'Picket-Demo to Stop Race Attacks' leaflet. Early 1990s?

(more…)

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