Five years ago, revolution and revolutionary politics were in. Actors, playwrights, journalists were switched on to Trotsky. Trotsky was seen as the antithesis of Stalin, the grave digger of the revolution, and the cynicism, brutality and dogmatism which Stalin symbolised to them.
Today Trotsky is out. Indeed the latest fashion of the well-heeled trendy male is the assassin's outfit as modelled by Alain Delon in Losey's film on Trotsky.
Five years ago, the British working class was passive. The British trendies could identify with revolution ......in France, in Vietnam and Latin America-the Che Guevara style was in. But Kings Road and Kensington W.14 were safe. Today, with the struggle in Ireland and the traumatic shock of the miners? strike, yesterday's trendy left has shed his thin skin -his fashions and his politics. The Gravedigger's hired assassin is their new model.
In this situation, Wyndham and King, who in their working lives cater for the whims of people in the top advertising bracket, could easily have capitulated to the pressures of this new mood. They didn'. In these pages, Trotsky lives, warts and all-Krona documentary his life to the construction of the revolutionary socialist movement, not Losey's nice old man who liked to tend his garden and his rabbits. In his last breaths, he dictates in broken English to Joe Hansen, I am sure ... of the victory... of the Fourth International... Go forward... Those militants who are being gathered around the programme of the Fourth International in Britain are turning this understanding into a struggle to build the British Section of the International and its paper, The Red Mole.
Gery Lawless Photographs reproduced here from Trotsky, a Documentary, by Francis Wyndham and David King, published by Penguin Books at £1.50 in paperback and £3.00 hardback.
COVER: Trotsky at the height of his political power as founder of the Red Army. CENTRE SPREAD. Top left: L. D. Bronstein (Trotsky) aged 18. Top right: Trotsky on board his famous armoured train visiting the Western front in 1918. Right: The funeral of Dzerzhinsky in 1926. Trotsky and Stalin are carrying the front of the coffin.
LABOR ACTION STALIN HAS MURDERED OUR COMRADE TROTSKY arewell, Leon TrotskyTion printed the truth. Above left: Trotsky's grave in the garden of his house in Coyoacan in Mexico City.
Interview with Sean Mac Stiofain and Joe Cahill Below we reprint the full text of an interview with Sean Mac Stiofain. Chief-of-Staff of the "Provisional" IRA. and Joe Cahill. former O/C of the Belfast Brigade, first published on 13 September in the Italian left-wing daily. Lostta Contintr.
Note. Muc Stofain's Jirst language is now nsh ine nICTTICH MUs EnaUECEI English, translated into Irahan and then retranslated by us into English.
What is the present situation in the field? Cahill. We are going from strength to strength. Our organisational structure is intact, and the supply lines ate functioning notwithstanding the Nixon government's repression against our supportets in America. Mac Stiofain. The choices of methods of struggle are-dictated by tactical and stratege necessities, on hoth the military and political level. Alter the invasion of the Free Areas. which was meant to put an end to popular militancy and to the manoeuv.ahility of the Republican Army, we caused more losses to the enemy than in any past period. rusuy, ine changc wyct to une usc on a wide scale of anti-personnel and antitransport mines which extended the struggle to the previously neglected countryside. forced the enemy to disperse his forces and faced him with a danger which is practically impossible to get rid of. Increased training and use of the sharpshooters has then been added to the mines. Twelve soldiers were shot in two weeks. At the same time we proportionally reduced the bombings and we have limited them to government and military installations We don't want to run the risk of a high loss of life among the civilian population, even if the risk of this was provoked hy the police and the army who didn't publicise our warnings. We are going through a delicate moment. Apart from the lact that by now the capitalist economic structure is almost completely destroyed, we realise that something is taking place among the protestant workers. We don't want to obstruct any kind of a process of radicalisation, increasing the economic difficulties of the protestant workers, by destroying factories and jobs. The recent clashes between protestant workers and the English army have hod the merit of revealing an objective contradiction between two counterposed ch wes, apart from all the mystification. What ase does the IRA intend to make of this contradiction?
Cahill. We are watching these developments. which we knew would come shout winer or later, with great interest. After all, don't the Shankill protestants hve in the same misery as the Fall catholies? And have not the two communities the sume exploiter? I he truth had to come to light. However we have to proceed with great tact and caution. Ii'sa hig step forward that the protestants today talk ahout the Paras mn the same way as the catholic workers did after the Derrs massacre. But lo sten in straight away to gather the fruits of these developments would give the impression that we are cunningly trying to use the protestant workers as took, and would only create diftidence.
Mac Stiofain. The Inglish policy. digging its own grace, is now provoking a division hetween moderate protestants. who could he integrated into the English plans, and "extremist" workers, with the result that an increasingly strong proletarian component is emerging in the protestant organisations. Gusly Spence, head of the Ulter Volunteer Force, is already talking ahout working class revolt against the capitalist bosses who stand alongside the English. Spence has always sand he is a socialist. however his methods were fascist: the OAS ty pe murders of single catholies. Perhaps the man isn't to he trusted, but the fact that he talks like he does is a sign of rank and file pressure. At the moment, the protestant workers are anti-English in terms of heing anti-nationalists, hut in the meantime a front has heen opened which. we hope, will continue to become more clear, until the protestants recognise where their real interests he.
We intend to leave open all possible roads for a dialogue with the protestant forces. Cahill. The protestant working masses are open to the idca of a New Ireland. They are very afraid of the tyranny of the (atholie Chutch as they sce it in the South. And their fear is understandable. The Ireland which we should propose to them must include all the guarantees they need. Now this means to work to create an organisation a tie with the more radicalised protestant When we have huilt this then we will indeed have a people's war for national hberation against capitalist imperialism. As for Gusty Spence, it is true' that his methods before his atrest in "6o were fascist. But the man has been a long time in prison alongside our militants. lt scems that he has read quite a hit. Perhaps he has grown up. Prison teaches a lot of things, as both Sean and I have learnt.
Red Mole Joe Chill (lete and Sean Mae Stiofain Mac Stiofain. The English can hehave and plot how they like, but they remain hosses to the marrow of their bones, and they will never understand the people, and they can never foresee their reactions correctly. They continually make false steps. So the real intetests come to light and the workers hecome aware of them.
There will be a conference of the Northern Ireland parties on the 25 September. What do you expect the outcome to be? Mac Stiofain and Cahill. The results of the conference, perhaps not immediately, will he: the reconstruction of the Pro-C'onsular government of Stormont, which the people's struggle overthrew, a mixed government of moderate cathohcs and protestants. a poltce system controlled hy the ruling clsses of Dublin and London together: an inter-Ireland cconomic council, which will prepare the rationalisation of the industrial and agricultural economy of the whole island and its integration into the European Economic Community. These are the demands of the U'nionist party, which has recently hecome more "moderate" and realistic". in order not to he trodden on. The protestant workers reacted very angrily: Faulkner. the little Fuehrer, was stoned and kicked in Shankill Road. We oppose armed mass struggle to these plans, a struggle which provides an obiective connection of interests even if it is for ohjectives that still seem counterposed today with the protestant What is the attitude of the Eire government towards the IRA, after the Lynch-Heath meeting at Munich?
Mac Stiofain - Cahill. It is said that we have connecuons win ine ruang cicies ш unc South. I would then like to know why. if this connection still éxists (certainly, who would have refused-money and arms, when the hattle hegan?). Lynch threw us into prison, and left the Official "marxists" in peace? The repression against us, coordinated hetween London and Belfast, gets worse every day. Heath gave Lynch a list of people who had to he put out of the way. The rst victim was one of our top office nCS DaG mau aC On CuCEr TER ever to have escaped from Long Kesh, arrested the other day with two comrades. The fact is that the Dublin government is much more afraid of us than of the Official IRA opportunists, who unfortunately have the support of a lot of marxists, even sincere marxists, ahroad, while the revolutionary groups. particularly the Fourth International. are all on our side. It is we who are fighting an armed struggle against capitalism, against clerical conser wtism, against the manipulation of our economy by foreign capital, against their control of our means of distribution and production, which deprives, through wage slavery, the worker of the wealth which he produces.