What a great movie
Obligatory
Great story about revolution that made me think a lot about what's going on in Palestine, with the IRA hitting military targets and the Brits doing violence against civilians as retaliation. It makes sense that the brother who joined the free state was the one who protected the landlord earlier in the film. He's all like "if we don't defend the free state then the British will come back" and it's like motherfucker you swore an oath to the king! You are the fucking British now
Good film yeah, I especially liked the bit with the revolutionary judge. It did feel a little where they show how the revolutionaries overreach and some refuse to compromise - Loach is a Trot and it's pretty on brand for him to insist on framin the problems of a revolution on the revolutionaries themselves, even to the point of arguing if was foolish to rebel in the first place, which I felt like was insinuated at the end.
It made that a question earlier when Cilian Murphy was about to kill the kid who ratted and he says something like I don't know if I like the Ireland that we're fighting for but then he makes his decision and sticks with it
Banshees of Inishirin was very "what's the point of fighting" in retrospect.
Fuck I wrote a whole thing and then lost it. Russia was majorly Orthodox at October, how the heck did they do a socialist revolution? More than that Ireland has always had a complicated relationship between the Catholics and the diocese. The pope funded the army of the Orangists that crushed Ireland. During '98 and '03 the church condemned the risings, and yet priests like father Murphy literally led their parishioners into battle in defiance. The workers didn't exactly love it when the church refused to let the children of workers get food aid from British trade unionists during the Dublin Lockout cause it would "spread protestantism".
Greece had a huge communist partisan movement, how could that have happened in a country that was so Orthodox? They didn't legalize abortion until 1986. Some clergymen joined the communists or stayed out of politics, otherwise what did the workers and peasants of that Orthodox country do? They fought for communism while not letting their faith be controlled by the clergy or a section of it.
It is such an anti materialist thing to note. Communist countries have a mixed history with abortion access even well AFTER their revolutions. More than that you are looking at an outcome and using it to explain the cause. Ireland was controlled by the church and Fianna Fail and Fine Gael from the 30s until this century. Progress was not only halted but reversed in places. But more than that socialist movements arise for a variety of reasons and not every aspect is widely accepted. Some communist nations never had good access to abortion
The larger reason things didn't work in ireland is that the IRA had nothing to offer workers, even though those workers had little love for the Free State. They fought a guerrilla war, there was no land to give back or factories to hold. I can't find the quote but at the end of the war one of the IRA leaders said they lost because they didn't offer labor anything tangible.
Even then Ireland had soviets formed and they didn't fail because they where some backwards "hardcore Catholics" they got crushed by the state. We saw something similar in Russia, churches that collaborated with the white armies or that horded their bejeweled cathedrals while their parish starved faced reprisals from their parishioners which was made possible because they had a successful army aligned with the peasants and labor. In Ireland the army was too scattered to protect them. Plus during the War of Independence its not like many clergymen didn't support the IRA on some level.
This article is great for the missteps and how during the civil war you had a strong labor movement in need of action and a national liberation army that was being compared to the Bolsheviks and the Jacobins that needed popular support and how those missed their chance to really unite again. https://www.socialistparty.ie/2022/06/war-against-bolshevism-the-irish-civil-war-1922-23/
In August the pro-treaty National Army (NA) seized Tipperary after heavy fighting with anti-treaty forces. The NA, the new armed forces of the Irish Free State, put an end to the Soviet movement in the town, as they did all over the country as they advanced (2) The anti-treaty forces, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), burned down the creamery before they retreated, leaving the militant workforce unemployed.
This local episode in some ways represents the Civil War in miniature. On the part of the pro-treaty forces, we see repression in the interests of the wealthy. On the part of the anti-treaty forces, we see a stubborn resistance but a complete lack of strategy, leading to destructive actions. On the part of the organised workers’ movement we see great power and potential. But the labour movement was let down by its leadership over several years, then defeated during and after the Civil War by the violence of the pro-treaty forces.
and
By 1921 the struggle for independence had reached a dead-end. There had been huge potential for a movement of the working class and poor in which socialism and national liberation were linked. This could have appealed to working-class and poor Protestants in the North. Instead Sinn Féin offered an independent capitalist Ireland which appealed to the Church and the wealthier classes. The leadership of the labour movement modestly stepped back and allowed them to take the lead, instead of boldly offering an alternative. Sinn Féin fought for this programme with a guerrilla strategy that, while heroic, had no chance of success in and of itself.(3)
....Some socialists attempted to appeal to IRA members. Peadar O’Donnell, a member of the Communist Party of Ireland, was also on the anti-Treaty IRA executive. Liam O’Flaherty, later a famous writer, and Roddy Connolly, son of James, were two of over a hundred socialists who fought on the anti-treaty side during the battle for Dublin. Their courage should not blind us to the fact that their strategy was a disaster. The Revolutionary Socialist Party pursued a better policy, leading the Munster soviet movement. But both parties were very small and underdeveloped, and it appears both were dealt fatal blows by the Civil War and the repression that followed.
ah what could've been. regardless it was in the Catholic majority areas of the occupied counties that the socialist Provisional IRA found its base.
What's sad is we can never know how committed or opposed many figures would've been to socialism or social democracy. On both sides major figures like Collins and Cathal Brugha died tragically in the Civil War. We can guess based on their statements how much of the original Sinn Fein Programme they would've thrown out in time, but many of the arguments are based on a reflexive "no they never would be dirty commies" when the implication of even socdem stuff is mentioned.
The socialist movement also had to make itself part of the national revolution, it couldn't lead it or separate itself from it. Lenin himself strongly agrees with that assessment for ireland specifically. That was part of what Connolly meant when he said the Union Jack could be removed but without real revolution Ireland would remain imprisoned. The militant nationalist movement, despite its varied beliefs, was beneficial to the labor movement and both shared the mortal enemy of not the British but the Irish reformists.
the British managed to get parts of Sinn Fein to buy into a form of Home Rule and sell it to the population. The exact thing Connolly warns about years prior, that reformist nationalists and less nationalist inclined labor party members would fall for.
From my understanding both the pro and anti treaty factions of Sinn Fein ended up splitting into some pretty fucking conservative movements. Eamon De Valera was the radical here, the other side were fascists.
And look what Valera did as soon as he couldn't use the IRA any more? He tossed it aside and made Fianna Fail. Love that line in Patriot's Game"
This Ireland of mine has for long been half free, Six counties are under John Bull's tyranny.
And still de Valera is greatly to blame
For shirking his part in the patriot game.
I don't mind a bit if I shoot down police
They are lackeys for war never guardians of peace
And yet at deserters I'm never let aim
The rebels who sold out the patriot game
Yeah, I'm generally a fan of Loach but his British Trot side does come out occasionally, like how Land and Freedom shits all over the International Brigades and Soviet support for the Republicans in general.
The "you wrapped yourself in a fucking Union Jack, the butcher's apron" is SO fucking good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddXJnePI6dU
Pablo, a Chilean refugee in London, writes a letter to the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks, reminding them of "his" September 11: Chilean coup of 1973, when the general Augusto Pinochet implemented a coup d'état (backed by the US) against left-wing president Salvador Allende, democratically elected in 1970. Pablo narrates in his letter of US involvement in financing of right-wing and subversive groups, up to the coup, and of the violence and torture suffered by him and his countrymen. Forced to first five years in prison and then into exile, he declares that he can no longer return to Chile because his family and children are now born and raised in the United Kingdom. Pablo concludes his letter with the hope that, as he will unite in the memory of the victims of September 11, 2001, so they will join him in memory of the victims of September 11, 1973.
Doing an anthology movie about 9/11 and making your section about Chile is based.
I tried watching this at one point and couldn't understand a word anyone was saying.
if you download it and play it through Plex it can grab a variety of subtitles for you automatically
Plex is ass that spys on its users, use Kodi and it will do the same thing. Or if you actually need transcoding then use jellyfin.
I do, and many others do too. If you run FOSS then no, not everything spies on you.