Morality, revolution, the Bolsheviks, and us: Workers' Liberty 3/68

“Impartiality in the face of injustice is the virtue of a slave” — James Connolly, October 1915 “Problems of revolutionary morality are fused with the problems of revolutionary strategy and tactics... Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means... which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that...

The Birmingham pub bombings, on 21 November 1974, killed 21 people and injured 182 others through bombs in Birmingham city centre. The reaction to the killings included protest strikes; some workers seen to be sympathetic to Irish Republicanism being driven out of their jobs; and drastic curbs on civil liberties through a Prevention of Terrorism Act rushed through Parliament (with no votes against — supposedly as a temporary measure, but renewed again and again over decades until its provisions were folded into more recent “anti-terrorist” legislation). Six people were quickly arrested and...