The revolution continued

"The problem has a name: Gaddafi. He must go."
José Manuel Barroso
March 11th 2011

The drawing of parallels between the Spanish Civil War and present day political developments in various parts of the world is a habit that many of us on the left just cannot seem to shake off. Sometimes though it is simply unavoidable. I found myself doing it again last Monday as I sat in the departures area of Cardiff Airport reading Jason Webster's ¡Guerra!, a book which looked at the scars left by the civil war of the thirties on today's generation of Spaniards. In one of the final chapters there is an account of the desperate attempts by people in the Republican zone in the spring of 1939 to escape Alicante, the last city in the country remaining loyal to the elected government. Amazingly even at such a late stage there was hope among some that the democratic world, or Britain to be specific, would intervene. Webster wrote:

The hope in Alicante was that the British would finally come to their aid and help them fight against the fascists who were threatening the whole of Europe. The British, on whom everyone's hopes had rested through all these years of war. But the British didn't want trouble, and they didn't want war.

Unfortunately no cavalry came over the hill at the last moment. You know the rest of the story.

Thanks to UN Security Council Resolution 1973 the city of Benghazi in 2011 will not be subjected to the same treatment as Alicante had to endure from the fascist forces of General Franco in 1939. There is of course still some way to go. I do have some concerns when I hear leaders like Cameron claim that this has nothing to do with regime change but instead being about the protection of Libyan citizens (as if a situation could even possibly exist whereby the safety of citizens could be guaranteed under Gaddafi). Nevertheless, at least something is being done and the promised merciless slaughter in Benghazi which Gaddafi was telling us about last week has been averted.

Had the usual minority of anti-intervention leftists had their way it is likely that things would have been very different. The most common position adopted by groups like the Socialist Workers Party has been one of supporting the revolution in Libya but opposing western intervention (outlined here). That sounds fine in theory I suppose yet the fact remains that this time last week the Libyan armed forces had pushed the anti-Gaddafi militias back to the point where they were under siege and on the verge of being annihilated.

I have no more love for Mr Cameron and Monsieur Sarkozy than Richard Boyd Barrett has, however if toppling a 41 year old totalitarian dictatorship and establishing a new democracy in Africa means standing with them on this issue then I am more than willing to do so. Now ask yourself what the alternative outlined in the pages of Socialist Worker and the Morning Star would deliver. The answer? Passive support for a revolution that ultimately failed and was ruthlessly put down. Or in other words, another glorious defeat. You might think different but personally I think left-wingers and progressives have suffered enough of those over the years.

Had the gutless Daladier and Chamberlain managed to drag up the courage to (belatedly) intervene in the early months of 1939 it is unlikely that those living in Spain's Republican zone would have come out in opposition at such a move. It is no surprise then that, despite whatever dirty dealings the Americans and the French and the British have engaged in down the years, the people of Benghazi and the areas controlled by the revolutionaries celebrated in the streets when the UN Security Council Resolution was passed last Friday night. These people are not counter-revolutionaries. They are not dupes of imperialism. They are men and women engaged in a struggle to liberate their country from one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet and they realise that to achieve their goals they will have to build alliances with some who may not exactly be their ideological bedfellows. That, comrades, is genuine practical internationalism and it is infinitely more revolutionary than the isolationist policy advocated by those socialists who declare their support for the revolution but who promote a strategy that would in due course kill it.

What happens next is the big question hanging over this whole affair. There has been much talk of mission creep and the possibility of ground troops being introduced. I find that scenario hard to envisage, but then again very few would have imagined that what we are witnessing right now could actually take place. Perhaps, alongside the current coalition support from the air, a Libyan equivalent of Peter Tatchell's 'Arm the Kurds, Topple Saddam' slogan could be made policy. Putting arms in the hands of the anti-Gaddafi resistance would certainly be much more preferable to the all too common western practice of selling sophisticated deadly weaponry to all manner of dictatorships. But whatever happens from here on in it is crucial that the democratic world does not shirk from its responsibilities to the struggle taking place.

Solidarity with the resistance. Death to fascism.