Irish PM Enda Kenny backtracks after claiming Michael Collins brought Lenin to Ireland

Nationalism and bolshevism are incompatible.

Edmundburke; I don't need to google Limerick Soviet. As a leftist and a student of Irish history I am quite familiar with it. For others who are interested in learning something, I recommend O'Connor Lysaght's short history which is available on line. The Limerick Soviet was just one element in a wave of radicalism that swept Ireland in the post-WW1 period. There were also interesting events in Tipperary, Galway, Waterford. In Dublin a group of Communists under Liam O'Flaherty occupied a building and proclaimed a Workers Republic. Earlier, 10.000 people had met in Dublin's Mansion House to welcome the Bolshevik Revolution. It was the tragedy of the Irish labor movement at this time that the great Connolly had been executed and that Larkin was in the USA. This left the leadership in the hands of mediocrities such as Thomas Johnson, an Englishman who had no understanding of the nationalism of the Irish working class.

Don't ya just love the complexity of modern commerce. A loan given by a nascent nationalist/republican proto independence Irish government, (mainly Roman Catholic in proclivity). To a nascent Communist/internationalist superpower, (mainly atheistic in orientation). Using Romanov family crown jewels as collateral, received in the bastion of free enterprise. Catholic republicans lending public money from citizens bonds and emigrant remittances publicly to ostensible atheistic communists using the trappings of a monarchy as sureties. This tends to prove Karl Marx: The Materialist Messiah right that when it comes to materialism, opposing ideologies tend to fly out the window. (Were not Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin bosom buddies at Yalta for the post WWII global real estate carve-up?) Alas, 1916-1922 was a petit-bourgeois revolution, nationalism generally tending to be a middle-class phenomenon, with Connolly's hard-left very much the juniour partner. More's the pity! But, at least there were no professional moneylending usurers using debt entrapment as the new imperialism then, as there are now. If Ireland was/is to be sold, restrict shares in Ireland Incorporated IreInc) to its citizens, diaspora and/or progressive unionists/commonwealthers! And just think of the Troubles that would have been saved if the auld enemy (England) had been the first to recognise Ireland's independence ahead of its subsequent erstwhile arch rival Argentina/Malvinas and the CCCP/USSR.

It's just so sad that this is the best that Ireland can produce as a leader,it has now come to bear that since the foundation of the state a shower of serpents on both sides is all we got.All the true patroits were forced to emigrate or died fighting for freedom What did Cosgrove Lynch Garrett Albert C.J. Bertie Biffo Enda ever do for Ireland except line their own pockets none of them were ever even in a fist fight in school

When will the Irish political love affair with the hard Left ever end? I suppose Kenny thought that since De Valera had Hitler (e.g. De Valera condolences to German Embassy on the "death" of Hitler in '45), Fine Gael has to scrounge around for its own dictator. Why Kenny ever thought that associating Collins with Lenin was a plus, I'll never know. Does he want to put Mayo in competition with Galway for that statue of Che Guevara? Regardless, @ Woundedknee, the Communists were always a small minority within Ireland. During the time of the War of Independence, the experience of the no-more-than-a-week long "Limerick Soviet" (Google it) was clear demonstration of general Irish distaste for Marxism and Communism. Sadly, too many Irish politicos think otherwise.

This is just wacky.

Next week he'll say "I AM THE BATMAN".

Edna Kenny is a Lilly Lolly Wall Paper Flower !

Edna Kenny is David Cameron`s Shoeshine Boy !

Irishmen Demand Gerry Adams !

I agree with Mairint, you're no rebel if you're fighting against foreign occupiers - Michael Collins was a patriot, in every sense of the word!

And the ass before him was even dumber, no wonder we are in another fine mess as Oliver Hardy would say.

And this dump ass is running our country ?

In fairness to Kenny, or to whomever wrote his speech, there may be a half-digested memory of certain dealings the nascent Soviet Union had with Ireland. One is of the fact that Sinn Fein Ireland lent the Soviet Union a substantial sum of money. Another is that the Soviet Union recognized the Irish Republic at a time when may other countries held back. (I believe Argentina was the first country to recognize the Irish Republic). And yet another element is the famous welcome that V.I Lenin gave to news of the Easter Rebellion: "The misfortune of the Irish is that they have risen prematurely when the European revolt of the proletariat has not yet matured". History shows that Lenin erred in looking to a Europe-wide workers revolt, but at one time this is what seemed imminent. Had such a thing happened Irish workers could have struck a lethal blow against imperialism and capitalism.

moron supreme - a simple schmuck whom shatter feeds lines to