Today we celebrate the life of Vietnamese communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, born 130 years ago today. He travelled the world as a young man, helping to establish the French communist party, studying in Moscow, and much else. While working as a dishwasher in London he heard of Irish republican Terence McSwiney’s death by hunger strike. He commented that ‘a country with a citizen like this will never surrender’.
On returning to his native land he led the anti-imperialist forces to victory in 1945 but the war for liberation was far from over. He guided the Vietnamese people through long years of struggle against the imperialist forces of Japan, France and America until his death in 1969. Six years later his country was unified as a single socialist republic.
Ho Chi Minh’s convictions developed from a deep-rooted desire for Vietnamese freedom from French occupation to an understanding that only socialism and communism can offer the economic and political independence that his people needed.
In his own words, ‘At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.
Ho Chi Minh was not dissimilar to James Connolly, particularly in their acute understanding of the inseparability of republicanism and socialism and their conviction that socialism without anti-imperialism is useless. However, unlike Uncle Ho, Connolly never led his people to power. One contemporary indication of the impact of this is the stark difference in our two country’s Covid-19 death tolls. While Ireland has suffered over 2000 deaths, Vietnam has suffered none - with about 14 times our population.
While Vietnam is an independent socialist republic, Ireland is still cut in two and governed by imperialist interests.
His struggle and ideas are fundamental to ours as much today as ever before, and we thank Ho Chi Minh for giving his life in the fight against imperialism.
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