26th October seems to be a day
on which prominent politicians like to get born, particular those with a
left-leaning or revolutionary approach to politics.
26th October 1759 was the day on
which Georges Jacques Danton (pictured) was born in eastern France. He was an
early leading member of the French Revolution of 1789 who voted for the
overthrow of the monarchy and the execution of King Louis XVI. He became head
of the Committee of Public Safety that condemned thousands of people to death,
although he later fell from power and was himself a victim of the guillotine.
On 26th October 1879 Lev
Davidovich Bronstein was born in the Ukraine. He was to lead a parallel life to
Danton’s in several respects, notably as a revolutionary leader, regicide, and
eventual victim of the monster he helped to create. Under the name Leon
Trotsky, he was a leading member of the Bolshevik Party that overthrew the
Russian Tsar in November 1917 (although the use of the Julian calendar means
that the event is always referred to as the October Revolution). Lenin and
Trotsky were almost certainly behind the decision to execute the Tsar and his
family in 1918. Trotsky’s fall from power was engineered by his greatest rival,
Joseph Stalin, who ordered Trotsky’s assassination after the latter had fled
from Russia and was living in Mexico in 1940.
A Socialist of a somewhat different hue was
François Mitterand, born on 26th October 1916 in Jarnac, southwest
France. He emerged in the 1960s as a left-wing opponent of General de Gaulle
and, after several failed attempts against Gaullist candidates, eventually
became President of France in 1981. He served two complete 7-year terms and
therefore holds the record as France’s longest-serving President. Unlike
previous members of the “26th October club” he died peacefully in
1996, from cancer.
The fourth member of the club has very
little in common with any of the others, this being Hillary Rodham, born on 26th
October 1947 in Chicago, USA. As the wife of Bill Clinton she held the honorary
office of “First Lady” from 1993 to 2001, was a senator for New York State
(2001-9), and was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. Her ambition of becoming
the United States’ first woman President came to nothing when she was defeated
by Donald Trump in 2016. However, she possesses very few of the Socialist
credentials of the erstwhile predecessors who shared her birthday!
© John Welford
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