BREAKING The Paris attacks and Marx on individual acts of terror by Andrew Taylor Fri 13 Nov 15

• At least 150 killed in multiple attacks in Paris

• All attackers believed dead; reports say there were 8 of them

• Paris prosecutor says authorities investigating six attack sites

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In 1867 in London England the Irish Republican Brotherhood ('Fenians') had used explosives to liberate a comrade from Clerkenwell prison. The explosion destroyed a nearby row of houses, killing seven.

Marx wrote:

"The last exploit of the Fenians in Clerkenwell was a very stupid thing. The London masses, who have shown great sympathy for Ireland, will be made wild by it and be driven into the arms of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries. There is always a kind of fatality about such a secret, melodramatic sort of conspiracy."

(Karl Marx, from his later letter to Kugelman in K Marx and F Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question (Moscow, 1971) pp. 378-9.