Marching with Stalinists

The Independent political commentator Johann Hari gives a sobering account of responses on the Internet to a column he wrote recently about an incomparably odious regime:

North Korea is the one foreign policy issue upon which I thought we could achieve a total consensus on the left. It is “the worst tyranny on earth” (Noam Chomsky’s words, not mine) – a Stalinist hell-hole whose starving people are denied, according to Amnesty, “all freedom of thought.” I do not believe in invasion: I simply propose that along with the food aid we offer, we should also try to undermine the regime by flooding the country (as some brave human rights activists currently do) with transistor radios and information, to let the North Koreans who have been locked away from the world for fifty years know that there is still a world out here and that we give a toss about them.

I can understand why conservatives would oppose this. Why should we give a toss about a bunch of yellow people, they ask, when we have so many problems of our own? But it didn’t even occur to me that anybody on the left – which by definition is universalist and concerned with human equality – would disagree.

I use understatement on a grand operatic scale to say his expectations were confounded. One of those he doesn't mention and who is worth recalling is a Stalinist called Andrew Murray. In an earlier post I gave a link to a report given by Murray to the executive of the Communist Party of Britain in March this year. That link has since been taken down, but I quoted Murray thus:

Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with People[']s Korea clear.

Why cite the judgement of a man so morally bankrupt that he declares support for a regime that uses starvation as a tool of political control and that pursues the development of nuclear weapons? Because, of course, Murray is chairman of a supposedly broad movement of mass protest called the Stop the War Coalition. Nick Cohen aptly observed of Murray in The New Statesman last April:

Andrew Murray, the coalition's chairman, wrote an article in the Morning Star to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Stalin's birth. He acknowledged that the tyrant had used "harsh measures" but asked why "hack propagandists abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others". That there were 20 million reasons didn't seem to occur to him. Murray is on the politburo of the Communist Party of Britain (which must never be confused with the Communist Party of Great Britain). In a report to his comrades in March, he said the coalition should have two slogans: "Stop the war" and "Blair must go".... Thus, a living fossil from the age of European dictators was heading the biggest protest of the new century.

I keep banging on about the political complexion of the Stop the War Coalition - both its leadership and its policies - because I think it's worth doing, and hasn't been done enough. Consider, for example, the Government's response when the role of Andrew Murray was raised in the House of Commons last March by the Tory defence spokesman Julian Lewis, who asked:

May we have a statement from the Home Secretary on the curious case of Mr. Andrew Murray, a former worker for the Soviet Novosti news agency, currently a member of the Communist party of Britain—it still exists, believe it or not—and an avowed supporter of nuclear North Korea, who has promised, in a report to the Communist party of Britain, that next weekend's great anti-war demonstration will have two slogans: not just "stop the war" but also "Blair must go"? Curiously, Mr. Murray is able to make that promise because he, of all men, is the chair of the Stop the War Coalition, which organises the huge demonstrations to which so many people, perhaps unwittingly, subscribe.

To which the minister he was addressing, Ben Bradshaw, replied thus:

Those of us who have taken part in demonstrations or been involved in protest organisations—and, yes, even I have—will have sometimes had strange bedfellows. However, I am sure that the Home Secretary, and those who are involved in the anti-war movement—most of them for good reasons—will be very interested in what the hon. Gentleman has told the House.

How feeble can a ministerial reply be? The point about the Coalition is not merely that it throws together 'strange bedfellows' but that it is a front organisation for parties of the totalitarian fringe. The Government, whose policy on Iraq I have unreservedly supported, did a miserable job of selling its case, and its unwillingness to confront the anti-war movement directly was a strategic blunder. Being apprehensive about alienating middle Britain is one thing, but the Government ought to have made more of the obvious point expressed to the BBC by a Labour MP concerning the Coalition's April demonstration in London:

Labour MP David Winnick accused organisers of "hijacking" public feeling against the war for their own ends.

"I don't doubt the sincerity of most of the peace marchers who marched before and those who, for some reason, march today," he said.

"But the fact remains that there are a number of the leading organisers whose commitment to parliamentary democracy is very remote indeed."

There's a kind of consistency in the approach of Andrew Murray to the Iraq war: he opposed the overthrow of a tyrant because, of course, he is a declared supporter of tyranny. Those others who marched with the admirers of Stalin and uttered not a word of criticism of them from the platform did themselves no credit, the quality of public debate in this country no good and the people of Iraq appreciable harm. Such moral obtuseness should not be forgotten and ought to be described for what it is.

Comments

[David Gillies]

A good article by Hari, although marred somewhat by that gratuitous cheap shot at 'conservatives'. No conservative I know thinks that way, especially amongst the libertarian end of the spectrum that I inhabit. Freedom from tyranny is the most fundamental desideratum of libertarianism.

[Richmond]

I'm not a conservative, but I agree with David about Hari's gratuitous "yellow people" remark. The implication that every conservative is a Pat Buchanan supporting isolationist bigot is offensive and uncalled for.

[Phil Jackson]

It is not gratuitous but well calculated, if a little cynical. Many on the left are driven by a puerile tribalism that instinctively disagrees with anything "Tory". Therefore Hari has to invent a mythical conservatism for Independent readers to contrast themselves with, and thereby win them over (presumably). And who can blame him? But it’s depressing that he has to resort to such devices and that the condition of N Korea in itself is not enough to convince them.

[Eamonn]

Oliver

Please continue reminding us of the make up of the Stop the War Coalition. It is shameful that before, during and since the Iraq war, the aims of this largely odious coalition have gone almost unchallenged by the BBC and other news organisations. In particular, the Liberal Democrats deserve much criticism for their alignment with others such as the MAB and The Communist Party of Britain who oppose freedom and democracy.

[Richmond]

I see your point, Phil. And you're right: it is depressing.

[Mitch H.]

For those of us not up on the fine-scale taxonomy of the British Left, what's the difference between the "Communist Party of Britain" and the "Communist Party of Great Britain"? I did some googling, but all I found was a lot of gibberish about "ginger groups".

[Richard]

The difference is that they have different names Mitch.

[FeloniousPunk]

Mitch:

Think Judean People's Front vs. People's Front of Judea.

[Matty]

The "yellow people" remark, whilst simplistic, takes a very correct shot at a significant portion of the Right who "support" the war but have always scoffed at the reasons myself, and a growing number of Liberals, support these sorts of actions. I find it slightly galling to hear the broad right condemning the "appalling human rights record" of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban when so many of them vocally supported the ex-dictator and murderer Augusto Pinochet when the Blair government (rightly) considered extraditing him to Spain to stand trial for a fraction of his crimes. Many of them echoed the current line of the anti-war "left" with "leave the Chileans to deal with it, it's their business" - ignoring the fact that Pinochet had ensured his immunity from prosecution. And then there is Richard Littlejohn, a nasty piece of work who supports the war but took a very different line when human rights in Indonesia under the Suhartu dictatorship were brought under the spotlight "Why should I care about East Timor? I've never heard of the place". And let's not forget The Sun's lambasting of Blair when he (rightly) sent British troops into Sierra Leone to defend the fragile government against murdering goon-squads. I think it went something along the lines of "Why are our troops being risked in some foreign country cleaning up their mess? This doesn't concern us".

The point is that the broad Right (I realise there are many on the right of a more internationalist bent, but I don't think these were who Oliver was referring to) who are being as two-faced as the anti-war "left" on this issue and we would be foolish to ignore it and embrace them as comrades.

[Matty]

The last paragraph should have started "The point is that there are many on the broad right...". Apologies.

[James]

Matty, is it possible you're confusing strands on the right? There is one line of right-wing thought that sees foreign policy purely along national interest lines (see Douglas Hurd in the UK, and Pat Buchanan in the US for fairly consistent expressions of this) and another that does respond, as you say, to internationalist views (Michael Ancram in Zimbabwe is an excellent example of this that doesn't get enough attention). In the '80s, the national interest right had the upper hand, whilst on the Left, in my opinion, the internationalists were to the front. At the moment, the right-wing human rights interest is in the ascendancy, while the presence of Bush in the White House seems to have brought out a far less internationalist left, or a left that is not prepared to be internationalist until he is gone. It's a lost opportunity. I put myself amongst the internationalist right - e.g. supporting action in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and I was very disappointed that Pinochet didn't go on trial: I will be equally disappointed if something of the sort doesn't address some of the Nixon administration's survivors, if you see what I mean.

[Morgoth]

Damn it Oliver - you're rapidly filling up my bookmarks file with all these wonderful posts of yours...