Jackson's legacy

There was a curious item in The Guardian's Diary, written by Hugh Muir, on Friday:

How far will Gordon and his lieutenants go with this "big tent" thing? Everybody's welcome, it seems. Bring a friend, bring a bottle. At next week's Labour conference, ministers Liam Byrne and Shahid Malik are expected to address a meeting called Winning the Battle of Ideas Against Islamism and Terror. Should be a goodie, particularly as it is co-sponsored by the Henry Jackson Society, named after a virulently anti-communist Democrat who lobbied so hard for military spending that he was dubbed the "senator for Boeing". He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the internment camps set up to hold Japanese Americans during the second world war. He died in 1983, but the society is a rallying point for American neocons. Bush adviser Richard Perle, James Woolsey, promoter of the wildest absurdities about WMD in Iraq, and Bill Kristol, the publisher of neocon bible The Weekly Standard, are all on the Henry Jackson Society board. After attending the London launch two years ago, my colleague Ros Taylor described its supporters as "a smattering of spooks, diplomats, Times journalists and grandees whom recent events have treated badly". Ministers can sup with who they like, but if they let these people anywhere near the tent, there'll be trouble. Tell them the marquee is full, the bar's closed.

I read the Diary religiously. It's particularly strong when dealing with funny names and the dangerous activities of squirrels. But now it's ventured into political commentary, it appears less sure of its ground. Regarding the Jackson item, there was a good reply by Alan Johnson, editor of Democratiya, on the letters page yesterday, to which I draw your attention. (There is a small typo in Alan's letter. The legislation linking US trade benefits to the right of emigration of Soviet Jews was the Jackson-Vanik amendment - not Jackson-Vinik.) I sent my own comments directly to Hugh Muir:

I was always sure to express to your immediate predecessor [Jon Henley, who recently left the Diary] my appreciation for his occasional jovially inaccurate references to me. But I fear your comments today about the late Senator Henry Jackson and the society named after him are – being about far more important personalities than I – a more serious business.

I leave to the officers of the society – which I support but on whose behalf I do not speak – the task of correcting your depiction of it. I merely comment that the existence of a board of the HJS is news to me, while the notion that the society is a “rallying point for American neocons” is absurd. If you look down the list of signatories to the society’s declaration of principles, you’ll find a fairly heterogeneous group. Lord Soley, former chairman of the Labour Party, is a politician of notably loyal and mainstream party affiliation. Professor Vernon Bogdanor fits, so far as I’m aware, none of the categories conjured up by your colleague; his public profile derives from the quality of his scholarship in constitution and government. Sir Michael Ancram is hardly a supporter of the policies on Iraq and Trident pursued by Tony Blair.

But I particularly object to your slighting treatment of Senator Jackson. If you describe him as “virulently anti-Communist”, would you by the same token describe him as “virulently anti-fascist”? Or were you intending to insinuate that there is something suspect and disreputable about anti-Communism? If so, then your views are far from those that your newspaper has traditionally championed. Jackson, like other anti-Communist liberals such as Hubert Humphrey and Arthur Schlesinger, both opposed the demagoguery of Senator McCarthy and recognised the genuine security threat that Communism posed.

Nor was Jackson just “a Democrat”: he was one of the most prominent figures in his party in the 1970s, twice seeking the presidential nomination. He was an effective legislator, admired on both sides. His work for civil rights, conservation and welfare was of firmly liberal bent, while his interventionist views on economic policy – he believed Nixon’s wage and price controls were too weak – would put him around the position of Tony Benn in today’s political debates. I have a suspicion that you refer to his support for the shameful injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans in WW2 because it may be one of the few things you know about him. Yes, he was wrong, and he regretted it. If you go back further in his political career, you’ll find he once expressed notably isolationist sentiments in foreign policy; these were also disastrously wrong, and he changed his mind in that respect too. (He visited one of the concentration camps [it was Buchenwald: I couldn't recall this off-hand - OK] in 1945 only a few days after it had been liberated, and this powerfully affected his support for anti-totalitarian politics.)

I realise the Diary is a place for repartee, but – I offer merely my own view, and it may be different from other Guardian readers’ – a light touch, showing fidelity to historical facts, seems to me a better course than a strident reinforcement of stereotype.

If any reader wishes to accuse me of being a virulent anti-Communist, my response will be "thank you: I certainly hope so". But I fear the term may be intended to evoke different associations when used by Guardian columnists of a particular stripe, and I shall endeavour to establish whether this is so.