Peter Hitchens needs to give it up his strange, once-a-Trotskyist claim that the British trade union movement
opposed Solidarity in Poland, merely because individuals whom he hated for
other reasons, the likes of Ken Gill, did so.
Hitherto, his published works on the
subject have not purported to be comprehensive accounts of anything other than
his own experience. Now, however, he is trying to present them as definitive.
They simply are not.
He is even reduced to citing Denis MacShane,
of all people, as a serious authority.
He, Peter Hitchens, is almost immeasurably better than that.
He, Peter Hitchens, is almost immeasurably better than that.
As I had assumed that he knew perfectly
well (but I am afraid that I am starting to think that, inexcusably, he does
not), there was an entire group of Labour MPs called the Solidarity Group and
maintained by the unions, both to support Solidarity and similar movements in
Poland and elsewhere, and to combat Communist influence at home.
One of the key players in that is now a
Founding Signatory to the Statement of Principles of the One Nation Society.
I have a strong feeling that Peter
Hitchens is coming to realise that he never left the Labour Movement because he
was never really in it, but just another recent student Trot passing through.
In his latest Sunday column, he has
arrived at its mainstream norm (rail renationalisation, public ownership
generally, a peaceable foreign policy, economic patriotism, dislike of privileged
"libertarian" celebrities) at exactly the time when it is returning
to that point.
Therefore, he is having to come up with ever-more-desperate attempts to explain why he never stayed to find out more about it, attaching himself instead to a party of the record of which during that same period he has since been scathingly critical.
Therefore, he is having to come up with ever-more-desperate attempts to explain why he never stayed to find out more about it, attaching himself instead to a party of the record of which during that same period he has since been scathingly critical.
Give it up, Lindsay. You know nothing about this because, unlike Peter and Denis, you weren't there.
ReplyDeletePeter met the leader of Solidarity who told him exactly what he thought of the TUC.
You were in nursery at the time. He was an industrial correspondent.
You know nothing about this.
The history of the British Lefts support for Stalinism is disgusting.
I suppose you can be forgiven for not knowing anything about it since you weren't there
At least I was born, unlike you.
ReplyDeleteHe is doing himself no favours with this. The full story is very readily available.
Most people (perhaps everyone, by definition) with any interest in the subject already knows it.
Dennis MacShane? I ask you!
I know, poor PH really is becoming very sill now. He gets away with it by writing for a paper with hardly any Labour readers.
ReplyDeleteHe might manage it in the Guardian too, because they also think the Tankie-Trot War was the only thing going on, half of them think it still is.
But if there were a proper Labour middle to up market paper like the old Daily Mirror or the Daily Herald he would be torn apart by people who remembered the Manifesto Group, Labour First, the St Ermins Group, Forward Labour magazine and yes Labour Solidarity. Someone told me Labour First still exists.
Well done on getting Roger Godsiff for the One Nation Society, not only a living link to all that but one who is still an MP. Several more of them also are, people like John Spellar. Hitchens has no excuse.
Indeed, he does not. I am afraid that in this case he is being rather worse than merely silly.
ReplyDeleteEven his followers must now see that he was never really in the Labour Movement, while he himself is quite obviously pondering how much happier he would have been if he had been, having now arrived at its classical position at just the time when the Labour Party itself is reverting thereto.
As I more than suspect that you know, the story of the St Ermins Groups was finally told to the public, while the rest was also set out in detail, by Diane Hayter in Fightback! Labour's traditional right in the 1970s and 1980s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), which it is inconceivable that Hitchens has not read.
It demolishes in advance his entire case that the Old Labour Right was destroyed (it is not the force that it was, but nor is Blairism these days, and the traditionalists probably now have more influence than the Blairites), or specifically that Labour and the unions opposed Solidarity.
The Communist trade union figures with whom, in his IS-trained way, he was obsessed might have done. But they were not even members of the Labour Party.
Apart from the St Ermins Group, the whole thing has been in the public domain ever since the time. It was always intended to be. That was the point. It was and is specialist stuff, but Hitchens has chosen this specialist ground.
John Spellar and Luke Akehurst do still maintain an organisation called Labour First, which does come out of the same stable as the old one. But I do not know if there is any formal continuation.
As you say, though, Spellar, Roger Godsiff and others are still there, on the floor of the House.
"Ex-Spellar", as he was known when he was purging Militant, has gone a bit Henry Jackson Society.
But Roger is deeply, deeply sound, and therefore never on television, although certainly known to journalists.
So, as you say, Peter Hitchens has no excuse.
He is depending on his readers' being unable or unwilling to spot the differences among an IS student, a Tankie union functionary, a mainstream Labourite of the period, and anyone in the Labour Movement today.
For shame.
Hitchens mocks the idea that it would have been difficult to contact Solidarity, but there was no Internet then, you couldn't just go to Poland from the UK you needed all sorts of paper work, and even so plenty of Labour MPs and other figures managed to get in touch. Did any Tories? They were not exactly unions-friendly in the 80s. Hitchens is trying to present himself as Solidarity's only friend over here. It won't do.
ReplyDeleteThe Conservative Party and its allies are conspicuously absent from his account, as well they might be.
ReplyDeleteThe title (which it is possible that he did not write) of his latest post on the subject refers punningly to "the Right"
That post presents the good guys as having been the AFL-CIO, the CFDT, and the International Metalworkers' Federation, none of which was terribly Maggie'n'Ronnie, to put things at their very mildest.
Yes, I am afraid that he is trying to cause his readers to form the impression that in Britain, Solidarity had only him, and that that was why he left Labour. That is reminiscent of the very worst of his late brother.
He claims to regret the loss of what was once Right-Wing Labour, but he is the one writing them out of history from his privileged position for his own aggrandisement.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this post and the previous one on this subject.
ReplyDeleteThe Hitchens account is a lie. It is a lie by omission but that still makes it a lie.
Keep fighting.
Oh, depend upon it.
ReplyDelete