Howe and the people
Timothy Garton Ash
Warsaw
Will he go to the Church?' asked my old newsagent, when we first ar- rived in Warsaw. No need to ask 'Who he?' He Howe. The Church: St Stainslaw Kost- ki, where Father Popieluszko is buried. Well, he did go, and the next morning my newsagent produced a smile more eloquent than any public opinion poll.
Why did he go? Why did the Foreign Secretary altogether place so much emph- asis on making contact with 'the people' throughout his East European tour? After the most dramatic of these contracts, in Prague, I am told the small group of Chapter 77 signatories and supporters sat around discussing whether two senior for- ign officials had come to talk to them because the British Government is ge- nuinely interested in what the Chartists have to say about Czechoslovakia: or just so that the Foreign Secretary could tell the British press and Parliament that such a meeting had taken place. In other words, whether the British Government was really interested in Czechoslovak public opinion or in British public opinion.
Of course there is no necessary contra- diction: it could be equally interested in both. But Sir Geoffrey himself repeatedly stressed to his official hosts the point that British public opinion would not tolerate much-improved relations between the Brit- ish Government and East European gov- ernments, unless those governments im- proved their own relations with their own peoples. No doubt his official hosts did not believe him, imagining he uses such argu- ments as cynically as they do. But the strange fact is that what Sir Geoffrey says is probably at least half true. Twenty years ago British public opinion did not care a tuppenny damn what the Foreign Secretary did in Eastern Europe. Today it does. Part of the electorate, the press, the Conserva- tive Party, trade union and Church opinion expects that a British ministers will, in Sir Geoffrey's language, speak to 'the people' as well as the government.
This was therefore right because, to put the thing quite simply, elected govern- ments should on the whole do what their electors want them to do. It was also right because, as Sir Geoffrey said in his main official speech here, it is 'natural that we should continue to join with you in seeking to keep alive the quest for those 'same freedoms for which we fought together during the war'. The 'you' in this passage was ambiguous — it could just be read to mean Mr Olszowski, the Polish foreign minister and official host, rather than the Polish people — but the ambiguity was papal. Yet quite apart from the democratic and moral arguments for doing what Sir Geof- frey did, on his almost didactically prog- rammatic tour, there is a very strong political argument. The premise of this argument is that peaceful political change in Eastern Europe, in the direction of more pluralism and self-determination, is in our interest as well as being (obviously) in the interest of the people who happen to live there. Now even today there is a fairly widespread view in the Western foreign policy-making establishwent that, as one American ambassador to a Soviet bloc country recently put it: 'significant change will come only through governments.' Of course this is something which all govern- ments are always inclined to believe where- as we ordinary non-governmental mortals still know 'How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure'. But on the face of it there is more reason to believe that the government is the key to changing any- thing in countries where the government aims to control everything.
However, the experience of the last ten to 15 years in Eastern Europe has shown this to be a false assumption. It has suggested that there is less potential for change from above (with the partial excep- tion of economic reform) than was pre- viously imagined, but in the longer term, more potential for change through pressure from below. This change is already quite visible if you look at things from the point of view of the individual rather than the system.
Take a 20-year-old East German or Polish student in 1965 and in 1985. Com- pare and contrast their access to truthful information, contact with Western culture, possibilities of self-expression. Free discus- sion or worship — and, on the other side of the coin, the lies they have to tell, com- promises they have to make, ideological rubbish to spout, Party organisations to join, in order to get a university place or a reasonable job. Of course the Polish stu- dent is far better off in this respect, after the revolution of 1980-81, than his East German counterpart, although consider- ably worse off materially. At Warsaw University there is completely free discus- sion in seminars of everything from Aron to Zinoviev, both authors available in unofficial editions, and no question of joining the Party youth organisation or (as increasingly in East Germany) of commit- ting yourself to three years' military service as a precondition for getting a university place. But even the East German student is significantly better off than his predecessor of 1965. For example, he will quite likely participate in an unofficial discussion group organised under the auspices of the Protestant Church — a precious opportunity for free speech which simply did not exist 20 years ago.
And all this is not the result of a,ny official 'liberalisation' or 'reform' from above. No, it is ground which has been hard won from below, by the kind of unofficial people whom the Foreign Secret- ary made a point of meeting — churchmen, academics, journalists, independent trade unionists. It is ground which has constantly to be defended against their own govern- ments. The change is not that the regime has decided to control everything different- ly: it is that there are now many things which it can't control at all.
Yet if the change is initially in the pays reel rather than the pays legal, the system cannot, in the longer term, continue wholly unaffected by the changes in real life and real attitudes — if not in 'public opinion' then in what I might call 'private opinion'. Even in Prague, supporters of Charter 77 claim that, if the Charter produces a document about, say, acid rain, then a few weeks later they find the official press discussing acid rain. The same applies a fortiori to the independent opinion of the Protestant Church in East Germany.
In Poland, independent opinion infects everybody. I am told that recent sociolo- gical research has revealed almost the same range of views among Communist Party members as in society at large: almost the same proportion of Christians, elitists, anti-socialists etc! This is also revealed in what may be called the 'Frankenstein's monster' phenomenon — now a familiar feature of General Jaruzelski's Poland. Every time the government creates a pup- pet organisation, that organisation starts mildly revolting. The government creates new official trade unions, and they start behaving like real trade unions: it creates a Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth to rally the Poles behind the government, and PRON starts criticising legal changes intended to bridle the universities.
One shouldn't exaggerate, of course. When the Polish foreign minister repays Sir Geoffrey's visit he still won't have to pay much attention to Polish public opin- ion. Mr Olszowski need hardly fear a,
thundering leader from the Times of Pol- land (although he might be arraigned in.the pages of the Polish Spectator, an interest-
ing unofficial journal). However, if Mr Olszowski did want to curry favour with Polish public opinion, one could easily devise him a small, informal programme: an unofficial meeting with the Polish Gov- ernment in exile, perhaps a candle at the Katyn monument . . . .
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