Political commentary

Not a small folly

Colin Welch

Weirder and weirder have become some of Enoch Powell's contributions to the national debate. Those who follow him blindly on all his intellectual trips, and who regard any criticism of him as blasphemy or treason, must by now be bewildered or else assiduously searching for hitherto un- suspected merits in some very strange points of view — in a sort of unilateralism, for in- stance, in anti-Americanism and in a quite unwarranted faith in Russia's pacific and non-expansive intentions.

Recently Mr Pym called in the Soviet Ambassador. He urgently appealed for the release of Mr Anatoly Shcharansky from the vile concentration camp in which he is held for no other reason than that he tried to monitor the workings in Russia of the Helsinki agreement in which, as a signatory, we have a legitimate interest.

`What reply would the Government give,' Mr Powell acidly asked in the House, `to a demand by the Soviet Government that a prisoner in one of Her Majesty's prisons should be set at liberty?' Not exact- ly a knock-out, surely? Assuming our prisoner to have received (or to be about to receive) a fair and public trial under an ir- removeable judge for a known and recognisable offence, the Government could snap its fingers at the Soviet demand. It would in no way to be inconsistent to do so, since none of these desiderata apply in M. Shcharansky's case.

Mr Bernard Levin in the Times was outraged. Reminding Mr Powell of Solzhenitsyn's dictum that nations which divorce freedom from morality will not long enjoy it, he denounced his views as `the politics of the pigsty'. In this matter I am warmly on Mr Levin's side. Even so, I can understand Mr Powell's question as proceeding from an old-fashioned and respectable view of external politics, which regards the national interest as supreme and the internal affairs of other nations as none of our business. This was, I think, a reasonable view till the rise of totalitarian states like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, in which internal crimes and oppression are closely connected with — indeed, directed towards — external aggression and oppres- sion. It is surely absurd to treat Soviet Russia as Lord Sainsbury treated the Kaiser or Tsar. Even so, I cannot regard Mr Powell's question as evidence of wickedness or madness. Stranger stuff, however, is to come.

In a recent programme on BBC 1 called `People and Power', Mr Powell expressed himself thus: 'I have said that I would sooner live in Socialist Britain. I have even said that I would sooner live in a Com- munist Britain than in a Britain which was an integral part of a West European state.'

That he should have said this becomes even more incredible as all the implications sink in. Is it possible that this learned man has no idea what Communism is like? Has he read nothing about it or, having read, does he disbelieve it? Or, knowing full well about life under Communism, does he think it obviously preferable to whatever life might be like in a West European state? Would he prefer an East European state?

There have indeed been a few old- fashioned authoritarian Tories for whom Soviet Russia had a grim and incongruous charm. Good government for them was presumably associated, like good medicine, with nastiness. The late and in many ways estimable Sir Cyril Osborne praised Russia for its supposed industrial discipline, its rough and ready way with strikers and the like, and commended it as an example. I don't find it easy to fit Mr Powell into this category; where then does he fit?

Does he really think that property, the family, religion, prosperity, freedom under the law, civilisation, truth and other things which high Tories like himself are supposed to value would be better secured under Communism than under any conceivable West European state? Does he really think that forced labour, starvation, massacres, torture, the uprooting of whole peoples, are less likely under the former than the latter? Or does he — which is surely impossible care about none of these things?

What he does care about, we presume, is the survival of Britain. But a Communist Britain would be no longer Britain. Her in- stitutions, her way of life, many of her peo- ple, these the best, Mr Powell himself perhaps included, nearly all of what makes her precious to us, would be destroyed. To talk of rulers and ruled constituting under Communism a nation is misleading. Com- munist rule is more like an enemy occupa- tion, a hideous congeries of masters and slaves, pursuers and pursued, jailers and jailed.

Mr Powell may have some mystic faith that the genius of Britain will always survive every sort of oppression, no matter how harsh, so long as it comes not from Western Europe. But the damage alone as it comes not from Western Europe. But the damage done by Communism has everywhere else (Chile perhaps excepted) proved irreversi- ble.

Further questions are in order. Mr Powell 'would sooner live in a Communist Britain...' Life might not be granted to him: Communism has the innocent blood of tens of millions on its hands. If spared, he would sooner live — as what? As com- missar or concentration camp inmate, as secret policeman or helpless victim of `psychiatry', as persecutor or persecuted, spy or spied on, robber or robbed? These are the sort of choices which Communism would, if experience be any guide, force on him and his family as on all the rest of us. I would have expected him till now always to choose and advise the better course. But how can one be sure of a man who already freely exhibits such perverse preferences?

What does all this matter, you may ask. You could quote from what I myself wrote a few weeks ago, to the effect that Mr Powell had shunted himself or been shunted into a siding. Some may regret that he has become thereby less important, others rejoice. But, in either case, if he has dotty views about Communism, so what? Let me try to explain.

The views of Mr Jim Mortimer, Labour's General Secretary, about Communism are at least as bizarre as Mr Powell's. According to an Observer profile, he considers the Soviet revolution in Russia to have been 'a momentous event in social progress'. He might as reasonably speak thus of a terrible train smash or earthquake — more reasonably in so far as no such catastrophes known to me have caused such widespread suffering and social retrogression. Russia's political experience has for him `no relevance' to British democracy. I cannot agree, much as I hope he is right. `Economically', he continues, 'their achievement [the USSR's] has been very great.' I know of no competent authority who would swear that Russia is better off economically than she would have been without the revolution.

If Mr Mortimer talks nonsense, what would you expect from such a quarter? But Mr Powell, on the other hand, talks sense on many subjects. On some (such as Ulster and, most recently, on the folly of lending more money to defaulting countries) he is almost unique in doing so. It is nothing short of tragic that the same lucid, powerful and fearless intellect leads him alike into in- sights and follies unattainable by ordinary mortals, and that the wisdom he has to im- part should be discredited by excursions in- to fantasy.

How inarticulate Ulster loyalists must have rejoiced at the arrival of this learned Lohengrin, the first champion able to put their case with cogency and logic and to ex- press with fire and eloquence what is in their hearts! And how they must grieve when he exposes himself (and them, by im- plication, whom he represents) to sniggers or worse from lesser men! 'So Enoch doesn't care for Jim's assembly? Rather have Bolshevism, I suppose. Better the Kremlin than Dublin, eh?'

How infinitely sad, that genius should be to madness so close allied and that, as Goethe said, when a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.