Tribune leader, 7 February 1992
The relationship between the British Labour Party and the
Soviet Union is a fascinating subject.
The diplomatic reports from the Soviet
embassy in London on meetings with Labour politicians during the eighties,
unearthed by Tim Sebastian, are without a doubt a legitimate, if unreliable,
source for researchers.
But they are not news. There was nothing in the Sunday
Times "exclusive” last weekend on what the paper's promotions department
called “Kinnock’s Kremlin connection” which told anyone anything not already
widely known. The opinions of Denis Healey and Michael Foot on the arms race
and the dangers of Reaganism were expressed forcefully in speeches and articles
throughout the early eighties. That Neil Kinnock was critical of Arthur
Scargill’s leadership of the 1984-85 miners' strike can surprise no one who sat
through Mr Kinnock’s speech at the 1985 Labour Party conference. The Labour
National Executive Committee's arguments over the declaration of martial law in
Poland in 1981 were widely reported at the time.One could go on.
It could be that the Sunday Times's decision to splash Mr
Sebastian's report was simply a matter of misjudgment on the part of Andrew
Neil, its editor. But such an explanation is too charitable to Mr Neil and his
paper. The "Kremlin connection" story is nothing more or less than a
traditional red-scare smear, an attempt, in the run-up to an election, to
encourage voters to speculate that maybe there was something in the idea of
Labour being part of a giant Soviet conspiracy to take over the world.
One expects this sort of garbage from the Sun, the Daily
Mail and the Daily Express. They have always been lower than vermin. But the
Sunday Times used to have a reputation as a serious paper. Mr Neil severely
damaged that reputation with his handling of the Gibraltar shootings. Now he
should hang his head in shame.
