From Tony Guthrie

[p031] Tony Guthrie has just heard the facts of life—and smiled at me—told me to keep quiet, don’t talk ‘while at home’ and go back and don’t get mixed up in anything! Gollan said almost the same, word for word. Campbell, too, although Campbell is, in my opinion, still the best of the bunch of them, he knows what’s going on: knew before I did, but he thinks the larger issues should predominate. (This despite his present Right-wing stand). You may be shocked to hear me say I despise Harry Pollitt —not for his refusal to face facts before the Hungarian tragedy but because of his failure to face up to the implications of the Twentieth Congress and his shameful silence throughout the Hungarian-Polish business. Search the Daily Worker since the Polish business began and you'll search in vain for a message with which to be guided. Even old Gallacher, bruised by time, spoke his piece as soon as he returned from China. I am glad your branch is ‘discussing’ things. Any guidance I can offer may be dismissed as the ravings of one of the ‘dispossessed’ or as coloured by prejudice. But the bodies of the Hungarian people will long remind us all of the ‘mistakes’ of those that shot them down—thus completing the temporary destruction of the work which we all have tried to do for so many years. . Nothing, of course, will destroy socialism—or indeed com- munism. But I venture to suggest that we must start again—on new and more humane foundations, with a livelier critical faculty and with new leaders and perhaps new models! 59

[p032] ‘LABOUR REVIEW I have just read Peter Fryer’s book.! He has been kind enough to refer (obliquely) to me on page 10, and to quote my letter on page 92. I support his views—even to going outside the party (after the idiotic suppression of The Reasoner) to make himself heard. I too should have done it—even though it was before the Twentieth Congress. If you read Fryer’s book, as you should, forgive his occa- sional intemperate language, written white-hot to denounce an evil he saw for the first time—and remember his conclusions are not invalidated by the methods he chose to get a hearing. Basil Davidson, diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Herald, whom I have known for some years as a really warm supporter of socialism, publishes his pamphlet (via the Union of Democratic Control) today.2 I haven’t yet seen this, but judging from his talks with me he arrives at much the same conclusions as Fryer. I repeat, thank you for writing; it is nice to know one’s opinions are still wished to be heard. But you doubtless know that I left the party on my return from Prague and therefore your branch may pay scant attention to an ‘enemy of the people’, as we such are erroneously called. December 14, 1956 DEAR MRS B Thank you for your letter. Yes, I can give examples of fear, anti-Semitism, denial of trade union practices and social in- equalities. FEAR: Almost everyone walked and worked in fear. Only the most courageous, and after they got to know they could trust you in ‘Czecho’, would speak of political matters—and then to deplore the way the system was being worked. There was a spy.in every office and none knew who it was until experience eliminated the more courageous and left the finger of suspicion pointing in the right direction. One thing engendering fear was the refusal of the political management to believe any ‘mistakes’ could be made. ‘Mis- takes’ were always said to be counter-revolutionary acts with the result that although the country starved for cadres, every capable communist who could (read dare) leave a responsible position, fled from it (some of my friends into coal-mines or to the factory floor where no large responsibility was expected of them). My colleague on the journal I edited, Czechoslovak Life, was threatened with arrest because of a mistaken caption under a picture. Incidentally, this journal, circulating through- out the world, was allowed to send only 160 copies to Russia, for Czech embassies etc., because the pictures indicated a higher standard of life than in Russia: this at a time when millions of copies of Russian translations of everything were being produced in Prague in a special institution, at Czech expense. Every worker has a work dossier, kept by the firm’s politi- cal cadre. The worker never sees it. Every spy or enemy can report him: down it goes into the report—and if the lHfungarian Tragedy (1956). - 2What Really Happened in Hungary? (1956). 60 March-April 1958 worker is allowed to leave the next firm’s political cadre will not take him on without an O.K. and the dossier from his last job. Do you wonder that communists and secret police were the first to be strung up in Budapest as soon as the oppor- tunity presented itself or that every bureau holding documents was the target for arson? , ANTI-SEMITISM was rife in Czecho—unloosed by the Minister of Information, Kopecky, who is still in charge.3 No attempt was made to differentiate between anti-Semitism and Zionism in political propaganda. It was even shared by ex-trade union leader Zapotocky,4 then premier, now president since the death of the weak, vacillating Gottwald, who ‘died’ in Moscow after Stalin’s funeral. On New Year’s Eve, 1953, twenty-seven Jews in my build- ing (the equivalent of Reuter’s building in Fleet Street) were sacked because of their birth. They were not even allowed to come back to the office and clear their desks. One was my secretary (her Christmas letter to me arrived with your second one). They walked the streets for months trying for work, fighting against the telling dossier—and these were brave, honest communists who had the indelible numbers printed on their arms by the fascists in concentration camps. “What’s the difference, now?’ they asked me bitterly. Such as these led those workers who rose in Budapest—and had I been there I would have been with them! TRADE UNION membership was obligatory, and attend- ance at meetings—but such was the farce they were, so far as righting injustices or even getting them aired, that there was an understanding: no questions, no discussion at any meeting. Get it over with as soon as possible. Yet such was the extent of the working-class democracy facade that hundreds of well-meaning visitors (including me) have been taken in by seeing only the facade and not the reality. Workers rock with laughter at the simplicity of ‘visitors’ who see and believe in the ‘facade’. Different flats, different wages (totally disproportionate), different food shops and rations (as a diplomatic journalist I had diplomatic rations and access to special shops from which I fed half the office!), different health resort hotels: all these mount to gross inequalities enjoyed by higher party Officials at the expense of the rank and file (see Fryer’s book and Anna Kethly’s statement to Labour MPs this week). The list of crimes is so great that I too could write a book—which I ought to have done, because only when the British workers know these things can they understand Poland and Hungary (and the long-suffering Russian people) and also prevent our bureaucratic little Stalins here from exercis- ing similar excesses. What chance would Fryer have’ of liberty had Mahon, Pollitt and E. Burns been vested with State power? I must close or the post will not be caught. 3Vaclav Kopecky is now vice premier. 4Antonin Zapotocky, elected president March 21, 1953, died November 13, 1957.

[p033] Society and the Aged