Reaching through the Iron Curtain

04 November 2009

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In the pages of the Kremlin’s secret diary, Pavel Stroilov discovers what Labour’s Soviet sympathisers said when they thought no one was listening

In the evening we were in the Soviet embassy, waiting for Hayward. Kubeikin brought him. Hayward immediately began speaking about the conference, and how he has managed to put more pressure on the right-wingers, on the government. As he told us in Moscow and repeated now, he believed the point of his work as General Secretary was to provide a ‘genuine socialist government’ for Britain. To achieve that, he must break the Labour Cabinet and the parliamentary party’s tradition for disregarding conference resolutions and accepting no control from the National Executive Committee. He has done a lot to increase the NEC’s role and authority, taking advantage of the current left-wing flood in the party — it is unusually steady this time. This is why he has an escalating row with [Prime Minister] Wilson, who was his friend when they were young. (When Hayward began his speech at the first session, Wilson stood up and left the room, to come back just after it finished.)

This is also why he [Hayward] is now committed to developing links with the CPSU.

So Hayward envisioned a real Soviet-style system in Britain: with the Party General Secretary — not the MPs’ leader — at the top. Chernyaev’s diary says he would refer to himself as the party leader. Or, specifically, as ‘the first Labour leader in history who is not afraid to come out alongside communists with the same agenda’, Chernyaev quotes. He even stated later in that meeting that Hayward ‘prepares young people, puts them in the right places, helps them to become prominent’. Such was the backdrop to the civil war that would then engulf the Labour party where the pro-communist faction crushed moderates and Trotskyites.

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Jez

November 5th, 2009 1:39pm Report this comment

I went to the final Labour party rally in Leeds Town hall in 1987. An old trade unionist at the end of my street got me a ticket.

The pull of my local football team, combined with a sh*t school and then eventually the acid-house revolution totally obliterated any persuit whatsoever in regard to Labour politics, soon afterwards.

Let's face facts; would anyone like to end up like the f*ckwits running the country right now? Hopefully not.

The point is this; I saw with my own eyes Hattersley with his fist clenched in the air calling everyone 'comrade' through out his speech. Kinnock did the same.

To me it was very impressive for a 14 year old.

The things is though, nailed on, these people are (past and present) Marxists / Careerists (or both) of the highest order in my opinion.

At least back then they didn't try to hide it as much.

KindnessofWomen

November 5th, 2009 4:40pm Report this comment

There was no British general election in 1973, as the article suggests. There were two in 1974 though, in February and then in October.

Noa Zrk

November 5th, 2009 7:01pm Report this comment

We need to remember this took place during the Cold war. Even on the limited information available here many of these people should have been tried for treason. In the USSR they would have been sent to the Gulags or shot.

Peter From Maidstone

November 6th, 2009 9:40am Report this comment

I hope the Spectator will be doing some more digging. How do we know the the present Labour leadership is not still communist? Though in a 21st century, Armani suited manner. How do we know that they do not still hold to the ambitions of their youthful communist pasts and have successfully implemented a plan to socialise and centralise our society?