Kinnock and the Kremlin

11 November 2009

/article_images/articledir_11060/5530388/1_listing.jpg

In the second part of our investigation into Labour’s dealings with the USSR, Pavel Stroilov reveals the secret Soviet diplomacy behind one leader’s most famous victory

COMRADE HEALEY

Neil Kinnock wasn’t the first senior Labourite to embark on sensitive discussions about Western defence plans with the Soviets. A report, again by Vadim Zagladin, records his discussions with Denis Healey, then shadow foreign minister, about the American Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) — the so-called Star Wars project — in May 1985:

Healey said that nobody except Reagan believes that the purpose of SDI is defending civilians. Experts and Pentagon specialists make it clear that the SDI’s purpose is to defend the positions of strategic missiles.

One of the questions [causing controversy] is the assumption, promoted by the US Defense Secretary, that the Soviet Union has achieved significant results in its own research on ‘Star Wars’. As a rule, two examples are given. One is about the laser technology research related to targeting space objects from the surface; the other is about the Krasnoyarsk radar.

In relation to the radar, Healey remarked that British intelligence disagreed with the Americans’ assessments and did not believe that the radar had the significance attributed to it.

Chernyaev’s diary also confirms that on the same visit Healey ‘was giving us tips of how we should handle Reagan to get something out of him’, and describes the Labour visitor as being relaxed and cheerful with his hosts. When The Spectator contacted Lord Healey, he admitted that the period represented a particularly troublesome time for the party: ‘Defence is always a very difficult thing for the Labour party because at one time we were committed to pacifism. Carrying on a nuclear policy based on an alliance with the United States was always very unpopular with one section of the party — the left. They made it very difficult, and regarded the US as a champion of capitalism and not to be worked with. That wasn’t my position at all.

‘As modernisers in the party we had to work against these people. The trade unionist Alec Kitson, for example, who was strongly sympathetic to the Soviets, was an absolute pain in the nether regions.’