Corbyn, Labour and the Communists

Back in February Peter Whittle interviewed Giles Udy, author of Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left. I haven't read it but the book is on my reading list and is discussed in the video from about 17:00. The book description alone is worth reading.

The Labour Party welcomed the Russian Revolution of October 1917. For the following two decades it enthusiastically supported the Soviet 'great experiment', excusing all its excesses, and prepared to bring about its own socialist revolution in Britain. In 1929, Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to labour camps in the Russian far north. There, in appalling conditions, thousands died. But when British protesters called on the Labour government to halt the import of timber cut by those slave labourers, it refused. In private, the Cabinet acknowledged the truth but blocked appeals for an inquiry. In public, it dismissed the protests as a stunt fabricated by the Tories. Eyewitness accounts were rejected, diplomatic despatches ignored, and Soviet denials repeated as fact. One Labour minister even called it 'a remarkable economic experiment' and declared that the Soviets should be left to pursue it 'without outside interference'.

So many middle class socialists seem to lose any semblance of a moral compass when it comes to enforcing their favoured political doctrines. More sociopath than socialist in some cases.