29 OCTOBER 1988, Page 6

POLITICS

Notes from underground during the Thatcherite terror

NOEL MALCOLM

This House believes that the suppres- sion of human rights in the Soviet Union is a fallacy propounded by the West.' When I attended the debate on this topic at the University College debating society on Monday, I was not surprised to see the motion heavily defeated in the final vote. The main proposer, a young man in a leather jacket from Soviet Weekly, went no further than to claim that things were getting better now; his supporter, a lady from the Communist Party of Great Bri- tain, was mainly, interested in telling the audience how much better things would get in Britain once she came to power; and the phrasing of the motion (leaving aside its improper use of the word 'fallacy') was such that support for it became impossible once a single factual example of a human rights violation had been given by the opposing side.

What did surprise me, however, was that more than one third of those present chose to abstain in the final vote, having been persuaded to do so by several speeches which argued that this was the only fair thing to do. Britain, the argument ran, was also guilty of human rights abuses, such as the expulsion of government employees from GCHQ. To oppose the motion would be to presume that our abuses were less important than the Soviet ones; and that would be to engage in 'ideology', a Cold War practice not to be commended.

Earlier that day, the first copy of a new political magazine had dropped through my letter-box. The contributors to this first issue represent a wide spectrum of non- Conservative opinion, from Communist to SDP, and their articles, on social, econo- mic and foreign policy issues, are lively and intelligent. In fact there is only one pro- foundly unintelligent thing about this magazine, namely its title: Samizdat. A note on the inside front cover explains: "Sa'mizdat" — underground publication in pre-Gorbachev USSR'. Any Soviet dis- sidents who happen to read this will be surprised to learn that the circulation of samizdat (which simply means 'self- published') literature ceased when Mr Gorbachev came to power. And once they have got over their surprise, they may feel a little puzzled, or even offended, by the comparison between their activities in the Soviet Union and the open publication of a magazine which puts forward policies for legally constituted political parties to cam-

paign on at a general election.

A front-page editorial explains:

Russian samizdat publications circulated secretly among a small, advanced public in the face of official disapproval. British Samizdat takes its name from that example, seeking to change the political climate in a society where opinion is controlled not by fear of the gulag, but more subtly, through the persuasive powers of the deferential media.

The implication, if I am not mistaken, is that a form of 'control' which is more `subtle' than fear of the gulag is therefore even worse than fear of the gulag — more insidious, more dangerous. How powerful the forces of control must be if they can operate entirely by persuading people . . .

I mention these two examples of patent foolishness (and a third: not long ago I was told, in all seriousness, by a solicitor at a dinner-party, that there was now more liberty in Gorbachev's Russia than in Thatcher's Britain) not in order to show that I am a paid-up member of the deferen- tial media, but merely to suggest that the current debate about liberty under the Thatcherite regime is gradually losing its grip on reality. The price of liberty, as we all know, is eternal vigilance. A little eyestrain on the part of the vigilant is to be expected, therefore; but it should not follow that the price of eternal vigilance is the loss of all sense of proportion. Even proponents of the 'thin end of the wedge' argument are not obliged to believe that the thin end is, in reality, just as thick as the thick end.

In the radical press (i.e. some way to the Left of Samizdat) one reads again and again about the Thatcher government's `sustained assault' and 'systematic attack' on all areas of human liberty. The lesson of the last ten days is rather different: it offers a striking example of just how unsystema- tic and haphazard this Government's stumbling progress on these issues can be. The ban on broadcasting interviews with Irish terrorists and their supporters, for instance, was pushed through in a hurry on the first day of the resumption of Parlia- ment, because the deferential media had already got hold of the idea and was forcing Mr Hurd's hand. The Government

had not had time to co-ordinate properly its defence of this measure: the message from Downing Street was that it was needed to deprive the terrorists of support, while the message from Mr Hurd was that it was needed to prevent the causing of `grave offence' to ordinary viewers. And the measure itself is so broken-backed (it excludes the non-broadcast media, it ex- empts speeches made by candidates at elections, and it also exempts any non- members of Sinn Fein who are prepared to support Mr Gerry Adams' arguments with- out explicitly supporting his organisation) that one is forced to conclude that what it represents is a largely successful rearguard action by the Home Office against pressure for something stronger from one gravely offended lady in Downing Street.

The decision to qualify the right of silence, which was announced the follow- ing day in the House of Commons by means of a written answer, seems even more badly managed. The Northern Ire- land Secretary explained in his answer that this change was necessary in the light of `the cynical, planned exploitation of the criminal justice system by those involved in organised crime, led by those involved in terrorist crime', as if this were some sort of emergency measure needed in the fight against terrorism. But the Home Secretary had already told Parliament, in May of this year, that he was considering making this change to the criminal justice system in England and Wales; and his authority, so to speak, for making the change lay in a recommendation of the Criminal Law Re- vision Committee as long ago as 1972.

There is no shortage of examples of this Government's ineptitude when it comes to pushing through its 'sustained and systema- tic' campaign. The handling of GCHQ springs readily to mind; or the row over the `Real Lives' programme, where Mr Bri- tan's mistake lay not in writing to the head of the BBC (as numerous previous Home Secretaries, Labour and Conservative, had done), but in foolishly giving his letter to the press. None of this implies, of course, that an incompetent government cannot do tyrannical things. It's just that we need, apparently, to be reminded every now and then that to live under a fumbling and bumbling government which sometimes fails to think through the consequences of its actions is not quite the same as living under the fear of the gulag.