It's all Greek to me

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON

I have just come back from a visit to Greece. 1 have been going there for some years, on and off, and it didn't occur to me to change my

habits because there had been a revolution in the country. I had regarded it as no real con- cern of mine. But I was surprised to find that a number of my friends regarded the trip as ill-advised, if not actually disreputable. As one woman put it, 'surely you don't approve of those awful colonels!'

I told her she was quite right: I didn't. On the other hand I really couldn't see why that should stand in the way of my visiting the country and talking to my friends there. Since then I have become increasingly aware of a campaign to keep people away from Greece, as if it were some kind of a leper colony. Some- times the suggestion is made that the country

is unsafe, carrying a danger of being harassed

by the police or being arrested for asking ques- tions or speaking one's mind. In my experi- ence, this simply isn't so. More commonly, it is claimed that by spending money and support- ing the tourist industry, we are giving both moral and financial support to a dictatorial regime.

I must say I don't find it easy to accept the proposition that the best way of doing the Greek people a good turn is to rob them of their livelihood. While giving Greece the cold shoulder may embarrass the junta, it causes a great deal more than embarrassment to the taxi-drivers and waiters and owners of small cafes and restaurants throughout the country.

One also wonders how effective it is. Surely one of the lessons we have been repeatedly taught during the last fifty years is the futility of economic sanctions. Over and over again

the cordon sanitaire has been drawn—round Russia, Italy, Germany, Japan, Cuba, Rhodesia

—and never with the expected result. When one sees how long nations can resist outright military and naval blockade, a cutback in the number of bus-trips going up to the Acropolis is hardly likely to lead to the collapse of the regime.

The other question I find bothersome is the consistency of all this. Why so much more fuss about Greece than anywhere else? Democracy may be a Greek word, but the Greeks don't have a particularly strong tradition of represen- tative government. Like most poor nations with a highly volatile population, they have always had the greatest difficulty in managing a parliamentary system. Corruption, the rigging

of elections, and extremist movements of both right and left, are endemic in the country—

the communists, who are now howling to the world for sympathy, have already made two attempts to take over the country by force of arms.

Nor is it very convincing to say that we have a special responsibility towards Greece because

she is a member of NATO, which is an organisa- tion dedicated to the defence of the democratic system. After all, Turkey is a member of NATO.

In 1962 a military junta overthrew the govern- ment and subsequently celebrated their victory by hanging the Prime Minister. How much indignation did this arouse in the British press? Did the British Prime Minister of the day sound off in the House of Commons about

'bestiality'? Is it logical to pay less attention to the murder of a head of state than the arrest of a bouzouki player?

Some of the news about Greece suggests an exhibitionistic undergraduate game more than a serious approach to politics. While I was in Athens a reporter on one of the British Sunday newspapers wrote a lurid account of his exploits in contacting the Greek under- ground. It seems that he was followed every- where he went by sinister Gestapo-like figures, but with consummate skill shook them off and managed to complete his assignment. A James Bond adventure by our special correspondent. But of course we are all aware that if Greece were a really tough police state, such simple college fun wouldn't be tolerated for a moment. One waits to hear of this particular correspon- dent deploying his talents for espionage in some more exacting area—like China, for instance. or the Soviet Union.

It is perfectly true that the junta is despotic and very undesirable by our standards, but we must not forget that so are most of the govern- ments throughout the world. if it is wrong to go to Greece, why is it all right to go to Yugo- slavia? Tito, in case anyone has forgotten, is a military dictator who imprisons his opponents if they speak their minds. If we go to Russia, are we condoning the prison camps or the atrocious treatment of the Czechs? If the junta is brutal, what are Gomulka or Mao Tse-tung? The absurdity of the situation was illustrated to me by a well-known Greek physician who had been on the organising committee of a medical congress planned to take place in Athens. It had been cancelled because some of the foreign speakers refused to turn up, on political grounds. 'Of course it doesn't really matter to me personally,' he said; 'I shall meet them all later in the year in Warsaw.'

If we are to be so rigid in our disapproval of the Greek regime, where is our moral censure to stop? On any reasonable grounds, anything behind the Iron Curtain is out. In the Middle East its autocracy all the way apart from Israel and even Israel is in open defiance of the United Nations. The military are in control in Indone- sia and most of Latin America. When I visited Mexico last year, nobody told me I was letting down western civilisation; yet Mexico is ruled by a tightly-knit group of politicians who pass the major offices of state round among their number and tolerate no organised opposition. This has been so for as long as most of us can remember and nobody seems to worry about it at all. A similar pattern is obviously taking root in many of the new African states, even to the extent of acquiring a verbal figleaf as `democracy on the one-party pattern.'

The special hatred of the colonels cannot, then, be justified on democratic grounds. Can the campaign be justified on the grounds that `here is a situation we can do something about'? This is an argument which has done yeoman service, at one time or another, in defence of a double standard of conduct in international affairs. It is reasoned that since the Chinese, for example, don't give a damn what we say or do, there is really no point in bothering to abuse them. What is more, they are big and ill-tempered, and only too likely to take some spiteful form of reprisal. The sensible thing to do is therefore to forget all about them and concentrate our energies on states which are weak enough, or sufficiently troubled with con- science, to be responsive to a bit of bullying. I suppose this policy can be defended on a

purely pragmatic basis, but it is something short of heroic, and tits rather uneasily into

a lofty moral attitude. It smacks rather of a sort of bargain-basement imperialism, with a leading article doing duty for a company of Marines, and the travel allowance for a gun- boat.

I cannot help wondering whether the real origin of the emotion about Greece lies not in any of the more obvious circumstances of the case but in a psychological conflict of our own. We are reluctant to abandon the role of policeman of the world, even if only in a moral sense. Yet we are tormented by Jur own impotence and, even more, by the increasing complexity of world affairs. Life has grown too confusing for us recently; we are badly in need of some simple issue to feel virtuous about.

At one time, moral judgments were fairly easy. There were certain rough rules by which it was possible to decide which was the 'pro- gressive' side in any dispute. In general, black people were more okay than white and poor than rich. In a colonial situation an encouraging sign of progressive behaviour was the murder of British troops. But in recent conflicts these rules have become increasingly difficult to apply. The Israelis, who should clearly be in the wrong, since they are better-off and more European than the Egyptians, are manifestly more democratic. Nasser loses marks for being a Colonel but gains them for being a dema- gogue and anti-British. The Burmese junta is despotic and military, just like the Greeks, but is all right for some reason, and so is Ayub Khan. Suharto is considered tolerable, in spite of massacring countless numbers of Chinese, largely because anything is a pleasant change after Sukarno. Haile Selassie is an absolute monarch and should be completely out of the question; but he gets by for having stood up to Mussolini thirty years ago.

But the most balling of all problems is Nigeria. From the very beginning of the war, nobody could really decide which was the side to support. Both sides were equally black and equally anti-colonial. The lbos were richer and more able than the Federalists and this was against them; on the other hand they scored points for being a minority. Self-determination was considered progressive; yet so, on the other hand was the abolition of tribalism. And if Biafra had a right to be a separate state, why hadn't Katanga? It was a hopeless dilemma. The explosion of interest in Biafra when the figures for starvation were made public was partly an expression of relief at being able to sweep the political issues, at least temporarily, under the rug.

In the midst of all this confusion the Greek colonels stand out like a beacon, calling the faithful to unite. They arc white, they are soldiers, they are anti-communist, they are un- democratic, and they are, thank God, pretty weak and ineffectual. If we go for them hard enough, perhaps we shall be able to forget the abandonment of Eastern Europe to the Russians, the rape of Tibet, the massacres in• Indonesia. Here at last is an issue on which we can all stand up and be counted without get- ting our heads shot off. And if we want a bit of sun, there's always the Bulgarian Riviera.