Reds on the mantelpiece
From Professor Antony Flew
Sir: Your correspondent, the Rev R. C. Sinclair, writes: "1 am not sure that Senor Allende would have been my electoral choice. But I regret that Mr Pearce found it unnecessary to remind your readers that Senor Allende was democratically elected and overthrown by a disgusting military coup which has done nothing to enhance the stature of those who proclaim their opposition to Marxism."
I am glad that Mr Sinclair is at least not quite sure that he would have voted for a coalition of Marxist-Leninists rather than — say — for the Christian Democrats. But while your readers were being reminded of things I could wish that he had noted that in that 1970 election the Marxist-Leninist coalition won all of 36% of the total votes cast, and no less than 40,000 more than their nearest opponents. On this they proceeded to attempt to make a revolution which was to be, they threatened, "irreversible."
The democratic credentials of any movement are revealed more clearly by the behaviour of that movement in office than by the votes obtained in getting there. Mr. Sinclair might, therefore, most usefully have reminded us that on August 22 of last year the Chilean parliament by 81 votes to 47 resolved "that the present government, from the beginning, has attempted to seize total power, with the evident purpose of subjecting everyone to the most rigorous economic and political controls, and of achieving by. this means the installation of a totalitarian regime absolutely opposed to the system of representative democracy that. the constitution upholds."
I have no wish either to defend or to attack the conduct of Chile's generals since Mr Sinclair's "disgusting military coup." For the urgent lessons tor us in Britain lie in the fact that so many in the Labour Party now identify themselves with the totalitarian socialists of Chile. So long as this remains so it must be mad to let that party get into a position to imitate Allende's model. It can happen here.
Antony Flew 26 Alexandra Road, Reading
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