LETTERS Trading insults
Sir: In my article in The Spectator of 28 November (Tacking the wrong horse'), I made the not very revolutionary suggestion that British governments should be careful whom they sold weapons to, since profess- ing high principles in public and ignoring them in private was likely to cause prob- lems. Lord Ridley (`Guns before lectures', 12 December) calls this 'deliciously naive'.
What is unquestionably naive, though scarcely delicious, is the belief of some hon- ourable, well-meaning British ministers that they are worldly wise enough to enter into deals with seriously unpleasant dicta- torships and come out on top. This did not happen in the case of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There has been a scandal, and Sad- dam Hussein failed to pay for much of what we sent him. It scarcely amounts to a good business deal.
For some reason Lord Ridley cites British policy towards China as an example of how we should behave. He accepts that the Chinese 'have not only raped Tibet, they have an appalling record over decades of repressing their own citizens'. Indeed; and yet even after Tiananmen Square Mrs Thatcher refused to shake hands with the Dalai Lama. John Major changed this poli- cy when he became prime minister, and he received the Dalai Lama at long last. But there is a clear link between our former willingness to bend our principles in order to avoid irritating the Chinese, and Deng Xiaoping's belief today that he can bully Chris Patten into giving up the proposals for greater democracy in Hong Kong. You simply do not do yourself any good by letting unpleasant regimes think you don't really care if they break the rules of civilised behaviour: to stick by those rules is plain self-interest. And there's another advantage which, had not Lord Ridley cho- sen to be uncivil to me, I should have been too tactful to mention: if you behave according to your stated principles there is unlikely to be a judicial inquiry afterwards.
John Simpson
BBC Television Centre, Wood Lane, London W12
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