The Anti-Whites
is surprising to find in 'the columns of the Spectator endorsement for the McCarlhyi.te attempts by the authors of The Pitppeteers to smear those who campaign. against white supremacy in Africa as. being either anti-white, Communist, or Communist. tools.
My own name, and my wife's, appear ..a number of times in the. book reviewed by Brian :Crozier. in yOur issue of July 23 under the title 'Tile Anti- Whites,' Neither of us is anti-white, Communist or a Communist puppet. Our. links, in fact, are With. both whites and non-whites in South Africa. where both our families still live. We are committed social democrats and hence anti-Communist. Having grown up in the political atmosphere of the 1930s. nobody can teach me' much about the methods of Communists—or fascists.
The fact that Communists crusadeit times for the same causes as radicals is not sufficient reason to discredit either the cause or the crusaders. Must one opt out of causes or movements simply because Communists might be involved?
Mr. Crozier's own' special indignation is against People who are indignant about apartheid but not about Uighurs, etc. How absurd can you get? And what must one say of people who worry about Uighurs but not at all about apartheid?
The real answer to Mr: Crozier, however, is that the great majority of those I know who are con- cerned about apartheid are also concerned about injustice wherever it arises—whether in Hungary,
T,ib9t or South Africa. This attitude is exem- plified by the Rev. Michael Scott (a special target in The Puppeteers). He has just returned to England seriously/ ill after fighting the Naga cause in India for the last fifteen months; yet not so long ago he went to prison in Durban fighting the cause of Indians there. Often those who complain most fiercely about the 'selective indignation' of Com- munists are guilty of the same charge themselves. They are well to the fore when it comes to criticising what happens in Communist countries or among the less popular Afro-Asian states, but have no tongue for what happens in Portugal, South Africa Or Spain.
However, I am much less concerned about Mr. Crozier's odd views than I am about the likely effects of his apparently authoritative endorsement of the material which appears in The Puppeteers. The book is. in fact, full of inaccuracies. But what is even Worse is the way in which it employs the techniques °1 'smearing by association,' of insinuations and innuendoes, to achieve its objectives. Finally, there is one simple point which needs to be stressed to expose the central weakness of The Puppeteers. Its authors deliberately fail to dis- tinguish between people who are opposed. to white supremacy and those who are, or may be, .anti-- White. The two attitudes are totally different. Those. like myself, who are implacably opposed to white supremacy believe that the true interests of white people in Africa can be served only if white people right the pernicious doctrine of white supremacy. COLIN LEGUM
IS Denbigh Gardens, Richmond, Surrey
Previous page
