The Greek experience
Taki Theodoracopu los
A Short History of Modern Greece Richard Clogg (Cambridge £10.50) 'I cannot get over the undeniable fact that now, when Greece literally is starving and is short of every kind of supply, the Left has been responsible for the present ghastly situation. The British Commander here could have done nothing else in the circumstances. If we had acquiesced in the demand of EAM for monopoly of government there would have been a massacre. To call the EAM-ELAS crowd friends of democracy is like saying that the SS would make good Sunday School teachers.'
The above quotation is taken from Henry Maule's book about General Scobie, the British commander who saved Greece and kept us from disappearing behind the Iron Curtain during the Communist uprising of 1944-45. The quotation is from a dead soldier's last letter home to his father, an explanation as to why the British were fighting. The latter was read in Parliament by Quintin Hogg as a repudiation of the lies and false pontifications of fellow-travellers in the New Statesman. The free world's press, then as in Vietnam 30 years later, willingly reported the lies fed to it by EAM, the Greek National Liberation Front. (Read Gulag for liberation.) I mention Maule's book because I have something in common with him. I was there during the uprising and saw many soldiers killed. Worse, I saw too many of my family murdered in cold blood. (My uncle, who had won the highest Greek decoration for gallantry fighting the Axis, was murdered by the Communists for refusing to fight on their side. Needless to say he was called a fascist.) Both Maule and I take into consideration the feelings and thoughts of common soldiers, even common people. Professors, intellectuals, progressives and Oxbridge lecturers do not. If they are not committed to re-writing history in order to suit their leftism, they do what Richard Clogg, a lecturer at King's College, London, has done. They shuffle through their papers, contact some professors, read hundreds of books on the subject, and then take the safe and easy way out. Why call the Communists blood-thirsty murderers, collaborators (yes, collaborators; when nationalist resistance fighters were apprehended by the Germans, more often than not they had been given away by comrades in the resistance) or cynical totalitarian rabble, when by doing so one will get one's Marxist colleagues screaming? Isn't it better to write 'objective' history? Or like leftist-opportunists like Jane Fonda, the Berrigans and Daniel (gigolo) Ellsberg refuse to admit that Socialist Peoples Republics like North Vietnam are one and the same as Nazi Germany? (As the opportunistic lawyer William Kunstler said, 'I do not believe in public attacks on socialist countries'.) Mr Clogg, then, has written an objective book. It is to his credit that at times he throws a few bones to what he probablY considers the misguided Right: Netaxas met with little opposition to the establishment of his dictatorship. The general feeling was that the politicians, with their interminable feuding and intrigues, had not served the country well.' But soon he goes back to his objectivity by writing: 'Although EAM— ELAS certainly did not shrink from terror tactics. . . ' I wish he would explain to me how Colonel Ladas, one of the original conspirators in the coup of 1967, a man who had seen 12 members of his immediate family massacred in front of his very eyes by the EAM — ELAS resistance fighters, was expected to take into consideration the fact ' that although they did use terror tactics they did, after all, enjoy genuine popular support'.
Or how I, a Greek, am supposed to make sense of the following: `Plastiras proved unable to check the right-wing backlash Which was fuelled by the discovery that some 8000 civilian hostages taken by ELAS, in the hope of staving off defeat during the last stages of the fighting in Athens, had been killed off or had died in its custody'. Backlash? As far as I am concerned, and if I had the power to do it, every Single Communist should have been repaid M Khomeini law for it. Clogg rubs it in by following the above statement with this gem: 'Despite the promIse of amnesty, leftists were systematically persecuted — 'persecuted' by being denied Jobs, sent to island camps and not being allowed to take part as full citizens. Poor Chaps. Poor Clogg. He is probably the type that might forgive the man who rapes his Wife, but I am not. And, fortunately, so are many patriotic fellow countrymen of mine. One very important historical detail escapes Clogg. He writes about the bloody repression of a popular demonstration on 3 December 1944. The police did fire upon the demonstrators and the ensuing fighting did spark the bloody Athenian battle that Scobie and his red berets finally won. What Clogg doesn't know, or refuses to write, is that the first shots fired against the crowds Caine from Communists hiding behind Police lines. This is an important detail. Historians have throughout blamed the fascist-police-collaborators for the Shooting. Typically, even so-called conser vatives have refused to get involved on the Point, as they would look, as if they were defending the police. It is perfectly true that the police collaborated with the Germans. What would the English police have done if England had fallen?
Having said all this, Mr Clogg does write Well and concisely. The book is what its title Says: A short history from the 13th century to March 1978. Clogg knows Greek history Well. But he gives not one single new twist or revelation. So why the book? Perhaps it Is. designed for students to learn about the birthplace of democracy. The fact that Greece's democracy has always been a sham, yes, even under Karamanlis, with retroactive laws applied when expedient and with the sanctity of the individual as resPected as much as the British Left resPects it, does not become clear to the reader. That is because Mr Clogg, like, Others, people who themselves would never choose to live under Communism, attack the excesses of others who have come under the threat or have seen first-hand what Communism means. • Although Europe has often been warned, its inhabitants, led by its intellectual elite, feel too snug to be bothered to listen, or embarrassed that they might be taken as red-neck, short-sighted fanatics. (When Helen Vlachos, publisher and 'democrat', Came to England as a protest to the Colonels, she was accorded the honours due to the high-priestess of anti-fascism. The fact that she was opposed to the Colonels because they had forestalled a coup by the establishment — something which people like C.M. Woodhouse knew — was overlooked.) So, read on, all you students. The book will give you a rough outline and students never get anything more than a sketch anyway. That is for the people who have the bad luck to go through things. Something that Clogg and the Greeks who advise him have not yet experienced. But there is always time.
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