LETTERS Luncheon offer
Sir: Norman Stone (3 February) does Spectator readers a disservice in his review of Vaclav Havel or Living in Truth. Since the vision of a nuclear-free Europe prom- oted by CND looks like becoming reality, I shall be charitable and assume this is due to Professor Stone's failure to come to terms with events of the last decade, and not deliberate misinformation.
Nowhere does Havel 'record what it is like for a persecuted dissident to deal with naive Western socialists — unilateral dis- armers in particular'. (If Professor Stone can prove this, I will stand him to lunch at a restaurant of his choice).
Moreover, far from shying away from the peace movement, many of the people prominent in Civic Forum and other demo- cratic groups in Eastern and Central Europe have been working with the peace movement for years. They are now taking a leading role in preparing the Citizen's Assembly due to be held in Prague this October, and are partners in organising the Convention for European Nuclear Dis- armament which will be held in Helsinki and Tallin this July.
What Havel does do is point out how devalued the word 'peace' became when used as a propaganda tool by the regimes of Eastern Europe; and he depicts how the state-run media portrayed Western peace movements and their activities as 'evidence of the eagerness with which the people of the West await Soviet-style communism'. One has to chuckle, since, after all, the Thatcher government and various bran- ches of the MoD spent a lot of time and public money trying to do the same thing to CND.
Havel also asserts (pp. 168 and 169) that. he does not share the views of those who viewed the peace movement as a Soviet plot or as a collection of naïve dreamers.
Where I would disagree with Havel is with his view that the peace movement has a real impact on the dealing of parliaments and governments. This may be so in other Western countries, but the British Parlia- ment has been consistently misled on nuclear topics for 25 years. True, CND has challenged that, with sympathetic mem- bers of the Labour, SLD, SDP and nation- al parties (and a very few brave Conserva- tives).
But the most appropriate epitaph for the British Government could come, again, from Havel: 'A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states'.
Marjorie Thompson
Vice-Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 22-24 Underwood Street, London Ni
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