Good Resolution
By ROBERT CONQUEST
I regret having given erroneous informa- tion and/or advice about Fidel Castro and his Cuba. As token of my repentance I undertake to abstain from publicising my opinions on foreign affairs for a trial period of ONE YEAR.
signed
IT is no doubt pressure of work and similar causes which have prevented a number of people from making the disavowals which are now called for, and it is with a view to saving them trouble that the above form is printed. It should be signed, torn out and sent in c/o the Spectator. If this is thought to be undignified, perhaps one of the more conscientious would organise a round-robin?
It is both in practice and in theory that the Castro regime has now demonstrated that it is totally unlike what a number of men of good- will, as well as one or two with more doubtful motives, would have had us suppose. Signatories to pro-Castro letters and articles included a number of vocal bomb-banners. When the Soviet fifty-plus megaton bomb was exploded, it will be remembered, the Cuban delegate to the Belgrade conference of neutralists was the only one to express hearty approval, and Cuba was the only State supposedly outside the Com- munist bloc which voted in favour of the ex- plosion when it came up in the United Nations. On that occasion, however, the customary volu- bility even of some of our most dramatic com- mentators seems to have deserted them.
Then we had, at the beginning of December, Castro's speech on the creation of a new 'united' party in Cuba. This was a somewhat sensational document. But one would not have thought so from the almost ostentatious lack of attention which it aroused in the circles mentioned above. Castro boasted of his long attachment to Marxism-Leninism. And his references to the fact that this had to be concealed in the early programmes of his movement for fear of alienating support, were coupled with what amounted to the formal (in consummation of the long-established factual) setting-up of Coin- rnunist one-party rule in Cuba. With this, one would have thought, such arguments as the one which had urged that any hostility to Castro would 'drive him into the arms of' the Com- munists might seem to fall to the ground. And his cynical statements on the methods which Rakosi in Hungary used to call 'salami tactics,' could have been expected to arouse indignation and revulsion of feeling among those in this country who were duped by them. (Those in Cuba who were duped by them are of course now in gaol, like the unfortunate Major Matos and his colleagues.) Early in 1960 I wrote in the Spectator on the Cuban situation. I am not an 'expert! on Cuba like those who have put in the regulation week in Castroite Havana. But I know what happens when a country falls into the hands of a Com- munist Party with allegiance to the apparats in Moscow or Peking. (In much the same way, a doctor who knew about cholera would be en- titled to write about the outbreak of an epidemic of the disease in Tierra del Fuego, without neces- sarily being an expert on the conditions in that island.) I wrote that if certain facts were established—for example that the police, the trade unions, the universities and so on had been put under the control of the Communist Party —then Cuba must be seen as a Communist State in which no claims, or even temporary practices, of a progressive nature should be regarded as having any significance. Those inadequately aware of the history of the Communist move- ment could, and can, argue against this view. But those who claimed that the political analysis was incorrect, and that Cuba was not in fact in Communist hands and therefore destined to the political, economic, and social measures in- variably inflicted by orthodox Communist rulers, were wrong, and have been proven" wrong. It would clear the air, and introduce an unwonted decency and propriety into political controversy in this country if they would now speak their bits in public. I wish I could think that any of them would. But, alas, they are probably by now far too busy getting ready to teach us all about New Guinea or Vietnam.
'I've been commissioned to write the new national anthem. What rhymes with "Mato"?'
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