Monday, February 20, 2012

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Everything you always wanted to know about India and more

Sunday in the Park With George, Oops, Sir Alfred Sherman


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PR Newswire

US, Europe and Russia Face Similar Challenges in the Years to Come

Published: Monday, Feb. 20, 2012 – 3:49 am
WASHINGTON, February 20, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ –
Srdja Trifkovic, has said that the US and Russia must work together to fight aggression in the world, despite the recent unveiling of the US’ new Defense Strategy.
Trifkovic said: “The Obama Administration’s “Defense Strategic Guidance” (DSG) was unveiled on January 5 as part of the broader programmatic document, Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense. Presenting the DSG, President Obama spoke of “enduring national interests” in maintaining the unparalleled U.S. military superiority, “ready for the full range of contingencies and threats” amidst “a complex and growing array of security challenges across the globe.”
“The DSG further asserted that in the decades ahead it will be the task of the United States to “confront and defeat aggression anywhere in the world.” The ideological framework behind the concept was evident in Obama’s State of the Union address three weeks later, when he repeated Madeleine Albrigtht’s irritating dictum that “America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” “As long as I am President,” he added sternly, “I intend to keep it that way.” This is some light years away from candidate Obama bewailing “the consequences of a foreign policy based on a flawed ideology, and a belief that tough talk can replace real strength and vision.”
“The implications of the DSG for Russia’s strategic planners are clear: the rhetoric in Washington may vary from one administration to another, but the substance is constant. Obama made no attempt to support his claim that the security threats to America are growing, or to provide his own definition of “enduring national interest,” because he sees the entire world as a legitimate sphere of interest of the United States. The DSG is intrinsically a challenge to Russia and other powers outside the U.S. orbit, and that challenge may only become more acute if Mitt Romney wins in November. A sober reassessment of the “reset” will be needed soon after V.V. Putin’s expected return to the helm of the Russian Federation. U.S.-Russian relations over the past two decades reveal a remarkable role reversal. The Soviet Union came into being as a revolutionary state that challenged any given status quo in principle, starting with the Comintern and ending three generations later with Afghanistan. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, Russia has been trying to define her policies in terms of traditional national interests: stable domestic institutions, secure borders, friendly neighbors. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having “normal” relations with America, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert her, on the other, gave way to sometimes naive attempts to forge a “partnership” with Washington.
“By contrast, the early 1990′s witnessed America’s strident attempt to assert her status as the only global “hyperpower.” This ambition was inimical to post-Soviet stabilization. Washington refused to accept that Russia has any legitimate interests in her near-abroad, while reserving the right to meddle in her internal affairs. In essence, America adopted her own dual-track approach.
“Contemporary U.S. strategic doctrine is reminiscent of an old blueprint for Soviet policy: the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was defined by its author as the principle that the sovereignty of a socialist country is limited by the will of the Kremlin: “The norms of law cannot be interpreted narrowly, formally, in isolation from the general context…” The key difference between Brezhnev and the leaders of modern America is the limited scope of the Soviet leader’s self-awarded outreach. His doctrine applied only to the “socialist community,” as opposed to the unlimited scope of meeting “security challenges across the globe” by the “indispensable country.” No “interests of world socialism” could beat “universal human rights” when it came to determining where and when to intervene. The “socialist community” led by Moscow stopped on the Elbe. It was replaced by the “International Community,” led by Washington, which stops nowhere.
“Under President Obama, this remains the self-referential framework for the policy of permanent global interventionism. Sooner or later, however, U.S. foreign policy will collide with reality-Iraq and Afghanistan appear not to have been sufficient wake-up calls-and Washington, shorn of its ideological blinkers, will finally embrace the foreign policy imperative of the 21st century: Solidarity and strategic cooperation between the United States, Europe and Russia on the basis of their shared moral, intellectual and cultural foundations, as they face similar challenges in the years to come.”
Srdja Trifkovic is Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, and Executive Director of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies
SOURCE Russia Insights www.russia-insights.com


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The American Council for Kosovo
The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies
REPORT ON THE KOSOVO CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON D.C.
“Kosovo, a Preventable Disaster.”
Capitol Hill Club, Washington, DC
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Over the past decade Washington D.C. has been the venue of countless conferences and symposia
on Kosovo by the International Crisis Group, the United States Institute of Peace, the Wilson
Institute, and a myriad of like-minded institutions. All of them shared one unchangeable
assumption: that independence is the only solution for the troubled southern Serbian province. Their
only disagreements, if any, have been how to get from where we are now to carving up Serbia and
welcoming “Kosova” into the “international community.” No voices opposing the wisdom of that
outcome have been allowed a proper platform and a fair hearing over the years.
In early September The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies initiated the convening of a
conference on Kosovo in Washington D.C. with the specific and frankly stated intention to
challenge this prevailing wisdom. The Foundation’s partner in organizing this conference was The
American Council for Kosovo , which provided support with the administrative and logistic tasks
and publicity.
After a preliminary event – a reception at Washington’s Capitol Hill Club for 50 invited guests on
Monday evening, October 22 – the conference itself was held on October 23 under the title of
“Kosovo, a Preventable Disaster.” The event was held from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. and attracted some
70 attendees in all. Admission was free. All direct costs, including hospitality and catering, as well
as travel, board and lodging for out-of-town panelists, were covered by the LBF.
Ten panelists who gave presentations at the conference did not agree on every point, but all of them
were generally critical of the assumptions that are enshrined in current U.S. policy on Kosovo. To
that extent, this conference was “the other side” in the hitherto non-existent debate, and it has
contributed to the creation of some badly lacking balance.
The conference was well attended by Washingtonian standards for this type of event, and the
quality of discussion during Q&A sessions was remarkably high. Those present included journalists
(and a TV camera team from the Voice of America), Congressional staffers, policy analysts from
various government agencies, foreign diplomats, and members of the public.
The keynote address by Ambassador James Bissett , Chairman of The Lord Byron Foundation,
opened with the warning that the breakup of Yugoslavia was the first serious challenge facing the
Western countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union – and they made a mess of it.
They are still making a mess of it; and if a decision is made in the coming months to
grant independence to the Albanians in Kosovo – as the United States seems
determined to do – then the decision will simply add to, and compound, the many
errors and mistakes made by the US-led Western powers… marked by duplicity,
double standards and cowardice… More seriously, western intervention in the
former Yugoslavia has shaken the global framework of international peace and
security that has governed the relationship among sovereign states since the founding
of the UN.
After analyzing the disastrous legal and political consequences of the current U.S. policy and stated
intentions, Mr. Bissett concluded by saying that the new breed of American political leaders have
betrayed the trust bestowed upon them by the Founding Fathers: “By doing so they have abandoned
the very principles upon which America was founded and which are enshrined in the UN Charter.
By doing so they have lost the moral authority that formed the real strength of the democratic
countries in overcoming the forces of totalitarianism.”
According to James Jatras , Director of the American Council for Kosovo, Washington’s irrational
and destructive Balkan policy is to a significant extent the product of the ignorant and misguided
notion that the U.S. can curry favor in the Islamic world by sacrificing Kosovo’s Christians to the
violent jihad-terror elements that dominate Kosovo’s Albanian leadership. Such an unfounded
notion, which shows a breathtaking incomprehension of the worldwide jihadist threat, has been
expressed by Mr. Bush personally, by other Administration officials, as well as by Democratic
leaders in Congress. Nonetheless, in Jatras’s view, prospects for a unilateral declaration of
Kosovo’s independence and Washington’s recognition are not a forgone conclusion in light of splits
in the EU and the certain opposition of not only Serbia and Russia, but China, India, Indonesia, and
many countries in Africa and Latin America. The Bush Administration’s failing domestic
credibility is a further weight on the policy, which can be dealt a fatal blow if enough Americans
raise their voices against it.
Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College John Schindler opened with the warning that “the
much-misunderstood Bosnian jihad remains a troubling template for future Al-Qa’ida operations in
the Balkans” – especially Kosovo – and across the world. Al Qa’ida considers the Bosnian war one
of its top-three victories (along with Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya in the mid-1990s), as it
provided Bin Laden’s legions with a place to win critical battlefield and propaganda experience. Dr.
Schindler said that the jihadist success in Bosnia can be attributed largely to the successful
application of information operations as a core element of strategy: “The importance of IO has been
regularly underestimated by the enemies of Al Qa’ida, and those who hope to defeat the jihad in the
Balkans and elsewhere must learn to match the enemy’s formidable capabilities in this arena.”
Recognizing Kosovo’s unilaterally complained independence would be counter-productive and
detrimental to that objective.
Professor of Political Science at National Defense University Stephen Mayer expressed the
opinion that in the long run some form of partition could offer a viable solution. This view, which
was disputed by some other participants, Dr. Mayer supported by pointing out that the notions of
multi-ethnicity, inter-communal tolerance, etc. are simply not applicable to Kosovo: a physical and
political division of the communities is the precondition of peace between them.
Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam Bill Warner presented a devastating account
of the fate of various minority non-Muslim populations in predominantly Muslim societies. What
has happened to the Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo fits in with the tradition of
intolerance that is endemic to the Muslim mindset, Warner argued, and that in Kosovo combines
with a particularly virulent form of ethnic nationalism to produce a lethal mix. This theme was also
developed by Ben Works , Director of SIRIUS. His focus was on the phenomenon of “predatory
migrations” – of which, in his view, Kosovo provides a classic example. Independence under
whatever name and with whatever “guarantees” would only reward the process of ethno-religious
cleansing thathas been going on since June 1999, and make its completion well nigh irreversible.
Former New York Times correspondent in Belgrade David Binder focused on the overall
dysfunctionality of today’s Kosovo: an economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of young
people with criminality as the sole career choice; an insupportably high birthrate; and a society
imbued with corruption and a state dominated by organized crime figures. Invoking a German
report released last January, Binder noted that political unrest and guerrilla fighting in the 1990s led
to basic changes in Kosovo-Albanian social structures. The result is a “civil war society in which
those inclined to violence, ill-educated and easily influenced people could make huge social leaps in
a rapidly constructed soldateska.”
The LBF Executive Director and Chronicles Foreign Affairs Editor Srdja Trifkovic focused on the
need for Serbia to diversify her foreign policy options. Instead of continuing to swear by the
pipedream of “European integrations” (not to mention the ludicrous “Atlantic” ones!), Belgrade
should make it clear to the West Europeans and to the U.S. that it can no longer be taken for
granted. If the pleas and arguments based on legality, morality and common sense are ignored,
Trifkovic asserted, then, perhaps, those based on Realpolitik will be heeded: Serbia is still the key to
the region, and ignoring her interests will carry a price – yet to be determined and stated by
Belgrade – for those who still think that they can carve the country up with impunity.
Doug Bandow started his closing remarks by noting that the only consistency in the U.S. policy in
the Balkans is the odd insistence that the Serbs have to lose on each and every account. In Bosnia
they are subjected to centralization, but in Kosovo they are asked to accept amputation in the name
of self-determination. The Administration is continuing to act as if the outcome in Kosovo is
preordained, which indicates that the U.S. has learned nothing since 1999. A unilateral declaration
of independence would have numerous bad consequences – marginalizing the UN Security Council,
dividing the EU, setting a collision course with Russia, and alienating Serbia which is the hub of the
western Balkans. To prevent a series of negative consequences, Bandow suggested, we need
negotiations without preconditions and without a prescribed outcome. At the moment the
Administration appears adamant to persist in its flawed policy, however. A clear warning from
Brussels that the EU would be badly split by the U.S. recognition would certainly help. Serbia
needs to focus on lobbying Europeans to that end.
The organizers have received numerous compliments from the audience on the selection of
speakers, the quality of their presentations, and the overall level of the event. A retired USAF
Colonel with diplomatic experience has noted that, unlike last year when the uphill battle seemed
almost insurmountable, this conference had a tone of cautious optimism:
Last year, most people thought KosovA independence was a done deal. Today…
Russia appears to be standing firm; there are cracks in the UN; and those cracks may
also apply to NATO. The speakers were excellent. Each gave a unique perspective
on the situation that, along with questions from the audience, generated interesting
and enlightening discussions. The luncheon remarks by Congresswoman Melissa
Bean (D-IL) and Dan Burton (R-IN) indicated some successful headway into
Congressional support.
CONCLUSION
The conference took place at a crucial moment for the future of Kosovo and Metohija. With the
threat looming of a Kosovo Albanian unilateral declaration of independence and Washington’s
pledge of recognition, authoritative voices of sanity have laid out the disaster that would ensue. But
will anyone listen? Predicting a sudden attack of common sense in Washington is always a risky
proposition.
The participation of such respected Members of Congress as Dan Burton and Melissa Bean show
that reasonable and courageous people remain even here. More importantly, the conference
exposed, if more proof could be needed, the bankruptcy and futility of America’s Kosovo policy. It
is a policy that cannot prevail if Serbia stays firm and focused, as now is evident to everyone but its
authors in government and a few think tanks.
The only remaining question is how much damage the current pilots of the U.S. ship of state will
inflict on the people of the region, the Serbian state and nation, the stability of the Balkan region,
the security of Europe, a vanishing regard for international legality, and, above all, the American
national interest, before

The Jewish Chronicle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Jewish Chronicle)
The Jewish Chronicle
JewishChronicle1896.jpg
Front page, 17 January 1896
Type Weekly newspaper
Format Tabloid
Owner Kessler Foundation (UK)
Editor Stephen Pollard[1]
Founded 1841
Language English
Headquarters 25 Furnival Street
London
EC4A 1JT
Circulation 29,079[2] (2011)
Official website www.thejc.com
The Jewish Chronicle (“The JC“) is a London-based Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.[3]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Publication data and readership figures

The Jewish Chronicle appears every Friday (except on days which are Jewish festivals, when it appears earlier in the week) providing news, views, social, cultural and sports reports, as well as editorials and a spectrum of readers’ opinions on the letter page. It is independent and owned by the Kessler Foundation (UK), a charitable trust in the United Kingdom which has overall control of the newspaper and its assets.
The overall readership is estimated at between 110,000-120,000 weekly reaching up to half of the total UK Jewish population. The newspaper’s website includes paid-for searchable archives of all editions from the first issue to the present, making it valuable for Anglo-Jewish genealogists and historians. The website was launched in 2000 and has won three successive Weekly Newspaper on the Web awards. It was relaunched in 2008.[4][5] On 17 January 2010, the site was briefly hacked by a group calling themselves “Palestinian Mujaheeds” who changed the front page to protest against Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.[6]
The JC sponsors the Jewish Sunday league system in London, known as the Maccabi Football League.

[edit] Interviews

The newspaper has conducted several high-profile interviews with leading figures. In 1981, the publication published an interview with then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher was questioned regarding the state of Israel and how Conservative policy affects the Jewish community.[7] In September 1999, it was the first non-Israeli newspaper to publish an interview with Ehud Barak during his term as Prime Minister of Israel[8]. In December 2007, the newspaper published an interview with the Labour Party donor, David Abrahams.[9][10]

[edit] Chief editors

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ ‘Fantastic timing’: a baptism of fire at the Jewish Chronicle The Independent. 11 January 2009
  2. ^ 2011 consumer magazine circulations: Full breakdown
  3. ^ The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 Cambridge University Press
  4. ^ Jewish Chronicle relaunches website with open source software Journalism.co.uk. 10 July 2008
  5. ^ Jewish Chronicle adds social networking in website revamp Brand Republic. 11 September 2008
  6. ^ Jewish Chronicle website hacked by ‘Palestinian Mujaheeds Graham Cluley’s Blog, sophos.com, 17 January 2010
  7. ^ Interview for Jewish Chronicle Margaret Thatcher Foundation. 19 June 1981
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ Jewish Chronicle defends its coverage of David Abrahams The Guardian. 7 December 2007
  10. ^ The Jewish Chronicle on how they got the Abrahams interview The Spectator. 7 December 2007
  11. ^ Jewish Chronicle appoints new editor The Guardian. 21 February 2006
  12. ^ Condé Nast to launch Wired in the UK The Guardian. 30 June 2008

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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Conservative Monday Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Monday Club)
Club header from the 1970s
The Conservative Monday Club (widely known as the Monday Club) is a British pressure group “on the right-wing” of the Conservative Party.[1]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Overview

Founded in the early 1960s during the party’s internal debate over decolonisation, its published aims state that “The Monday Club seeks to evolve a dynamic application of traditional Tory principles”.[2] Roger Griffin referred to the Club as practising an anti-socialist and elitist form of conservatism.[3]
The club is notable for having promoted a policy of voluntary, or assisted, repatriation for non-white immigrants,[4][5] which mirrored the pledge made in the Conservative Party’s General Election Manifesto of 1970.
After its 1997 general election defeat, the Conservative Party began decisive moves towards becoming more centrist; the 2002–2003 party chairman, Theresa May, would later state that it had been perceived by voters as the “Nasty Party”. The then party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, suspended the Monday Club’s longstanding links with the party in October 2001,[6] saying his party would have nothing to do with the organisation unless it stopped making “distasteful” remarks on race and immigration.[7]
Since 1993 new full members of the club must be members of the Conservative Party, though there is no such requirement for associate membership.[8] Monday Club observers, such as Denis Walker, have attended Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) conferences.
Part of the club’s agenda stresses support for what it calls “traditional Conservative values”, including “resistance to ‘political correctness‘”.

[edit] History

[edit] Foundation and early years

The club was founded on 1 January 1961, by four young Conservative Party members, Paul Bristol (a 24 year-old shipbroker and the Club’s first Chairman,[9] who left the Club in 1968), Ian Greig (Membership Secretary until 1969), Cedric Gunnery (Treasurer until 1992) and Anthony Maclaren. The club was formed “to force local party associations to discuss and debate party policy”. Its first general policy statement deplored the tendency of recent Conservative governments to adopt policies based upon expediency and demanded that instead Tory principles should be the guiding influence. It believed that the principles needing to be reasserted included the preservation of the constitution and existing institutions, the freedom of the individual, the private ownership of property, and the need for Britain to play a leading part in world affairs.[10] It disliked what it regarded as the expediency, cynicism and materialism which motivated Harold Macmillan‘s government. In addition it was concerned that during this period “the left wing of the Party (had) gained a predominant influence over policy” and that as a result the Conservative Party had shifted to the left, so that “the floating voter could not detect, as he should, major differences between it and the Socialists” and, furthermore, “loyal Conservatives had become disillusioned and dispirited.”[11]
The group initially brought together supporters of White Rhodesia and South Africa; the main impetus for the group’s formation was the Conservative’s new decolonisation policies, in particular as a general reaction to Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change‘ speech made at Cape Town, South Africa. The club stated that Macmillan had “turned the Party Left”, and their first pamphlet opposed these policies, as indicative of the Conservative Party’s move towards liberalism.[12]
The 5th Marquess of Salisbury (1893–1972), who had resigned from Macmillan’s Cabinet over the Prime Minister’s liberal direction, became its first president in January 1962, when he stated “there was never a greater need for true conservatism than there is today”.[13] By the end of 1963 there were eleven Members of Parliament in the Club, which then only had an overall membership of about 300.[14]
The Club was courted by many Conservative politicians, not least the Conservative Party leader Alec Douglas Home who was guest-of-honour at the Club’s annual dinners of 1964 and 1969, and Enoch Powell, who, in a speech in 1968, claimed that “it was due to the Monday Club that many are brought within the Conservative Party who might otherwise be estranged from it”.[15] Some argued that the Club had a disproportionate influence within Conservative circles, especially after six of its MPs joined the Cabinet in 1970.[16]
Harold Wilson, twice Labour Prime Minister, sarcastically described the club as “the guardian of the Tory conscience”.[15]

[edit] Members

By 1970 eighteen Members of Parliament were Club members:[17]
In the 1970 Conservative Party election victory, six club MPs were given government positions.[18] In addition, the following club members were elected that year:[17]
Among sitting MPs who joined the Club after the election and other elections were:
A number of other Monday Club members contested Labour-held seats, some of which had large majorities, and although the challenge was unsuccessful the majorities were reduced. These included Tim Keigwin, who almost unseated the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe at North Devon, and David Clarke who failed by only 76 votes at Watford.[19]
By 1971, the Club “undoubtedly had the largest membership of any conservative group and included 55 different groups in universities and colleges, 35 Members of Parliament with six in the government, and 35 Peers”.[19] Enoch Powell was a constant supporter of the club until his death, although he never took up membership.
John Biggs-Davison, MP, in his Foreword to Robert Copping’s second book on the history of the club,[20] stated that “by its principles [the club] has kept alive true Tory beliefs and held within its ranks many who contemplated defecting from the Conservative and Unionist Party”. The club’s Chairman, David Storey, described it in June 1981 as “an anchor to a ship”, referring to the Conservative Party.

[edit] The Thatcher years

Three of the Young Members’ Group at a Club Conference at Chilham Castle, 1980: John R. Pinniger (YMG Chairman), Richard Turnbull, & Gregory Lauder-Frost.
The club’s revised Constitution (21 May 1984) stated that “the objects of the Club are to support the Conservative & Unionist Party in policies designed:
  • to maintain loyalty to the Crown and to uphold the sovereignty of Parliament, the security of the realm, and defence of the nation against external aggression and internal subversion;
  • to safeguard the liberty of the subject and integrity of the family in accordance with the customs, traditions, and character of the British people;
  • to maintain the British constitution in obedience and respect for the laws of the land, freedom of worship and our national heritage;
  • to promote an economy consistent with national aspirations and Tory ideals;
  • to encourage members of the club to play an active part, at all levels, in the affairs of the Conservative and Unionist Party.”
Members gather for the Club’s 20th anniversary riverboat party organised by the Young Members’ Group, 15 July 1981.
During the period that Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party, the Monday Club were prolific publishers of booklets, pamphlets, policy papers, an occasional newspaper, Right Ahead, and a magazine Monday World edited for some years by Sir Adrian FitzGerald, Bart., Sam Swerling, and later, Eleanor Dodd. In the October 1982 edition MP Harvey Proctor called for the scrapping of the Commission for Racial Equality, Sir Patrick Wall commented on the ‘Falkland Islands Campaign‘, James Molyneaux had an article ‘What Future for Ulster’, and Dr. Harvey Ward had an article on ‘Zimbabwe Today’. The September 1984 edition of Monday News carried the headline ‘Kinnock Talks to Terrorists’, quoting former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock‘s declaration to the South African African National Congress‘s Oliver Tambo that the ANC in South Africa could expect financial and material assistance from a future Labour government. Other attacks were made upon then-Greater London Council leader Ken Livingstone inviting Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to visit London in 1982.

[edit] Old Guard departs

The Foreign Affairs Committee were responsible for the Club’s Russia Dinner on 11 January 1990, with Vladimir Cyrillovich, Grand Duke of Russia, pretender to the Imperial throne, being the guest-of-honour.[21][22]
In 1988–9, a group of longstanding members led by Gregory Lauder-Frost, the club’s Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, succeeded in getting elected to the key posts on the Executive Council, with Dr. Mark Mayall as Deputy Chairman, and Lauder-Frost as the Political Secretary.
Executive Committee members Gregory Lauder-Frost, Denis Walker, Sam Swerling, Dr.Mark Mayall, April 1991.
At the beginning of January 1991, the Monday Club News announced the abolition of the only salaried position, that of Director (then held by the Club’s Treasurer, Cedric Gunnery, one of the Club’s founders). Although this was entirely due to the Club’s precarious financial state,[23] some felt more sinister moves afoot. Negative news stories began emerging[24][25] and resignations followed. An internal investigation followed. The chairman, David Storey, lost an almost unanimous vote of no confidence on 17 January 1991, and his membership was terminated by the Club’s Executive Council on 11 February on the grounds that “he has engaged in behaviour prejudicial to the best interests, reputation, objects, and other members of the Monday Club; by abusing his position as Chairman in encouraging members to leave the Monday Club and to join a new political group”.[26][27] Dr. Mayall became Acting Chairman until the May AGM when he was confirmed in that post by election. By 1992, the new team had the national (as opposed to branches) membership over 1600 again.
Personal legal problems forced Lauder-Frost’s departure on 31 May 1992 and subsequently the Club descended into in-fighting, with more departures and failed expulsion attempts resulting in huge legal bills. Dr. Mark Mayall’s term as Chairman expired in April 1993 and he left the group. Control passed effectively into the hands of Denis Walker, a former Minister for Education in the Rhodesian government. He changed the role of the club from a pressure group to a Conservative Party support group, bringing in a rule that all members must firstly be members of the party, something that prior to 1992 had been constantly opposed.

[edit] Organisation

[edit] Premises

The national club established itself in offices at 51-53 Victoria Street, a few minutes walk from the Palace of Westminster. The club was, however, always a pressure group, remaining separate from the Conservative Party organisation. Around 1980, the Victoria Street building was cleared for demolition, and the club moved its offices to 122 Newgate Street, London, EC1, opposite the Old Bailey. High rents forced another move to 4 Orlando Road, Clapham Common, and finally, in 1991, the club’s office was moved to an office belonging to W. Denis Walker, opposite Highams Park railway station, with new telephone numbers, and a new Post Office Box number in central London. The newsletter stated that “it is our long-term aim to relocate back to the very heart of London”.

[edit] Branches

In addition to the national club, which operated through an elected Executive Council and numerous policy groups or committees, there were semi-autonomous county branches, a Young Members Monday Club, and numerous university Monday Clubs, the most prominent and active being at the University of Oxford.

[edit] Policy committees

The Monday Club had various study groups (later renamed policy committees) including:

[edit] Foreign affairs

[edit] Anti-communism

At the Western Goals Institute‘s ‘El Salvador’ Dinner, London, 25 September 1989. L to R: Denis Walker, Lord Sudeley, El Salvador‘s Foreign Minister, Andrew Smith (yellow tie), Dr. Harvey Ward
The Club was anti-communist and had an active Defence Committee chaired for over 15 years by Sir Patrick Wall, MP, MC, and produced much literature on the perceived threat posed by Soviets and communists everywhere.
When it appeared that communism was failing in the Eastern Bloc, the Club’s Foreign Affairs Committee called upon Members of Parliament to be ready and to argue for the German borders to be restored to the position they stood at on 1 January 1938, saying there must be no gains for communism.[28]
Club officers attended a Western Goals Institute dinner in September 1989 in honour of Salvadorian president Alfredo Cristiani, whose military was at the time fighting the FMLN.[29]
The Club also took a hard line on the return of White Russians by the British Army to Stalin’s forces in 1945–6, who executed nearly all of them. In this respect they gave their support to Count Nikolai Tolstoy, historian and author of Victims of Yalta and The Minister and the Massacres, who was then being sued for libel, by holding a major dinner for him at London’s Charing Cross Hotel on 26 October 1988.[30]

[edit] Africa

Ian Smith makes a point at a dinner organised in his honour by The Hon. Denis Walker (far left) at Lympne Castle, Kent, 23 July 1990. Smith is flanked by Nicholas and Ann Winterton, both MPs, and Rhodesian flags.
The club opposed what it described as the “premature” independence of Kenya, and the breakup of the Central African Federation, which was the subject of its first major public meeting in September 1961.[31] It was fundamentally opposed to decolonisation, and defended white minority rule in South Africa and Rhodesia.
During the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) period in Rhodesia, the club strongly backed the government of Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front, being seen as its strongest supporters in Britain. In November 1963, the club had hosted a large reception for Smith at the Howard Hotel in London. That was followed the next year by receptions for Clifford Dupont and Moise Tshombe. The Club continued its support for white minority rule in South Africa with Lauder-Frost organising a large dinner in central London, on 5 June 1989, for their guest-of-honour Dr. Andries Treurnicht, Leader of the Conservative Party of South Africa, and his delegation. Tim Janman, MP, and the Lord Sudeley were amongst those present from parliament.[32]

[edit] Croatia

Meet the President: The Monday Club delegation to Croatia, 12 October 1991: L to R: Roger Knapman, MP, Andrew Hunter, MP, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, President Franjo Tuđman, Gregory Lauder-Frost, The Hon. Denis Walker, Rod Morris.
The government of Franjo Tuđman in Croatia invited the Monday Club to send a delegation to observe their conflict with Serbia, in October 1991, when the Serbian Orthodox minority in the Roman Catholic-dominated country refused to recognise Tuđman’s nationalist government.[33][34] It was the first British political delegation to go to Croatia during the conflict.[35]
The Hon. Denis Walker & Andrew Hunter MP on the Croatia-Serbia front line as part of the Monday Club delegation, 12 October 1991

[edit] European Union

Debate within the Club was intense on the European issue. In the early days of the EEC one of the Club’s MPs, Geoffrey Rippon, was so pro-EEC that he was known as ‘Mr Europe’. Because of the divisions within the Club on this issue the decision was taken not to have a policy on it. However, by 1980 the mood had changed. A Club Discussion Paper in October 1980 was entitled Do Tories Really want to Scrap 80% of Britain’s Fishing Fleet, and the Club adopted a firm anti-EU position. Teddy Taylor MP, an anti EEC man, became Chairman of the Club’s EEC Affairs Policy Committee and authored a Club Policy Paper in December 1982 entitled Proposals to Rescue the British Fishing Industry. The Club’s Scottish branch’s newspaper, The Challenger, carried a further article against the EU by Taylor in September 1985 entitled Swallowing the Nation, and Enoch Powell also spoke against the EU at one of the Club’s fringe meetings at the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool on 8 October 1991, with Lauder-Frost presiding, which was filmed and broadcast on BBC TV‘s Newsnight that night. In 1992 the Chairman, Dr. Mark Mayall, authored another Club booklet entitled: Maastricht: The High Tide of European Federalism, a fierce attack on the EU.

[edit] Immigration

In September 1972, the club held a “Halt Immigration Now!” public meeting in Westminster Central Hall, opposite Parliament, at which the speakers Ronald Bell, QC, MP, John Biggs-Davison, MP, Harold Soref, MP, and John Heydon Stokes, MP, (all club members) called on the government to halt all immigration, repeal the Race Relations Act, not the separate Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, and start a full repatriation scheme. A resolution was drafted, approved by the meeting, and delivered to the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who replied that “the government had no intention of repealing the Race Relations Act”. When Reginald Maudling resigned from the Cabinet, the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, commented that “Mr. Heath has been left to wrestle with the Monday Club single-handed.”[36]
In October 1982, the Monday Club published its latest, slightly revised, policy on immigration. It called for:
  1. Scrapping of the Commission for Racial Equality and Community Relations Councils.
  2. Repeal of the race relations laws.
  3. An end to the use of race or colour as criteria for the distribution of state benefits & loans.
  4. An end to positive discrimination and all special treatment based upon race or colour.
  5. An end to all further large-scale permanent immigration from the New Commonwealth.
  6. An improved repatriation scheme with generous resettlement grants for all those from New Commonwealth countries who wish to take advantage of them.
  7. The redesignation of the Ministry of Overseas Aid as a Ministry for Overseas Resettlement.
The Club’s position on immigration was reiterated in a letter in The Times from Lauder-Frost on the Club’s behalf in October 1991 where he stated that the annual levels of immigration “were unacceptable” and called for “the strictest possible entry to Britain for those of other cultures.”[37]

[edit] Northern Ireland

Following an Official Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing at Aldershot, Hampshire, in February 1972, club member and MP Jill Knight called for legislation to outlaw the Official IRA and its political wing, Official Sinn Féin. The club was opposed to the dismantling of the Stormont government in Northern Ireland and the imposition of direct rule.[38] On 7 September 1989, Lauder-Frost, on behalf of the Club, denounced “the disgraceful Anglo-Irish Agreement” in The Sun.

[edit] Controversies and criticism

The club has been described as “far-right” by journalists in newspapers across the political spectrum from The Daily Telegraph to The Guardian and, in 2002, as a “bastion on the Tory hard right” by the British Broadcasting Corporation.[39] The Guardian claimed in 1968 that the organisation was “probably the nearest British equivalent to the American John Birch Society“.[40]
It was claimed by opponents of the club that many members had drawn closer to the National Front, it being reported as early as 1973 that NF members were moving to take over branches of the club.[41] Thurlow, however, stated that it was doubted that members of the Monday Club were secret or even potential nazis.[42] Nevertheless the bad publicity led to a series of purges, mainly in Club branches.[43]
On 24 February 1991, The Observer ran a lengthy article entitled “Far Right takes over the Monday Club”, stating that a number of senior members had tendered their resignations in protest at the Club’s “takeover” by “extreme right-wingers”, some of whom were associated with the Western Goals Institute. The Club’s solicitors, Rubenstein, Callingham & Gale, sent a formal letter of protest to the editor of the Observer about the article, and demanded a right-of-reply for the Club. The editor agreed and Lauder-Frost, writing on behalf of the Club, subsequently challenged the article’s accusations in a Letter to the Editor, which was published the following Sunday. He denied that a takeover had occurred, and claimed that none of the Club’s policies had changed and that its direction was consistent with its aims and historical principles.
The playwright David Edgar described the Monday Club in an academic essay as “proselytis[ing] the ancient and venerable conservative traditions of paternalism, imperialism and racism.”[44]

[edit] Suspension of links by the Conservative party (2001)

Regardless of the fact that the Monday Club was a completely autonomous pressure-group and not part of the Conservative Party organisation, in 2001, Conservative Party chairman David Davis informed the club’s National Executive that links between it and the party were being severed until it stopped promoting several of its (long-held and established[45]) policies such as the voluntary repatriation of ethnic minorities. Davis later told the media: “I have told them that until a number of things are concluded—particularly some concerns about the membership of the club, and a review of the club’s constitution and a requirement that the club will not promulgate or discuss policies relating to race—the club is suspended from any association with the Conservative party”.[46] Three MPs, Andrew Hunter, Andrew Rosindell and Angela Watkinson, were ordered to resign from the club.
On the 10 May 2002, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported that the club sought to restore its links with the Conservative Party.[7] At the following Club Annual General meeting in April 2002, members approved two motions proposed by Michael Keith Smith, (also Chairman of the Conservative Democratic Alliance); one reaffirming the Club’s opposition to mass immigration, and another empowering Club officers to institute legal action against the Conservative Party following the Club’s ‘suspension’ by them. A third motion, asking the Club to call for the sacking of John Bercow, then Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and former Monday Club member, for his “hypocrisy”, was defeated.[47]
The Times reported (2 June 2006) that, as the club “is now slowly nudging back into the mainstream, many members feel that it is time to return to the fold”.
The Monday Club, having changed its original raison d’être as a pressure group, and whose membership is now said to be back below 600, now has very little influence on the agenda of the Conservative Party. Many of its former members subsequently joined the Conservative Democratic Alliance.

[edit] Monday Club publications

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Thurlow, Richard, Fascism in Britain, London, 1st edition 1987, revised reprint 2006, p.246, ISBN 1-86064-337-X where the author also refers to “traditional party supporters feeling intensly alienated by the Heath administration and made their opposition felt through their support of Enoch Powell“.
  2. ^ The Monday Club – Organization & Membership published on the back cover of the Club’s 1968 booklet Student Power by Patrick Wall, MC, MP.
  3. ^ Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism, London, 1991, p. 161, ISBN 0-86187-112-X
  4. ^ “Tories cut Monday Club link over race policies.” The Guardian. October 19, 2001.
  5. ^ The Independent – Five more names go in purge of Tory right[dead link]
  6. ^ “Tories suspend link with Monday Club.” BBC News. October 18, 2001.
  7. ^ a b Right-wing club appeals for Tory return.” BBC News. May 10, 2002.
  8. ^ Monday Club membership application form.
  9. ^ Seyd, Patrick, Factionalism within the Conservative Party: The Monday Club in Government and Opposition, volume 7, no. 4., 1972.
  10. ^ Policy and Aims. The Monday Club, December 1961.
  11. ^ The Aims of the Monday Club, Executive Council publication, Monday Club, 1970, p. 1.
  12. ^ Copping, Robert, The Story of The Monday Club – The First Decade, Current Affairs Information Unit, London, April 1972: 5.
  13. ^ Copping, 1972, p. 5.
  14. ^ Copping, 1972, p. 7.
  15. ^ a b Copping, 1972, p. 26.
  16. ^ Messina, Anthony M., Race and Party Competition in Britain, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 138, ISBN 0-19-827534-X
  17. ^ a b Copping, 1972, p. 21.
  18. ^ (cf. Messina, p. 138)
  19. ^ a b Copping, 1972, p. 22.
  20. ^ Copping, Robert, The Monday Club – Crisis and After, Current Affairs Information Unit, London, May 1975
  21. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1990, p. 16.
  22. ^ The Independent, 13 January 1990, article: “Tsar’s heir plans for day of Restoration”.
  23. ^ Monday Club News, January 1991 (circular)
  24. ^ Mail on Sunday, 3 February 1991
  25. ^ The Observer, 24 February 1991, major article by David Rose.
  26. ^ Searchlight (magazine), London, March & June 1991 editions
  27. ^ Club Minutes
  28. ^ The Independent, 4 March 1990.
  29. ^ The Daily Telegraph and The Times, Court & Social pages, both on 26 September 1989.
  30. ^ The Daily Telegraph, Court & Social columns, 27 October 1988.
  31. ^ Copping, 1972 p.6
  32. ^ The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, Court & Social columns, 6 June 1989.
  33. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 7/12/2002
  34. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 13/9/2003
  35. ^ Times, 5 May 1992, carried a letter from Gregory Lauder-Frost on behalf of the Club about this delegation and its findings.
  36. ^ Copping, 1975, pp. 6–7.
  37. ^ The Times (letters), 9 October 1991.
  38. ^ Copping, 1975, pp. 5, 6, 9.
  39. ^ [1]
  40. ^ Powell and His Allies, Labour Research Department, (p. 12) 1969.
  41. ^ Time – Bloody Monday
  42. ^ Thurlow, 2006, p. 251.
  43. ^ Copping, 1975
  44. ^ Levitas, Ruth, (editor), The Ideology of the New Right, Cambridge, 1986, p. 60, ISBN 0-7456-0190-1
  45. ^ Messina, 1989, p. 138
  46. ^ The Guardian – Tories cut Monday Club link over race policies
  47. ^ The Independent, 18 May 2002.

[edit] References

  • Copping, Robert, No Punches Pulled – Britain Today, Current Affairs Information Service (CAIS), Ilford, Essex, n/d but probably circa 1970 (P/B).
  • Copping, Robert, The Story of The Monday Club – The First Decade, (i) (Foreword by George Pole), Current Affairs Information Service, Ilford, Essex, April 1972 (P/B).
  • Copping, Robert, The Monday Club – Crisis and After, (foreword by John Biggs-Davison, MP), (ii) CAIS, Ilford, May 1975 (P/B).
  • Rose, Professor Richard, Politics in England – Persistence and Change, London, 1st published 1965. 4th edition 1985, p.301, ISBN 0-571-13830-6
  • Heffer, Simon, Like the Roman – The Life of Enoch Powell, London, 1998, ISBN 0-297-84286-2 (many references to the Monday Club).
  • Coxall, Bill, and Lynton Robins, Contemporary British Politics, Macmillan Press, Basingstoke, 1993 reprint, (P/B), Monday Club profile on p.239. ISBN 0-333-34046-9

[edit] External links


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Western Goals Institute

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Western Goals Institute (WGI) was a conservative pressure group in Britain, re-formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which originated in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation. Its stated intent was anti-communism, although the group was also known for its opposition to non-white immigration into Europe and Britain.
The Institute and its predecessor were affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League. In July 1990, WGI sent a delegation to the 22nd WACL Conference in Brussels and from 1991 WGI was the UK chapter of the senior World League. In 1992 the World League declined to be further associated with the Institute.[citation needed] The group was disbanded in 2001.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] early aims

The Western Goals Institute was founded (as Western Goals UK) in May 1985 as the British branch of the American organisation the Western Goals Foundation. In March 1987 Western Goals UK had filed a complaint with the Charity Commission for England and Wales against three major British charities, Oxfam, War on Want, and Christian Aid claiming that they were involved in political campaigning work (which was then contrary to UK charity law) in support of left-wing organizations due to their campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. The Charities Commission partially upheld the Western Goals complaint,[1] obliging War on Want (which at the time was led by Labour MP George Galloway) to halt political campaigning.[2]
In line with the ‘Reagan doctrine’ policies of its American patrons, Western Goals UK had established links with militant, and often violent, anti-Communist groups internationally. These include the Angolan UNITA movement (in October 1988 Western Goals facilitated the visit to London of UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi) and the Salvadoran Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, whose leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson, became, along with US Major General John K. Singlaub, the group’s international patrons.[3] It was also claimed that Western Goals may have been used by its U.S. partners as a conduit for funds to the Nicaraguan Contras following the ‘Contragate’ scandal.[4]
At the Western Goals Institute ‘El Salvador’ Presidential Dinner, London, 25 September 1989. L to R: Denis Walker, Lord Sudeley, El Salvador‘s Foreign Minister Ricardo Acevedo Peralta, Andrew Smith (yellow tie), Dr. Harvey Ward
As a result of their expanding activities, membership and organisation, Western Goals UK was relaunched in 1989, becoming the Western Goals Institute, independent of the U.S. foundation. The Institute’s stated aims were to “combat the insidious menace of liberalism and Communism within all sectors of British society”[5] and its initial activities included denouncing what it described as “extremist” left-wing Labour Party candidates. In addition 1989 was the year it formed close links with the Conservative Party of South Africa which it saw as fighting communism in the form of the ANC.
Initially, the Western Goals Institute drew some support from Conservative parliamentarians. The London magazine City Limits (21 June 1990) stated that “Western Goals is talking the same blunt authoritarian language as many Tory backbenchers and rank and file Tories. It is a group to be reckoned with … having a formidable list of honorary patrons and Vice-Presidents”.
The Institute stated its aims on the BBC in 1991:
“Western Goals works to establish networks and links with conservative groups dedicated to the preservation of the cultures and identities of western nations. We are conservatives who believe in traditional conservative values. A multi-cultural society does not work. We wish to protect the way of life we had before immigrants arrived. It was a mistake to permit these people to come here. Politicians must now accept this. Large numbers of immigrants reject European culture and wish to remain alien in religion and culture. We want European culture in European countries. We would seek to have treaties with countries to permit resettlement.”.[6]
Following the end of the Cold War, however, the group lost its original anti-Communist raison d’etre in Europe, at least, but continued to forge links with other ultra-conservative political parties such as the Front National of France. This association with Le Pen and his party resulted in many of the group’s former Conservative supporters distancing themselves from the organization.

[edit] Relationship with the Conservative Party

The WGI initially worked towards its goals within the British Conservative Party, in particular via the right-wing Conservative Monday Club with whom it shared some members.
In the late 1980s, WGI’s predecessor, Western Goals UK, had established a parliamentary advisory committee of Conservative MPs which included Sir Patrick Wall, Nicholas Winterton, Neil Hamilton and Bill Walker, as well as Martin Smyth of the Ulster Unionist Party. In 1991, Western Goals was accused in a newspaper report of engineering a “take-over” of the Conservative Monday Club, and there were reports that some veteran members believed the Club had become “more extreme”.[7] Club Political Secretary Gregory Lauder-Frost rejected these claims in a right-of-reply letter published the following week.

[edit] Front National

Pierre Ceyrac, MEP., speaking to the Western Goals Institute, 12 October 1989.
On 12 October 1989, the Western Goals Institute hosted a controversial fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, at which Pierre Ceyrac, a Front National Member of the European Parliament, was the Guest Speaker.[8] In December 1991, after a visit by French right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen at the request of the Institute, its Director Andrew Smith was quoted as saying:
“There is scope for a radical right alternative outside the Conservative Party. The Tories have betrayed their principles since Mrs Thatcher fell. With this contact with European leaders we are laying the foundations for a new party.”.[9]
The possibility of founding a new right-wing party, on the model of Le Pen’s Front National, appears to have been abandoned by Smith after the Conservative Party’s win in the 1992 General Election ensured that proportional representation stayed off the political agenda for the foreseeable future. However even at the time, the gradual defection of the parliamentary advisory committee and the decision of the leadership of the Monday Club and associated MPs to stay away from the Le Pen Dinner made the prospect unlikely.[10]

[edit] Opposition grows

In September 1992, Sir Norman Fowler, in an attempt to distance the Conservative Party from the Institute, said that “No one in Western Goals is known by Central Office to belong to our party”. This followed the Institute’s invitation to Jean-Marie Le Pen, and 31 year-old Italian parliamentary deputy, Alessandra Mussolini, to address fringe meetings at the 1992 Conservative Party conference (although they both were unable to come to Britain and the meetings were subsequently cancelled). The invitation to Miss Mussolini were said to have “caused outrage”, and led to calls for a ban on her entering the country.[11] The Institute rejected Fowler’s remark, saying that the majority of those associated with the institute held Conservative Party membership.
The Jewish Chronicle reported on 25 September 1992 that Marc Gordon, director of the libertarian International Freedom Foundation urged the Conservative Party to expel members of Western Goals, and in the same newspaper on 2 October, Julian Lewis (now a Member of Parliament, then deputy head of Conservative Central Office’s Research Department), said he would strongly advise local associations that Western Goals was hostile to Conservative objectives. The Guardian subsequently accused the WGI of attempting “to infiltrate fascists into the Conservative Party”,[12] which the WGI disputed as “rubbish”.

[edit] Notable activities

Gregory Lauder-Frost & Clive Derby-Lewis in Brussels as WGI delegates to the World Anti-Communist League Conference, 21 July 1990.
WGI supported the continuance of apartheid in South Africa, and hosted a visit to the UK, in June 1989, by the hierarchy of the Conservative Party of South Africa, which some years previously broke away from the National Party of South Africa after P.W. Botha instituted limited reforms. The delegation included the Conservative Party leader Andries Treurnicht. A press conference was held for the delegation in a committee room of the House of Lords on 5 June.[13] Conservative Party of South Africa MP Clive Derby-Lewis, then one of sixty members of the integrated State President’s Council, was made an honorary vice-president of the WGI. Derby-Lewis is currently serving a life sentence for conspiracy to murder Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party and leader of the ANC‘s terrorist arm, who was assassinated in 1993. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2 July 1993) lists the Western Goals Institute as an “impediment” to the elimination of racial discrimination in South Africa, saying of the Institute that it “claims to be devoted to protecting the Western way of life by offering self-defence training to white South Africans”.[14]
On 25 September 1989, Lord Sudeley chaired a Western Goals dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand for El Salvador’s President, Alfredo Cristiani, and his inner cabinet. The guest list included figures such as Sir Alfred Sherman (policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher), Lord Nicholas Hervey, Antony Flew, Zigmunt Szkopiak, Denis Walker and Harvey Ward.[15]
Torchlit small boat flotilla enters the lake at Moln, near Hamburg, as part of the anti-Communist demonstration on 12 August 1989, to which the WGI sent a delegation.
In Europe, Western Goals gave their open support to the French Front National, the populist right-wing political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen. On 12 October 1989, WGI hosted a controversial fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, addressed by Front National Member of the European Parliament, Pierre Ceyrac. Western Goals also examined the possibility of links with the right-wing German Republicans party, which in 1989 had six members in the European Parliament.
WGI delegation looks across no-mans land into East Germany (GDR) east of Moln where numerous refugees had been shot dead before reaching the west. 13 August 1989.
On 12 August 1989, a delegation from the Western Goals Institute attended an anti-communist demonstration at Moln, near Lübeck which over 20,000 people attended. The rally was organised by Die Deutschen Konservativen e. V., led by Joachim Siegerist, now a Latvian parliamentarian with whom the WGI had contacts.[16]
The group hosted social events including an Annual Dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria on 24 November 1989 when the guest of honour was Kenneth Griffith. On 20 November 1990, they hosted the General Franco Memorial Dinner, commemorating the anniversary of his death. This was also chaired by Baron Sudeley. A WGI notice in The Times stated that the late ruler of Spain was “remembered as a hero against communism”.
Western Goals hosted a widely reported dinner for Jean-Marie Le Pen at the Charing Cross Hotel in the Strand, London in December 1991. There was a large demonstration against the dinner outside the hotel and some damage to property took place, notably the hotel’s front doors and surroundings, which were smashed; an exclusive of the dinner appeared in The Mail on Sunday on 8 December. Western Goals director Andrew Smith speaking in April 1993 is quoted as saying that “on reflection the Le Pen visit was the zenith and also the beginning of the end”[16] for him. However Private Eye cited him at the same time as saying that the Institute was “currently inactive, i.e: in a state of ‘suspended animation’, but we have other plans and projects under way.”.[17]

[edit] Last years

Negative publicity, the departure from the Directorate in late 1993 of A.V.R. Smith (replaced by Stuart Millson) and the end of the Soviet Union, meant that the group’s activities diminished. In 1994/95 Lauder-Frost, writing as WGI Vice-President, called for the Union of Great Britain to be strengthened[18] and rounded on John Major and Jeremy Hanley‘s comments about traditional Tories being “the enemies within” the Conservative Party.[19] A successful Annual Dinner, chaired by Lauder-Frost, was held at the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria, in March 1995, at which the guest-of-honour was the Democratic Unionist Party Member of Parliament, Peter Robinson, now First Minister of Northern Ireland.
Lack of adequate finance reduced any subsequent campaigning to their occasional policy papers, the glossy newsletter, press releases, and letters to editors. The organisation was wound up in 2001 following the death of its Patron, General Sir Walter Walker.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Charity Ads were biased politically – ruling, The Universe (newspaper), 12 June 1987
  2. ^ War on Want rapped for political ads, Sunday Telegraph, 7 June 1987
  3. ^ An Introduction to the Western Goals Institute, 1988.
  4. ^ Tories linked to Contra-rebel fundraisers, The Scotsman, 10 June 1987
  5. ^ The Times, 13 October 1989
  6. ^ BBC Radio 4 interview, 1991
  7. ^ Observer, 24 February 1991
  8. ^ The Guardian, 13 & 21 October 1989.
  9. ^ Observer, 8 December 1991
  10. ^ The Guardian, 24 April 1993, “Guns, Goons and Western Goals, David Pallister, David Beresford and Angela Johnson report on the international connections of Clive Derby-Lewis, arrested by Chris Hani murder investigators.”
  11. ^ Daily Mail, 3 September 1992
  12. ^ Guardian, 18 August 1993
  13. ^ The Tribune, 2 June, and The Independent 2 and 6 June 1989
  14. ^ UNHCHR Report
  15. ^ The Daily Telegraph and Times, Court & Social page, 26 September 1989
  16. ^ a b The Guardian, 24 April 1993, article: “Guns, Goons and Western Goals”, by David Pallister, David Beresford and Angela Johnson.
  17. ^ Private Eye, 9 April 1993, no.817, p.7
  18. ^ The Scotsman, (Letters) 19 October 1994
  19. ^ London Evening Standard (letters) 4 January 1995.
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Sir Alfred Sherman:

WHAT IS GOOD FOR AMERICA …


International Conference: AMERICA’S INTERVENTION IN THE BALKANS


Chicago, February 28th – March 2nd, 1997
Address by Sir Alfred Sherman Chairman


    “Sherman is best known as Margaret Thatcher’s guru, co-founder of the rightwing Centre for Policy Studies and the man who did as much as anyone else to roll back of the frontiers of the Tory state from 1979.”
Qoute from The Guardian, November 10, 2000
The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every sense of tbe word. The US administration helped start it, kept it going, and prevented its early end. Indeed all the indications are that it intends to continue the war in the near future, as soon as its Moslem proteges are fully armed and trained. How it did so is common knowledge. Why it did so, and the implications for American defense and foreign policy generally remain to be elucidated. The facts are clear. In 1991, the break up of Yugoslavia, initiated by Germany which was reunified and dominant in the European Union, led to conflict in Croatia and brought the future of Bosnia onto the agenda. It had become clear that whereas a united secular Bosnia was feasible within Yugoslavia – any Yugoslavia – its perpetuation as a sovereign State created serious difficulties. A strong current of Moslem opinion led by Alija Izetbegovic desired to restore the status quo ante 1878, when Bosnia was a Moslem province ruled by the Sheriyat, with its Christian majority in subjection and subordination, and the whole province in constant turmoil.
Under Yugoslav rule, the Moslem minority enjoyed civil rights by Western standards, but these were basically unacceptable to committed Moslems, for whom Moslem rule independent of infidel power was a religious prerequisite. (This is clear from all Moslem theology and its associated political writings. It colors all statements by Moslems in Yugoslavia since 1878. It was repeated in their own publications, e.g., the periodical Islamska Misao and in Izetbegovic’s Islamic Declaration, though bien pensauts are as reluctant to take it seriously as an expression of intent as their predecessors were to take Mein Kampf seriously.)
At the outset of the present crisis the Croats of Bosnia wished to create their own state in association with Croatia. The Serbs, for their part, wished to avoid being placed under foreign rule, having suffered for several hundred years under Roman Catholic and Moslem misrule, including the clero-fascist Ustasa regime which in 1941-45 perpetrated genocide against the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia with active Moslem participation. It is not generally known or remembered that during the first world war, when the Germans occupied Serbia after the Austro-Hungarians had failed to conquer it, and handed out areas to Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian occupation a third of the Serb population was murdered, or died of starvation and disease. At all events, the European Union having broken up Yugoslavia on German prompting and thus unleashed war in Croatia, called meetings to prevent the same thing happening in Bosnia. Lord Carrington, one time British Foreign Secretary and Secretary-General of NATO, was chairman of this endeavor working closely with the Portuguese Foreign Minister in Lisbon, under the Portuguese Presidency. Carrington’s task of damage limitation was made all the more difficult when Izetbegovic, a militant fundamentalist, declared that the independence of Bosnia was a great event, second in his Moslem calendar only to 1453 – the fall of Constantinople.
However, Lord Carrington, who had fought through the second world war and regarded wars as worth avoiding, was able by inspired chairmanship to broker an agreement, initialed by leaders of the three delegations: Serb, Croat and Moslem, who returned to their respective strongholds committed to seeking ratification from their assemblies.
It was then that America acted fatefully. For whatever reasons — which remain to be adduced — Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who knew Yugoslavia well from his term as Ambassador there and as banker subsequently, instructed Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade, to fly post-haste to Sarajevo and persuade Izetbegovic to renege on the agreement, promising him all political, diplomatic and military aid if he agreed to do so. Izetbegovic was persuaded. He stationed his green-berreted snipers on the roofs of central Sarajevo, reneged on the agreement, appealed for support in the Moslem world; the Bosnian war began. It has yet to end. As in Greek tragedy, one action by a protagonist, Eagelburger, set a train of events irrevocably in motion.
During the years that followed, America pulled the strings from the background, encouraging the world-wide Moslem agitation in favor of Izetbegovic. They brought the Russians — who entertained futile hopes of large-scale western investment and aid — into line. Washington kept pressing EU members like Britain and France, which had serious misgivings, to accept its faits accomplis. The U.S. encouraged and facilitated the dispatch of arms to the Moslems via Iran and Eastern Europe — a fact which was denied in Washington at the time in face of overwhehning evidence. America used NATO and UNPROFOR as their policy instruments, and blocked all peace moves, of which there were several between 1992 and 1995. Then, having effectively prevented the EU from reaching agreement — which all but Germany, now intent on its third Drang nach Osten, wanted — the United States was able to corral them into a military offensive sparked off by staged incidents reminiscent of the Battleship Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It was the U.S. which organized the UN sanctions against Serbia-Montenegro on the basis of one such staged incident.
But why? Here we have the most powerful country on earth at the present time deeply involved off its own bat in Balkan affairs, which bear absolutely no relationship to American security, extending its power into Eastern and South Eastern Europe, involving itself deeply in a number of long-standing and perhaps incurable national contlicts, between Serbs and Croats, Christians and Moslems, (Slav) Macedonians and Greeks, Slovaks and Hungarians, Hungarians and Romanians, Romanians and Ukrainians, among others. Why, for that matter, is the U.S. pressing Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians to join NATO at this juncture?
We have the American C in C of forces in Europe arguing that the diminution of the Soviet threat is no reason for phasing out NATO but on the contrary increasing its political role in Europe; in other words, NATO is to be an instrument of American policy, whatever that policy might be. This entails the militarisation of foreign policy, the very antithesis of the American tradition in international relations.
The newly appointed Secretary of State Madeline Albright, speaking as US Ambassador to the UN, stated unequivocally that the US policy in Bosnia was the foundation of its policies for Europe. Think of the implications: lying and cheating, fomenting war in which civilians are the main casualty, and in which ancient hatreds feed on themselves, involving America in a maelstrom easier to enter than to leave, and above all risking long-term conflict with a Russia which is only partly broken from its recent imperialist past.
I ask you to hypothesize the basis of US world policy, political, military and economic. It must balance objectives against costs. The overwhelming objective is US security. This is partly geographical. What occurs in the Caribbean Basin is more immediately relevant than the East Asian mainland. One can understand the principle of US involvement in Cuba and Haiti, even though one need not necessarily approve of the particular policies.
America is of necessity involved in hemispheric affairs. America has traditionally been involved in “North Atlantic”, i.e., European, affairs, to the extent of two world wars and the cold war. But what is the relevance of the Balkans and Black Sea? And what is the point of creating and arming a militantly Moslem polity in the Balkans which ineluctably gives Iran a foothold there and a route into Central and Western Europe for subversion and terror?
I can find no rational reasons for doing so. I note one aspect of US foreign policy. Because the USA is a very large country, of whose inhabitants relatively few travel abroad and fewer still interest themselves in world affairs, while major foreign policy issues are given massive attention by the White House, legislators, media and academe, for better or worse, less import issues are left to minor interest groups. But they can lead Uncle Sam by the nose. Until the last presidential elections but one, Secretary of State Baker favored the preservation of Yugoslavia as an entity. It was when he took over belatedly as Pres. Bush’s chief campaign manager, and Eagleburger was given a free run, with his own personal Balkan agenda, the Serbophobes and Islamophiles came out of the woodwork, and committed Uncle Sam for years to come.
The US has traditionally worked with some ugly despotisms, and is still doing, so, viz. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, various Latin-American regimes considered a lesser evil, various unpleasant regimes in Asia, including Pakistan. In any case, democracy cannot be imposed. There are occasions when democracies can be given a helping hand, and others when intervention is counter-productive. But to intervene in favor of Clero-Fascism and Islamic fundamentalism, to help expel Serbs from land they have inhabited as majorities for centuries, and to adopt the German-Hungarian drive to reverse what is left of the Versailles provisions, does not make sense. Why then? I go back to the Spanish American war as an analogy, and to “Manifest Destiny”. The USA, with the Civil War and reconstruction behind it, wanted to flex its muscles. It was the period when half the Navy wanted to take on the British. But the Spanish Army was an easier hit. The remnants of the Spanish Empire in Cuba, the Philippines and the Pacific were no conceivable threat to the USA. Nor were the inhabitants groaning under Spanish yoke. They were treated as Spaniards. Even today, most inhabitants regard Spanish rule as a golden age.
Cuba’s ills, which led to Castro’s Communist dictatorship which generated the greatest threat to America in its history, were a result of U.S. aggression which tore Cuba away from the mother country, and left it with independence which it had not sought and was unprepared for. The Philippines, with a hard-working intelligent population, were unable to adopt American mores, but live in a miasma of corruption and violence. Spain itself was convulsed by defeat, which stripped it of its last outposts. These convulsions lay at the basis of Spain’s unhappy twentieth century: the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the Republic it egdendered, the militaiy uprising, civil war and Franco dictatorship from which Spain is only now recovering and finding its place in the world.
The temptations of imperial arrogance are not new, even in the U.S. They should not be forgotten just because America was, in some part, protected from this arrogance by the genuine weight and burden, more imposed than chosen, of defending the Free World against Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The end of the Cold War has stripped off this protection. Yet the White House has chosen a Secretary of State who is a Cold War junkie, a connoisseur of confrontation, a woman living too passionately in the past, eager to seize the first opportunity to show how the old battles should have been fought, how the West should have Won at Munich. Do not be surprised if all the talk of leadership, resolve, firmness and New Interests is a preparation for war and the nomination of new enemies.
To present the USA as the world’s poticeman, judge, jury, and DA may or may not go well into campaign rhetoric, but the idea is endlessly seductive for the Washington community of foreign policy professionals – often poorly educated, high on excitement and low in statesmanlike patience. They fear, quite imationally, that the world will happily pass them by unless America imposes herself, rises to ‘the challenge’ and throws her weight about. Albright’s heroes are Truman and Marshall. She makes it clear they are also her models. But where is her USSR? The foreign policy community wants the feel-good factor, the winning-the-Cold-War glow, to go on and on. But to live for the adrenaline and glory of yesterday and yesteryear is to ride for a fall and to walk with Hubris.
Can the yearning to be the world’s policeman be the basis of policy? In formal terms, perhaps not. But if the poison is at work, it may be detected. Clinton knows that he should always deny the charge. Throughout the Bosnian Intervention he was the respectable front-end of the Lake-Albright program. Inside the State Deparrment and the CIA there is always room for the pretense that policy is more limited and calculated that the passions and arrogance which may drive it. German policy before 1914 was sometimes defined, on paper, by men more rational and cool than those who took the initiatives and made the choices. Such draftsmen and spokesmen may be employed in Washington. But Mr Lake will wrestle with pragmatic formulas as Pilgrim wrestling with Sin. The power an prestige of America is in the hands of people who will not resist the Temptation to invent new missions, lay down new embargoes and fabricate new courts. For the time being, they control the United Nations, the World Bank, most of the world’s military high-tech weapons, and the vast majority of the satellites which watch us from every quadraut of the skies. This is the opportunity they sense, and we must ask what ambitions they will declare next.
The pursuit of World Importance for the sake of World Importance is the Great Temptation in human history, the path of ruin that winds from Xerxes, the Persian King of Kings, to Hitler, the Austrian corporal-tyrant. It is the path which George Washington forbade America ever to take. The American People will never chose it, but can they prevent it? The American foreign policy elite is locking itself onto this path, and their co-conspirators in the media corporations are calling it a pilgrimage. Bosnia was the acid test. They knew why they should not go in; they knew the damage it would do to their oldest alliances; but they could not resist. The combination of high moral purpose, however fudged up by the media, and the chance to show Europe that Only America Decides was just too intoxicating.
At the time of writing, the USA is uniquely powerful. It will not always be so. In the course of time, Russia may gain its potential strength, and there is very little the USA can do about Chinese developments one way or the other. It might save the Chinese Republic in Taiwan for better times, but that would need a great measure of commitment, which will be less likely if the Balkan war turns hot, and a flow of body bags begins. America is very vulnerable to body-bags, because the Americans, unlike the British and French, for example, have no sense of imperial mission which justifies losing young men in foreign fields. The outcry against the Helms-Burton Act, whose target was Castro’s Cuba, forced Clinton to delay application of its main provisions.
A law of history is that power tends to generate countervailing power. It is not for me to trace how this will come about. We can do little more than guard against arrogance and over-extension and minimize the pointless sacrifices they usually entail. I am proud to have taken part in this struggle, the struggle to bring the powerful to their senses before they plunge into reckless, ruthless folly. This struggle carries no guarantee of success, for it is the quest for sanity that epitomizes the struggle of suffering humanity throughout the ages.

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‘It was never a black and white affair’

See the pictures by Eamonn McCabe
The Tory: Alfred Sherman
Jonathan Glancey
Friday 10 November 2000
The Guardian
What happened in 1453?” The fall of Constantinople? “Exactly.” Having assured himself that a Guardian journalist has some vague knowledge of history, Sir Alfred Sherman plunges into a gloriously complex, yet lucid exploration of world history, making connections between peoples, cultures, religions and trade routes where few fellow government and public affairs policy advisors are likely to make them.Sherman is best known as Margaret Thatcher’s guru, co-founder of the rightwing Centre for Policy Studies and the man who did as much as anyone else to roll back of the frontiers of the Tory state from 1979. Privatising the railways? This onetime Daily Telegraph leader writer would have converted them into express bus lanes. If one takes Sherman’s anti-state philosophy to its logical conclusion, one might well be arguing for the withering away of the state itself. This, of course, is an idea of Karl Marx, nemesis of Thatcherism. Sir Alfred, however, was a member of the communist party from his teenage years to 1947. “I was expelled,” he says, “for attacking Stalin over Yugoslavia, and much else beside.” By then, Sherman, had decided that Stalin was, to put it bluntly, “a bastard”. “Communism and socialism were walls that stood in front of me after the Hitler war. I took them down brick by brick until I could see the clear light beyond.”
This conversion from youthful communism to arch-liberalism in his 50s seems logical enough. Sherman is, at heart, a man unwilling to put up with bullies, whether Spanish fascist generals of the 1930s or democratic superpowers that choose to throw their weight around in the Middle East and elsewhere today. In 1937, his bogey states were Italy, Germany and Spain. Today, the problem is the United States.
Sherman was born to Jewish emigre parents in Hackney in 1919. His father was a left-wing Russian tailor. There were books in the house, although on the day Sherman junior left Victoria station with a dozen or so young colleagues for Spain in 1937, he had yet to read Marx. “My politics were driven by emotion. That’s how you see the world at 17. It’s all black and white, painted in broad brushstrokes. I was studying chemistry at the time at Chelsea Polytechnic. I was appalled by the rise of fascism, followed the civil war in the papers and wanted to do my bit.” With no military training? “No. I’d never picked up a gun. What I could do, though, was speak Spanish, and French. Came in handy.
“When we arrived in Spain – train to Perpignan and then on foot over the Pyrenees – we were given three weeks basic military training by Red Army volunteers. We’d teamed up by then with a wide mix of fellow brigaders – miners, shipbuilders, many of them world war one veterans – and went into action on the Zaragoza road.”
Like many soldiers who have been involved in the bloody business of killing and being shot at but have no love of bloodshed, Sherman is not interested in talking about the actual fighting he took part in. What he does talk about is the weaponry. He can name the parts and assess the effectiveness of Mexican Mausers, Soviet-made first world war Remingtons, water-cooled Maxims, and air-cooled Soviet machine guns.
He wasn’t hurt. “Lucky.” What did he think of shooting to kill? “What’s a soldier for?” he retorts as the sun sinks over the Chelsea horizon and his comfortable flat, all books and papers, sinks into the dark, an age and a geography away from the sun-scorched Aragon front. “Bloody cold in winter,” adds Sherman in case I begin to wax romantic, which he refuses to do at any time in our conversation.
Sherman says he was involved in three major actions. It took him some while, though, to build up a reasonably detailed picture of the internecine nature of his own side. It was never exactly pointillist at the time. Hindsight, he suggests, is a handy gift for those who wish to remember the past as it wasn’t for them at the time. “If you want to know about the civil war in detail, read Hugh Thomas’s history,” he suggests. “We were stretched out along straggling fronts with little in the way of modern communications. Information was there, but sparse.”
Was he surprised that there were so many Catholics fighting Franco? No. He was generally well informed. “The Basques were zealous Catholics and were fanatically anti-Franco. There was even a Loyola brigade [Ignatius Loyola, 1491-1556, an aristocratic soldier wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, founded the Society of Jesus]. And, of course, there were Germans fighting Franco too. The Spanish civil war was never a black and white affair. Bloody complicated.” And very bloody.
Back off the train at Victoria station in 1938, Sherman took a job in a London electrical factory. He hadn’t told his parents he was going to Spain; they were pleased to see him back and in one piece. What did he feel about his part in the war? “Betrayed, by the west. We were given no real picture of Stalin’s motives. We were pawns in many ways. It took me nearly another decade before I realised what a cheat and liar Stalin was.”
What would he advise a 17-year-old today willing to fight for a cause in a far-off country of which most of us know little and care less?
“Spain was a special case; a few more good divisions and I still think the tide could have been turned against Franco. But, today?” In recent years, then.
“Biafra was one example. But that was Africa and who cared or cares about Africa?” Che Guevara, I suggest, in the Congo. “In the pay of bloody Moscow; directly or indirectly, doesn’t matter.” Sherman stops to serve Earl Grey tea, no milk, and to play me and my Slovenian colleague, Sonja Merljak, some old Yugoslavian marching songs on the stereo. “East Timor,” he suggests suddenly. “We really should have done something there, but that would have offended US interests and no one is allowed to do that…” Knighted in 1983 for services to the rolling-back-of-the-state, Alfred Sherman remains at heart a crusader. Behind the bluff and wilfully contrary exterior beats the heart of a romantic who would much prefer to call himself a rationalist. He would, I can’t help feeling, like all politicians of all creeds and states, to wither away, so the rest of us can get on with our lives, whether as tailors, students or government advisers with a passion for history. And no one would have to fight.
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CHRONICLES ONLINE, Monday, May 22, 2000
THE EMPIRE FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM? by Sir Alfred Sherman
The history of empires is somewhat older than that of civilization. They rise, flourish, decay and are overthrown. At their height they seem irresistible, in their decline they seem unsaveable. Some leave more behind than others. Greek, Latin and Arabic alphabets, vocabulary and language cover wide areas. Greek philosophy, Roman law and British jurisprudence are widespread, as is Islam, with its behavioral codes, architecture and way of life.
Imperial expansion seems to be an imperative driven by internal force, “manifest destiny” rather than, necessarily, economic or technological superiority. The original expansion of Islam and the Mongolian and Manchu empires reflected weaknesses on the side of civilization. The claim that Britain’s empire was acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness has much to support it, e.g., the “scramble for Africa,” designed mainly to forestall other European powers.
World history is entering a new phase following the collapse of Soviet communism and the emergence of American hegemony, exercised through NATO with varying degrees of partnership and subordination of other players. The immediate victims are the Serbs on both sides of the Drina. The process commenced with the deliberate break-up of Yugoslavia, led by Germany and acquiesced in by the other European Union members and the United States (1991). It progressed with sanctions against Serbia for attempting to help the western Serbs (1992). In Bosnia America’s early involvement sparked off civil war (the Zimmerman Visit to Izetbegovic, in the aftermath of the Lisbon Agreement), and it eventually matured into the bombing campaign of 1999 and the occupation of Kosovo.
On America’s past form we can expect the U.S. and its allies-cum-clients to continue their economic war against Serbia while occupying RaÑ™ka (“Sanjak”), turning Montenegro into their fiefdom, and breaking up Vojvodina. Germany and Hungary may in the end be allowed to redraw the map of central-eastern Europe – to the detriment of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians and others.
In a curious way the nineteenth century is being replayed out before our eyes. The great powers are intervening at will and with impunity but now justifying themselves in the name of that new fig leaf, the will of the “international community.” (The latter has become the modern equivalent of Rousseau’s “general will,” which means the will of the person talking.) The Congress of Berlin has even been mentioned, approvingly, without the consideration that it was a step on the way towards the catastrophe of 1914.
No respite is on the horizon. According to the U.S. Secretary of State,
We are privileged to live in a country that, through most of
this century, has chosen to lead. Today we are helping to
shape events in every region on every continent in every
corner of the world… We exercise this leadership not out
of sentiment but out of necessity. We must mobilize every
foreign policy tool, from the simplest art of persuasion to
the blunt instrument of force… we must work to sustain
our prosperity by creating an ever-expanding global
economy in which American genius and productivity
receive their due.
These words of Mrs. Albright’s are a timeless recipe for unlimited global imperialism. So long as this mind-frame prevails, and so long as “Western” policies continue to raise the hope of a Greater-Bosnian Islamistan and a Greater Albania – that would include not only Kosovo but also western Macedonia, parts of northern Greece and southern Montenegro – no Balkan peace can be expected. The alternative is conflict and the search for allies. At present the U.S. and its German allies, on whom Washington bases its European policy, are in the ascendant. But experience suggests that no ascendancy can last forever, and that the time for preparation to adjust to change is before changes begin, not after.
The alternative to the new imperialism is to begin thinking about a Balkan Peninsula of peoples, as distinct from one of states (though they too have their rationale). Unless this is done, all present and future manipulation of frontiers, nations and histories will be useless and counterproductive. There are many wires that may yet be tripped: differing objectives of Washington and Berlin; the volatility of American public opinion, and its diminished but not yet completely eradicated ability to resist the globalist project; the capacity of India, Russia and China to form a rival bloc; the unexpected. But meanwhile the juggernaut rolls on.
Empires differ in their objectives. The Greek city-states founded colonies abroad of their own citizens, to expand their own being. The Romans did so as an empire; so did the Ottoman Turks, with the commitment to unversalize Islam. The British tried to expand Britain by creating colonies in North America and the Antipodes, but then let the colonies slip out of their grasp. (The British confused others, and themselves, by calling their colonies “dominions” and their dominions – i.e. alien lands dominated by British power – as “colonies,” while calling their empire a “commonwealth.”)
One can understand the principle of U.S. involvement in Cuba, Guatemala, or Haiti, even if one does not necessarily approve of particular policies. America is of necessity involved in hemispheric affairs, and it has traditionally been involved in “North Atlantic,” i.e., European, affairs, to the extent of two world wars and the Cold War. But what is the relevance of the Balkans and the Black Sea? And what is the point of creating and arming militantly Muslim polities in the Balkans which ineluctably gives Iran a foothold there and a route into Central and Western Europe for subversion and terror?
The U.S. has traditionally worked with some ugly despotisms, and is still doing so, viz. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Pakistan. But to intervene in favor of Islamic fundamentalism, to help expel Serbs from land they have inhabited as majorities for centuries, and to adopt the German-encouraged drive to reverse what is left of the Versailles provisions does not make sense.
The temptations of imperial arrogance are not new, even in the United States. They should not be forgotten just because America was, in some part, protected from this arrogance by the genuine weight and burden, more imposed than chosen, of defending the free world against Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The end of the Cold War has stripped off this protection. To present the United States as the world’s policeman, judge, and jury may or may not play well in campaign rhetoric, but the idea is endlessly seductive for the Washington community of foreign policy professionals – often poorly educated, high on excitement, and low in statesmanlike patience. They fear that the world will happily pass them by unless America imposes herself, “rises to the challenge,” and throws her weight about. Albright’s heroes are Truman and Marshall. But where is her U.S.S.R.? The foreign policy community wants the feel-good factor, the winning-the-Cold-War glow, to go on and on. But to live for the adrenaline and glory of yesterday and yesteryear is to ride for a fall and to walk with hubris.
The power and prestige of America is in the hands of people who will not resist the temptation to invent new missions, lay down new embargoes, throw new bombs, and fabricate new courts. For the time being, they control the United Nations, the World Bank, most of the world’s high-tech weapons, and the vast majority of the satellites that watch us from every quadrant of the skies. This is the opportunity they sense, and we must ask what ambitions they will declare next.
The United States did not plan its empire or global hegemony any more than the British did. In the 19th century it expanded westward relentlessly, killing Indians, expelling all European powers (British, French, Spanish) and taking land from Mexico in a stage-managed war; but that expansion was “national,” not imperial.
But then, a century ago, McKinley acquired colonial possessions (and killed hundreds of thousand of civilians in the process, in the Philippines). In the ensuing half-century two world wars and Korea established America as a global power. Kennedy’s disastrous foray into Indochina seemed to indicate the limits of the empire, but the lessons of that trauma appear to have been inexplicably unlearned within a generation. Kennedy’s costly boast that he would fight communism the world over has long since been exceeded by Secretary of State Albright’s promise to set the whole world to rights, by force where necessary, without reference to other states.
Instead of rediscovering the virtues of traditionally defined, enlightened self-interest in the aftermath of its hands down cold war victory, America’s foreign policy elites are more intoxicated than ever by their own concoction of “benevolent global hegemony” and “indispensable power.”
In the short term there is no countervailing force on the horizon. Moscow is showing the awareness of the dangers emanating from expanding American hegemony which it failed to show earlier in the decade. But there are limits to Russian power to intervene, set by economic and strategic factors, the legacies of seven decades of socialist dictatorship. It can do Chechnya, but it cannot return to Europe. For nearly a decade the U.S. and E.U. were given a free hand in Europe, including Romania and Bulgaria, dragooning them into their anti-Serbian war against those countries’ public opinion, national interest, and economic considerations.
Cui bono? It was a German who remarked that you can do anything with bayonets but sit on them. What can the Americans do with their new empire? They cannot settle it, like earlier colonial powers. How far and how long can they dominate it, with their Muslim allies and satraps in the Balkans and elsewhere? How far ahead are America’s policy makers looking, and what their eventual aims are, if any?
A 19th century British liberal’s complaint that “the empire is a millstone round our neck” has continued relevance. It should be brought home to ordinary Americans, in order to turn them into allies.
At the time of this writing America is uniquely powerful. It will not always be so. In the course of time, Russia may gain its potential strength, and there is very little the United States can do about Chinese developments one way or the other. A law of history is that power tends to generate countervailing power. We do not know how this will come about. We can do little more than guard against arrogance and overextension and minimize the pointless sacrifices they usually entail. The opponents of globalism and interventionism should be proud to have taken part in this endeavor.
(Sir Alfred Sherman is a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher and chairman of The Lord Byron Foundation. He writes from London.)
Copyright 2000 The Rockford Institute – Center for International Affairs

Paradoxes of Power
Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude

Sir Alfred Sherman (1919-2006)

Edited by Mark Garnett

200 pp. £17.95/$34.90, 1845400143 (cloth) May 2005
£8.95/$17.90, 9781845400927 (paperback) March 2007Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com
Search Inside the Book at Amazon.co.uk
Purchase your copy
Photographs and Evening Standard report: 27 July booklaunch
“These reflections by Thatcherism’s inventor are necessary reading.” 
Sir John Hoskyns, Salisbury Review
“Paradoxes of Power is both inspiring and depressing”
Rodney Atkinson, Campaign for UK Conservatism,  full review TelegraphTimesGuardianIndependentHeraldScotsmanFoxNewsChroniclesIHTBBCBruce Anderson
      Thumb through the index of almost any study of the Thatcher years — biographical, scholarly or journalistic — and you will come across the name of Sir Alfred Sherman. In her memoirs Lady Thatcher herself pays tribute to Sherman’s ‘brilliance’, the ‘force and clarity of his mind’, his ‘breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist’. She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister.
Born in 1919 in London’s East End, until 1948 Sherman was a Communist and fought in the Spanish Civil War. But he ended up an indefatigable free-market crusader. The book describes his early relationship with Sir Keith Joseph and his own role in the formation of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974.
Sherman examines the origins and development of ‘Thatcherism’, but concludes that the Conservative administrations of the 1980s were, for the most part, an ‘interlude’ and that the post-war consensus remains largely unscathed — ‘we are back to where we started’.
“Fascinating . . . anyone sceptical about think-tanks, small magazines, and even speeches, should read Sherman’s marvellous little chapters on the Centre for Policy Studies and how they gradually transformed Mrs Thatcher from the untried party leader of 1974 into a prime-minister-in-waiting.” Peter Coleman, Quadrant
“This book is as much an engrossing human interest story as it is a fascinating record of the metapolitics of that period or a wise animadversion on today’s political realities.” Derek Turner, Chronicles
Advance praise for Paradoxes of Power
“Alfred Sherman’s views are always trenchant but what he has to say about the Conservative renaissance of the late 1970s and 1980s is of particular interest. This book should be read by anyone examining the period.”  Margaret Thatcher, April 2005
“These essays by ‘Alfie’ Sherman are highly relevant to the politics of today.”  Norman Tebbit, March 2005
Preface and Foreword

Table of Contents

      Preface, by Norman Tebbit

      Editor’s Foreword, by Mark Garnett

      Introduction

      1: The Outsider Inside

      2: Keith Joseph and the Centre for Policy Studies

      3: Margaret Thatcher’s Inheritance

      4: Mrs Thatcher in Opposition, 1975–9

      5: The First Thatcher Government, 1979-83

      6: The Long Haul, 1983–90

      7: The Legacies

      Appendix: Speech by Sir Keith Joseph at Upminster, June 22 1974

      Bibliography

      Index
Books homepage

Daily Analyst

US Kosovo policy – bad for Israel

By Srdja Trifkovic (The Jerusalem Post)
Tuesday, 14 Feb 2012



(Published in the print edition of The Jerusalem Post on February 14 and available online at JPost.com)
February 17 marks the fourth anniversary of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. Since that time successive Israeli governments have come under pressure from Washington to recognize Kosovo, but on this issue the raison d’etat has wisely prevailed across the political spectrum.

A Balkan Travelogue

By Srdja Trifkovic
Tuesday, 7 Feb 2012



It’s been some years since Tom Fleming and I have indulged in seven-day mad dashes across the Balkans, speaking, lecturing and giving interviews, meeting interesting people over good food and drink. Last December’s tour had the tempo and feel of the old times, but it was on balance a melancholy affair. After two decades of trials and tribulations, Serbia is on what appears to be an irreversible downward spiral.

Beyond the “Strategic Partnership”: A Neo-Bismarckian Paradigm for German-Russian Relations

By Srdja Trifkovic
Thursday, 15 Sep 2011



(Paper presented at the IIIS & EU-Russia Centre Conference in Munich on September 15, 2011) – To truly unite Europe by helping Russia modernize and by integrating it into the common European home, we need “Europe” but not in its current EU form. We don’t need arbitration from Brussels when major European nations seek common ground. Bismarck would see this, Putin does; the German political and business elite should do likewise during Putin’s next mandate.

Agim Ceku, the War Criminal Not Wanted by Canada

By Scott Taylor
Wednesday, 17 Aug 2011


Since the Conservative government decided in mid-July to publish the identity of suspected war criminals living in Canada, there have already been seven of the 30 fugitives turned in to authorities. A couple of months ago I bumped into a high-profile alleged war criminal at a European defence exhibition. Unfortunately, he is not on Canada’s wanted list.

Entering EU is an endless road for Serbia

By RTTV
Sunday, 24 Jul 2011



On July 20 Serbian authorities arrested Goran Hadžić, the last remaining fugitive sought by the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. By giving up wartime fugitives President Tadić may win the praise of EU leaders, but as Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor at Chronicles magazine told RT, this will hardly pave Serbia’s way to the EU.

Austria-Hungary Was Better…

By LBF Editors
Friday, 8 Jul 2011

Our attention has been belatedly drawn to a news item over a month old: Valentin Inzko, the International High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has decreed that it is “deeply deplorable” that the Republika Srpska (RS) – the Serb half of the Balkan non-country – plans to help fund the defense of General Ratko Mladić at The Hague Tribunal.

The Balkan Monitor

Origins of the Balkan Wars

By Eugene Girin
Friday, 10 Feb 2012



A review of Ustaša: Croatian Fascism and European Politics, 1929-1945 (2nd Edition) by Srdja Trifkovic, published in the January issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture
The long-awaited new edition of Trifkovic’s work on the genocidal Ustaša–Croatian Revolutionary Movement is a pivotal contribution to modern Balkan studies, an area regrettably mired in deception, half-truths, and outright lies served up with a noxious dosage of outright Serbophobia.

Neo-Ottomanism in Action: Turkey as a Regional Power

By Srdja Trifkovic
Tuesday, 7 Feb 2012

Over the past decade Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government and his AKP (Justice and Development Party) have been successful in undermining Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy and the character of the state founded upon that legacy. What remains is an increasingly empty shell of constitutional secularism.

FYROM: The New Kosovo?

By Srdja Trifkovic
Tuesday, 7 Feb 2012


An Orthodox church was set ablaze in the southwestern part of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on January 30. The incident reflects raising tensions between local Christian Slavs and Albanians, more than a decade after an Albanian rebellion brought FYROM to the verge of an ethnic war. It also evokes memories of the early stages of the conflict in Kosovo, in the late 1980s.

Multicultural vs. Stereotypical: Russia and the Western Media

By Srdja Trifkovic
Thursday, 24 Nov 2011

(Paper delivered at international conference Russia and Europe in Paris on November 24, 2011)
The similarity of negative stereotypes of Russia in the Western media reflects the perception that Russia belongs to a tradition that is both alien and unworthy of multiculturalist tolerance. The media class antagonism is due to the accurate assessment by its editorial echelons that Russia as such is an obstacle to the realization of their cultural and ideological preferences.

Otto von Habsburg: A Controversy at “Chronicles”

By Jaclyn Ryan
Monday, 8 Aug 2011

As an aficionado of serious-minded geopolitical and historical pieces, I recently found myself engrossed in a controversy over at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. The saga originated with a July 18 piece by Srdja Trifkovic, Otto von Habsburg’s Ambiguous Legacy (also published on this site two days later).

Law and Disorder in Kosovo

By Nebojsa Malic (Antiwar)
Monday, 1 Aug 2011


Among the many half-successes, pretend-successes and outright failures, until last week the Empire could still plausibly claim that it had scored a victory in the Balkans. Hashim Thaci’s little adventure in northern Kosovo, which started on July 26, threatens to upset the validity of that claim.

Copyright © 2010 balkanstudies.org. All Rights Reserved
Sir Alfred Sherman (1919-2006): A Witness to a Century
(August 27, 2006)
Sir Alfred Sherman, my dear friend and long-time political associate who died in London on August 26, started his political life as a Stalinist and ended it as one of the few “paleoconservative” thinkers in today’s Britain. He was a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century.
Born in 1919 to recent immigrants from Russia, Sherman joined the Young Communist League in his first year at Chelsea Plytechnic; as he later explained, “to be a Jew in 1930s Britain was to be alienated. The world proletariat offered us a home.” Within months he was a machine gunner with the Major Attlee battalion of the International Brigades in Spain. A gifted linguist, he translated the orders of the battalion’s Red Army instructor into English, French and Spanish. Sherman fought at Ebro in 1938 and spent several months as Franco’s prisoner at San Pedro de Cardenas before being repatriated to Britain.
During the Second World War Sherman served with the British Army as a Field Security Officer in the Middle East, became fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, and embarked on a life-long study of Islam. After the war he continued his studies at the London School of Economics and became president of the Communist Party student cell.
In that capacity he visited Yugoslavia, at that time one of Moscow’s staunchest allies, and upon his return prepared a favorably intoned report. As he was about to deliver it to his comrades in the summer of 1948, news came of Stalin’s break with Tito. The Party asked Sherman to rewrite his report accordingly. He refused and was duly expelled for “Titoist deviationism.” Sherman promptly left for Belgrade and offering his services to Tito’s authorities in their dispute with Moscow. He assumed his talents as an intellectual would be of value, but to his surprise when he arrived he was put to work helping to build a railway in Bosnia. Despite his small stature and obvious unsuitability for physical labour, he never complained. He carried on, learned the language, and developed a long lasting emotional tie to the former Yugoslavia.
In the early 1950s Sherman—by that time an ex-Communist but still a man of the Left—returned to Belgrade as an Observer correspondent. Unlike most of his Western colleagues, then and now, he was fluent in the language known as Serbo-Croatian at that time and possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history, culture and politics of the South Slavs. He developed a strong, life-long affinity for the Serbs, in many ways comparable to that of Dame Rebecca West. That affinity was rekindled in the 1990s when Sherman became a leading critic of the Western policy in the Balkans.
After a few years in Israel, during which time he advised the government on economic affairs, Sherman returned to London. Thoroughly disillusioned in Socialism in all its forms he joined the staff of The Daily Telegraph in 1965, rising to become the Tory flagship’s leader writer (1977-86). In 1974 he co-founded, with the late Sir Keith Joseph, the conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), and became its first director. (He was ousted from the CPS in 1984 after he fell out of favour with the Tory leadership.) The CPS was the launching pad for Margaret Thatcher, gradually transforming her from the untried party leader of 1974 into a prime-minister-in-waiting. More than any one man, Sherman provided her with the strategy for capturing the leadership of the Party and winning the historic general election of 1979.
Sherman’s forte was economics but he was acutely aware of the importance of a coherent cultural basis on which the economic superstructure rests. It behove a Jew deeply worried about the condition of our civilization to advocate the revival of Christianity in general, and particularly to stress that British political history was largely that of religion: church and state were inseparable. As Margaret Thatcher argued in a lecture, Dimensions of Conservatism, in 1977, which Sherman wrote for her two years before she became Britain’s Prime Minister,
To describe us as a party of free enterprise as opposed to State ownership would be misleading, although we have good cause to fear the deadening effect of State ownership and control . . . The Tories began as a Church party, concerned with the Church and State in that order, before our concern extended to the economy and many other fields which politics now touches.
Sherman’s star shone briefly after Mrs. Thatcher became prime minister. As the Telegraph’s obituarist has noted, during those years when his star was in the ascendant, Sherman’s breadth and depth of vision and willingness to say the unsayable provided a vital stimulus to “the Leaderin,” giving her the intellectual confidence to proclaim her radical free-market vision in her early years at the helm:
Sherman was arguably the most eccentric, and certainly the most contradictory, figure ever to have been a leading adviser to a senior politician. His early imbibed skill in Marxist dialectic made him a formidable logician; at his best he could be witty, educated and shrewd on economic matters. But he could also be breathtakingly naive, never losing the instinctive fanaticism which put him in the Communist party in the first place.
In her memoirs, Lady Thatcher herself pays tribute to Sherman’s “brilliance,” the “force and clarity of his mind,” his “breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist.” She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister. But his “instinctive fanaticism”—or, more accurately, his unwillingness to make compromises with the establishmentarian consensus—never enabled him to fit into the clubbable world of British politics.
His successor at the helm of The Lord Byron Foundation, Ambassador James Bissett, remembers Sherman as “a man who held strong views and [who] never hesitated to speak out and let his opinions be known.” To wit, he once gave an interview to a Russian journalist in which he was quoted as saying, “As for the lumpen, coloured people and the Irish, let’s face it, the only way to hold them in check is to have enough well armed and properly trained police.” To his shocked critics Sherman dryly replied that the quotation missed the word “proletariat” after “lumpen,” and denied using the phrase “well armed.”
By 1982, the latent strains in his relationship with Mrs. Thatcher became fully apparent. She complained that he was dismissive of the obstacles she was encountering in dismantling the legacy of decades of socialism, while he berated her for betraying the promise of her early years. (In the 90’s he said of her, “Lady Thatcher is great theatre as long as someone else is writing her lines; she hasn’t got a clue.”) After his exclusion from her inner circle she nevertheless continued to regard him with “exasperated affection,” and rewarded him with a knighthood in 1983. In July 2005 they were reunited at a reception marking the publication of Sherman’s last book with a revealing title, Paradoxes of Power: Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude.
In the last decade and a half of his life, Sherman was tireless in exposing the stupidity and malovelence of the Western policy in the Balkans. In 1994 we joined forces to establish The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, with the help of Michael Stenton and Ronald Hatchett, as a non-partisan research institute. In Sherman’s words, it was “designed to correct the current trend of public commentary, which tends, systematically, not to understand events but to construct a propagandistic version of Balkan rivalries, designed to facilitate the involvement of outside powers.” He chose the name of a great Western poet who gave his life in the fight to free Balkan peoples from Mohammedan rule, which reflected his belief in “the essential unity of our civilization, of which the Orthodox nations are an inseparable and essential ingredient.” As Michael Stenton wrote when Sherman retired as LBF Chairman in 2001,
Alfred has known Yugoslavia since the days the Muslim ladies were still wearing veils. Long decades before the talk of a ‘clash of civilizations’ he understood the Balkans in this sense. Where the average journalist sees the wars in Yugoslavia through some ‘worst since World War Two’ lens, Alfred sees precise parallels: between the Anglo-French reluctance to recognize Nazi malice and ‘Western’ courtesies and concessions to Islam today; between the fashionable denunciation of the Czechs for their treatment of the Sudeten Germans in 1938 and the recent excoriation of the Serbs in Kosovo and elsewhere. First select your blue-eyed boys, then wait for the atrocities, then believe what your favorites say. He has seen it all before—whether on the winning or the losing side. It inspires him not with cynicism but with stoicism. He is filled with regret but not with bitterness.
As early as 1992, writing in London’s Jewish Chronicle, Sherman warned against the lapse of logic in confusing the present plight of Bosnian Muslims with that of European Jewry under Hitler. “It does us no good to claim a locus standi in every conflict be equating it with the Holocaust,” he wrote, “or when third parties in their own interests take the name of our martyrs in vain; Bosnia is not occupied Europe; the Muslims are not the Jews; the Serbs did not begin the civil war, but are predictably responding to a real threat”:
Some years ago, I, among others, warned that, whatever the logic of establishing Yugoslavia in the first place, any attempt at hurried dismemberment, particularly along Tito’s internal demarcation lines, would lead to armed conflict, self-intensifying bloodshed and floods of refugees . . . Since 1990, the independent Croatian leadership—with its extreme chauvinist and clericalist colouring—and the Bosnian Muslim leadership—seeking, in its Islamic fundamentalist programme, to put the clock back to Ottoman days—have threatened to turn the Serbs back into persecuted minorities… The Serbs cannot forget that, in living memory, the ‘Independent Croatian State,’ set up by Hitler in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, massacred close on half of the Serbian population—which was then the largest of the three communities in Bosnia—and as many Jews as it could  lay hands on . . . If there is any parallel with the Holocaust, it is the martyrdom of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, who account for a third of the Serbian nation.
Both the Croatian and Muslim leaderships enjoy support and encouragement from Germany, Sherman noted, and from militantly Islamic governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, though Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia outnumbered Croatian and Muslim refugees combined, the media virtually ignore them:
It reminds one of the late 1930’s, when most of the British press demonised the Czechs at Downing Streets behest, denouncing them as a threat to European peace and for ill-treating their peaceful German Sudetenland minority; ‘Herr’ Hitler, by contrast was held up as a reasonable man . . . It its almost invariably the innocent who suffer in war. But that does not equate them with  victims of the Holocaust, any more than being a Jew automatically qualifies one to pronounce on Yugoslavia. This needs to meet the Serbs’ legitimate claim to self-rule with religious and cultural freedoms, otherwise they will go on fighting even if the whole world is mobilised against them . . . This will not be achieved so long as European Community foreign policy is made in Bonn, whose agenda entails the reversal not only of Versailles, but also of the post-1945 settlement.
By the end of the decade Sherman saw the U.S. policy in the Balkans as inseparable from the drive for global hegemony. At a conference jointly organized by The Lord Byron Foundation and The Rockford Institute in 1997, he noted that the American century began with the Spanish-American War, and that it was ending with American penetration of the Balkans. But in contrast to the Spanish-American war, he argued, U.S. intervention in the Balkans has no clear strategic aim, but is allegedly a moral crusade on behalf of the “international community”:
This begs many questions. First, is there such a thing as “the international community”? Do people in China, which accounts for a fifth of the world’s population, and the Buddhists, who account for another fifth—among others—really want the US and its client states to bomb the Serbs or Iraqis? And who exactly, and when, deputed the US to act on behalf of this “world community”? . . . Secondly, can the blunt weapon of force, of whose use US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright boasted, balance contlicting and competing ethnic, religious, economic and political interactions over this wide and conflictive region? Can the US raise the expectations of the Albanians and Slav Moslems without affronting Macedonians, Greeks, Italians, Bulgars and Croats, as well as Serbs? . . . Thirdly, can force be a substitute for policy? It was a wise German who said that you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. The same goes for gunships, the modern equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. Bomb and rocket once, and it has an effect. But if the victim survives, the second bout is less effective, because the victim is learning to cope.
Almost a decade ago, well before Iraq and 9-11, Sherman saw that Washington had “set up the cornerstone of a European Islamistan in Bosnia and a Greater Albania, thus paving the way for further three-sided conflict between Moslems, Serbs and Croats in a bellum omnium contra omnes . . . Far from creating a new status quo it has simply intensified instability.” The U.S. may succeed in establishing its hegemony, in the Balkans-Danubia-Carpathia and elsewhere, “but it will also inherit long-standing ethno-religious conflicts and border disputes without the means for settling them.” His 1997 warning could have come from the pages of Chronicles:
At the time of writing, the USA is uniquely powerful. It will not always be so. In the course of time, Russia may gain its potential strength, and there is very little the USA can do about Chinese developments one way or the other . . . A law of history is that power tends to generate countervailing power. It is not for me to trace how this will come about. We can do little more than guard against arrogance and over-extension and minimize the pointless sacrifices they usually entail. I am proud to have taken part in this struggle, the struggle to bring the powerful to their senses before they plunge into reckless, ruthless folly. This struggle carries no guarantee of success, for it is the quest for sanity that epitomizes the struggle of suffering humanity throughout the ages.
His realization that Western intervention in Yugoslavia has come as a result of Western crisis and not of Balkan tragedies, stemmed directly from his key insight that Washington’s “Benevolent Global Hegemony” is based on a new cultural paradigm, materialistic and anti-traditional. This megalomania is a form of madness, he would add, wnd nothing new in world history, but, as he wrote for Chronicles’ website in May 2000,
The power and prestige of America is in the hands of people who will not resist the temptation to invent new missions, lay down new embargoes, throw new bombs, and fabricate new courts. For the time being, they control the United Nations, the World Bank, most of the world’s high-tech weapons, and the vast majority of the satellites that watch us from every quadrant of the skies. This is the opportunity they sense, and we must ask what ambitions they will declare next . . . Instead of rediscovering the virtues of traditionally defined, enlightened self-interest in the aftermath of its hands down cold war victory, America’s foreign policy elites are more intoxicated than ever by their own concoction of benevolent global hegemony and indispensable power.
The project is coming to grief, as Sherman knew it would, but since his advice often took the form of a recommendation to prefer pain today to disaster tomorrow, he had found few patrons or disciples. As Dr. Stenton has noted, wilting patrons had found the message too clear, and possible disciples had been skeptical of the typical Sherman claim that the wickedness of the world does not much change:
There is nothing seductive about a Sherman political lesson, and it is delivered without the least concession to rank or reputation. An old communist faith in getting the ‘analysis’ right sits on an even older respect for the mission of Reason. Not that men are likely to do what is Reasonable, but they should have the chance.
May he rest in peace.
Monday 20 February 2012
Telegraph.co.uk

Sir Alfred Sherman

12:01AM BST 28 Aug 2006
Sir Alfred Sherman, who died on Saturday aged 86, was the former Communist who became one of Margaret Thatcher’s earliest intellectual soulmates when she succeeded Edward Heath as Opposition leader.
In 1974 he co-founded, with Sir Keith Joseph and Mrs Thatcher, the conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), and became its first director. He was ousted from the CPS in 1984 after he fell out of favour with the Tory leadership.
Sherman was arguably the most eccentric, and certainly the most contradictory, figure ever to have been a leading adviser to a senior politician. His early imbibed skill in Marxist dialectic made him a formidable logician; at his best he could be witty, educated and shrewd on economic matters. But he could also be breathtakingly naive, never losing the instinctive fanaticism which put him in the Communist party in the first place.
That fanaticism never enabled him to fit into the clubbable world of British politics. Though sensitive and easily stung by criticism, Sherman’s inability to compromise, and his deep contempt for large swathes of the Establishment, brought him few close friends. Many people regarded him as a sinister figure; but others found pathos in a man who effectively destroyed himself by a series of venomous quarrels that left him isolated from former colleagues.
During the years when his star was in the ascendant, Sherman’s clear thinking and willingness to say the unsayable – Sir Keith Joseph once described Sherman as the Tory Party’s “hair shirt” – provided a vital stimulus to Mrs Thatcher, giving her the intellectual confidence to proclaim her radical free-market vision in her early years as leader.
His access continued after Mrs Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, and it was Sherman who first introduced her to the monetarist Professor Alan Walters, who became her personal economic adviser in 1980.
In 1981 the CPS under Sherman’s directorship brought the Swiss monetarist Jurg Niehans over to Britain to advise on economic management. Niehans wrote a report critical of the government’s economic management that was crucial in influencing the change of policy in the 1981 budget; this tightened the government’s fiscal stance to make possible a looser monetary policy – the foundation for the policy successes of the Thatcher years.
Sherman also contributed to Mrs Thatcher’s speeches. It was said that at party conferences he could be relied upon to provide a draft of 50 pages, 48.5 of which were so outrageous as to be unusable, while the other one and a half contained phrases of pure gold. Mrs Thatcher’s close advisers were convinced that Sherman would continue to make a real contribution to the process of policy formulation in government, but strains in his relationship with the prime minister soon began to show. She was reported to find his frequent telephone calls irritating, and complained that he was too ready to sneer at difficulties she was encountering.
By 1983 Lord Thomas (the historian Hugh Thomas), who had been appointed chairman of the CPS in 1979, was finding Sherman impossible to work with. In the summer of that year, following a row over the relationship of the CPS with the Tory party, Sherman was summarily sacked from the CPS in a “virulent” letter from Thomas.
Sherman did not blame Thomas personally, but criticised “changed attitudes among Conservative leaders towards ideas, once back in office”, typically adding, “the effects on the CPS of de-Shermanisation are painfully evident in the brain death inflicted.”
After leaving the CPS, Sherman increasingly found himself cold-shouldered by former colleagues. Even Mrs Thatcher, who, it was said, continued to regard him with exasperated affection, appeared to avoid him. In 1987, when Norman Tebbit, then chairman of the Conservative Party, was asked whether Sherman still had the Prime Minister’s ear, he replied: “Not if she sees him coming he doesn’t.”
For Sherman himself, defeat brought bitterness and encouraged a tendency to romantic self-dramatisation. “If it wasn’t for me, Mr Heath would still be the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition”, he declared.
Alfred Sherman was born at Hackney on November 10 1919, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His early years were spent in grinding poverty; as a child he suffered from rickets. He was educated at Hackney Downs County Secondary School, which became notorious during the 1990s for its abysmal standards of education, but which was then, as a grammar school, regarded as a flagship of opportunity.
He went on to Chelsea Polytechnic, where he studied science. There he joined the Young Communist League because, as he later explained, “to be a Jew in 1930s Britain was to be alienated. The world proletariat offered us a home.”
In 1937, aged 17, he volunteered for the “Major Attlee” battalion of the International Brigades to fight as a machine-gunner for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil war. As a gifted linguist (he became fluent in at least five languages), Sherman was given the task of translating the orders of the battalion’s Red Army instructor into English, French and Spanish. He took part in the battle of Fuentes del Ebro in the lower Aragon before being captured by Franco’s Italian allies and sent back to Britain.
After the Second World War, in which he fought with the British Army in the Middle East, Sherman enrolled at the London School of Economics, where he became president of the student Communist Party. In 1948 he was due to deliver a paper on politics in Yugoslavia, following a visit to the country, when news came of Stalin’s break with Tito. Sherman was asked to amend his paper, but, when he refused, he was expelled from the Party for Titoist deviationism.
After graduating in 1950 Sherman found work as a teacher, but resigned a few weeks later when he found it impossible to keep order in the classroom. The experience stood him in good stead, however, because he wrote about the wreckage of his hopes in an article in an education journal, thus opening up a career in journalism.
Over the next 40 years Sherman wrote widely on political matters for many national newspapers. In 1965 he was recruited by Colin Welch, then deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph, as the paper’s local government correspondent. He was squeezed out soon afterwards, but continued to write fiercely-argued polemics for the Telegraph’s leader pages on many issues.
In 1986 he was sacked as a leader writer by Max Hastings, as one of his first acts as editor. In the following year Sherman alienated fellow Jews by arguing that young members of Hitler’s SS were as much victims of Hitler as the Jews. He also caused outrage by inviting the French National Front leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, to a Tory Conference fringe meeting. In 1992, when secret Soviet archives were opened, it emerged that in 1984 Sherman had given an interview to Pravda in which he was quoted as saying: “As for the lumpen, coloured people and the Irish, let’s face it, the only way to hold them in check is to have enough well armed and properly trained police.” During the furore that followed, Sherman merely complained that the quotation missed the word “proletariat” after “lumpen”, and denied using the phrase “well armed”.
Not that everyone took his outbursts seriously. On one occasion, when Sherman was supposed to have sounded off about the need for all second-generation immigrants to go home, an affable Jewish stockbroker patted him on the shoulder and said: “Okay, Alfred, I’ll meet you at Heathrow for the Thursday Aeroflot flight to Moscow.”
In 1993 Sherman became an adviser to the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a position which gave him a new opportunity to pour scorn on former allies in the Tory Party who regarded Karadzic as a war criminal.
Of the woman he once claimed he would die for, Sherman later said: “Lady Thatcher is great theatre as long as someone else is writing her lines; she hasn’t got a clue.” Nonetheless, when, last year, he published a book of memoirs, Paradoxes of Power: Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude, Lady Thatcher attended the launch party.
Alfred Sherman was knighted in 1983.
He married first, in 1958, Zahava Levin, with whom he had a son. She died in 1993, and in 2001 he married Angela Martins.
• Our obituary of Francis Maddison (August 21) stated that he was the first president of the Society for the History of Medieval Technology and Science; in fact, he was the second.
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