John Lloyd

The consensus since the miners’ strike ended in March has been overwhelming: it was a disaster, most of all for the miners themselves. It is irresistible, in the interests of fairness at least, to look at the possibility that that verdict is wrong. Let us suppose – as Arthur Scargill invites us to – that it was forced upon them: that, as he also claims, it was a victory.’

In June of this year Tony Benn took part in a radio discussion on the working of Parliament, together with John Biffen and Roy (Lord) Jenkins. Asked by the chairman, Peter Hennessy, if he did not think that the Lords now functioned as a ‘focus of opposition’, Benn responded that it was, instead, ‘part of an attack on democracy. After all, why bother to vote in the next election if you’ve got a friendly peer you can write to …’ After a little more of this, Jenkins cut in, the dwawl part amused, part irritated. ‘You do live in a wonderful fantasy world,’ he said.

It will prove very hard for Poland to find a way out of Communism, though not as painful, one hopes, as finding its way into it. But what we are now witnessing is the end: there is probably no way back, not even by armed force. This is a risky thing to write after the imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and the recent brutalities of Tiananmen Square: total control both of the military and of all forms of political activity obviously makes possible an almost limitless exercise of power. But martial law, as Norman Davies has pointed out in The Heart of Europe, was introduced by the ‘core of the Communist establishment’, the Army leaders, because every other source of authority had been exhausted. They acted, as Warsaw Pact forces manoeuvred on Poland’s borders and off its coasts, to preserve Soviet power, secure in the knowledge that their action would be supported by that power. They could not be certain of that now. There is no longer a Communist backstop. If the Army is to be used again, it is unlikely to be by the present authorities.

A new plan for economic reform will shortly be decided on by the Soviet Government. It will be the fourth in less than a year: we cannot of course know whether it will last any longer than the previous three, which were withdrawn because of public criticism and divisions among the leadership. It is a common view among Soviet reformers that this is the last chance for perestroika – though there are many who believe that the last chance has gone, who no longer have any faith in perestroika, or in Mikhail Gorbachev, or indeed in the continuing existence of the Soviet Union.

Most of the institutions of the Soviet state had their finest hour under Stalin. More than anyone else, Mikhail Gorbachev has made this clear: his efforts to force the Stalin period to act as a receptacle for much of the odium felt for Communist rule – with the Brezhnev ‘era of stagnation’ in support – have succeeded only in showing that effective Communism can have no dynamic outside of Stalinism. Communism is about the creation of utopia – otherwise defined as the end of history, or the full victory of the working class. If history does not know its script, it must be forced to act as if it did, dragged by the scruff of its neck towards an always glorious, but always receding climax. As W.H. Auden remarked in another context, those leaders who believe in the possibility of utopia would be shirking their civic duty if they did not terrorise their citizens into acceptance.’