Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left

by Giles Udy

Description

The Labour Party welcomed the Russian Revolution of October 1917. For the following two decades it enthusiastically supported the Soviet 'great experiment', excusing all its excesses, and prepared to bring about its own socialist revolution in Britain. In 1929, Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to labour camps in the Russian far north. There, in appalling conditions, thousands died. But when British protesters called on the Labour government to halt the import show more of timber cut by those slave labourers, it refused. In private, the Cabinet acknowledged the truth but blocked appeals for an inquiry. In public, it dismissed the protests as a stunt fabricated by the Tories. Eyewitness accounts were rejected, diplomatic despatches ignored, and Soviet denials repeated as fact. One Labour minister even called it 'a remarkable economic experiment' and declared that the Soviets should be left to pursue it 'without outside interference'. Labour and the Gulag uncovers a dark chapter in British Labour history. It tells the story of the party's seduction by the allure of a socialist utopia and the moral compromises that followed.On the centenary of the revolution and as the hard left's influence in the party grows again, it offers stark lessons for the future. show less