The Times – 10 July 1985

According to your report (July 3) of Mgr Bruce Kent's unsuccessful complaint to the Press Council, after nearly 20 years in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament he has "yet to meet someone who wanted this country to become 'part of the Soviet Empire'". Whatever else the several thousand British Communist Party members understood to be in the CND may want, therefore, they would appear – in Mgr Kent's view – no longer to desire the revolutionary transformation of our political system along East European lines. Or don't they?

CND Council member and leading CPGB activist Dr Vic Allen's booklet, Images & Reality in the Soviet Union (1983), distributed by the Centre for International Peace-Building, blandly states on page 12 that the majority in

"Soviet democracy is not that which is derived from counting votes but the dominance of the largest class .... The suppression of opinions hostile to it is intended to maintain its integrity".

The Times of 19 October 1964 reported how Allen (who later became a professor at Leeds University and a close adviser to Arthur Scargill) was arrested in disguise in Nigeria

"carrying a string of Koranic beads ... [and] a travel document describing him as Alhaji Madu Hassan Doga",

a Hausa tribesman. Allen was convicted and sentenced to hard labour for plotting a Marxist revolution in Nigeria. The Nigerian Government's action was endorsed in the House of Commons by the then Labour Commonwealth Secretary, Arthur Bottomley, on 30 March 1965.

No doubt it would be maintained by CND "spokespersons" that, if Professor Allen's escapade had been more successful, Nigeria would have been no more destined to become "part of the Soviet empire" than Britain would be, if ever the Communist Party took control.

Dr JULIAN LEWIS
Director
The Coalition for Peace Through Security
London SW1

[For exposure of Professor Allen as an agent of the East German Stasi, click here.]