“NATO is no virtuous body”

From the archives: Bertrand Russell

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First published in issue number three of the London Bulletin of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, October, 1967.

Free World Justice by Bertrand Russell

Opposing fascism in Greece

The prison sentences passed at the Old Bailey on October 4 [1967] were vicious. For what heinous offence were these three young men sent to jail for periods of six, twelve and fifteen months? Their crime was to have protested in London last April against the coup d’etat in Greece and the arrest and imprisonment of many thousands of innocent Greeks by the new military junta. It is a terrible commentary on Britain today that when fascism seizes power in Greece, the British “Labour” Government accords the new dictatorship instantaneous recognition, and those who dissent are savagely incarcerated.

Two of these young men are known to me as stalwarts of the days of mass civil disobedience. Michael Randle and Terry Chandler were both jailed for 18 months in 1962 for organising mass resistance to preparations for nuclear war. Chandler was later imprisoned for a further nine months for protesting against the visit to London of Queen Frederika of Greece, and has been convicted over the years a further 14 times for honourable offences against the indignities which we are required to suffer.

On the same day that these men were jailed, delegates at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Scarborough passed a composite resolution - against the wishes of the Party’s National Executive Committee - condemning the Greek military clique. Amongst other demands, this resolution called for the expulsion of Greece from NATO. Although I appreciate the spirit in which delegates voted for this resolution, its wording revealed a grievous misunderstanding of the role of NATO in Greece. NATO is no virtuous body from which a fascist newcomer must be expelled. NATO is the very instrument which has kept Greece in chains, thwarted social revolution there and made possible the replacement of a reactionary government by a fascist one. The failure of socialists to understand the role of NATO is crucial, because this organisation is at the heart of Western foreign and military policy. It is the instrument through which the United States interferes in the internal affairs of Western Europe; it also ensures the subservience of its Western European members to the United States.

I earnestly hope that the three million people whose votes were cast at Scarborough against the Greek junta will now raise their voices on behalf of those sent to prison in Britain for doing what their very own Government should itself have done: taking over the Greek Embassy in the name of human decency. Although some opponents of NATO have been jailed in Greece for as much as two decades, the British courts also have managed to demonstrate a cruelty which has no place in a civilised community.

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The London Bulletin, published in the early years of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, preceded publication of The Spokesman journal. The Bulletin covered the work in progress of the Russell Tribunal (International War Crimes Tribunal) on Vietnam and much else. An index of all issues available on request.