I recommend this posting at the highly recommendable Social Affairs Unit blog, by Anthony Glees, about Christopher Hill, John Roper and Robin Pearson. (SAU Director Michael Mosbacher, who is presumably the one who recruits the writers for this blog, is doing a remarkable job with this blog, I think.)
The stuff about Christopher Hill interested me particularly. What a vile man. I knew that he was a bolshevik, but I had not realised how vile a bolshevik and how much damage he did to the cause of civilisation.
The vile Hill wrote many highly regarded works of academic scholarship. This little bit from Glees’ posting throws a different light on the sort of academic that he was:
One of Hill’s unsavoury measures (showing his interest in Britain’s academic culture) was his proposal to dismiss for “political reasons” (Hill’s own words) all White Russian university teachers in the UK and replace them by Soviet citizens to be nominated by the Russians themselves (that little phrase, “for political reasons” is chilling). Hill wanted Churchill and Stalin to agree to this at the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
While googling for more about Anthony Glees, I came across this 1999 BBC report, which included this quote, from another of the vile academics whom Glees writes about, Robin Pearson of Hull University:
“This was all 20 years ago and I’d rather it all went away.”
I just bet you would, matey.
It is a pity that Glees had to promise the vile Hill to keep quiet about what the vile Hill told him about his (the vile Hill’s) bolshevistic activities until he, the vile Hill, died. But then again, the vile Hill had to die knowing that his full vileness would in due course fully emerge. That is justice of a sort, although not nearly enough of course.
Treating these people as badly as they really deserve seems difficult these days, but it is important to make them squirm a little, and to die in the knowledge that their support for barbarism has been thoroughly revealed and stands a fair chance of being the only thing about them that will be lastingly remembered. Well done Professor Glees.
(And again, well done Michael Mosbacher for getting him to write for the SAU blog.)
Brian:
thanks for recommending the Social Affairs Unit…I’ve been forced to bookmark it now, to give myself yet another chance for my head to explode. Hill sounds like the ideal tenured professor at any major U.S. university…
I refuse to judge cultural contributions by the politics of their authors. I judge them on their own terms.
If Roper and Pearson are remembered outside of friends and family, it will be as supporters of tyranny. Hill, I am not so sure about. He may be remembered also as a historian.
I am not sufficiently expert to judge whether his historical writing will last. But I do know that worse men than Hill have contributed great things.
In addition to what Richard E said: I think this “staff policy” Hill proposed for UK is already implemented in US educational institutions, and with US own cadre.
When I applied for admission to Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and presented my Russian Masters diploma in industrial engineering to the registrar office for possible course credits, I was stunned to discover they found I fulfilled their entire liberal arts criteria in HISTORY department with such disciplines (mandatory for Soviet educational institutions) as
-Scientific Communism (1-year course and state exam)
-History of Communist party of Soviet Union (2-year course)
-Marxism-Leninism (1 term)
Interesting that credit for Manual drafting was denied…
Shows how desperate the commie spooks were by the 1980s. Instead of future leaders of the Establishment and A-bomb scientists, the Stasi were trawling among provincial university exchange students for gossip about their own dissidents.
The cases are such small beer that the CPS decided not to prosecute Pearson, Allen or Fiona Houlding. But old Cold War dinosaurs have got to have their bit of fun. All this stuff is five years old. Presumably they haven’t managed to dredge up any more evidence of British treachery since 1999.
The wider point is that every country spies on every other country all the time, and the net effect is probably nil. Just a makework scheme for overgrown boys at the taxpayer’s expense.
JK
I agree that achievement is achievement and morals are morals. All Glees is (and I am) saying is that the morals of these people were appalling.
Paleo
Hill, if Glees is right, did a great deal more than merely spy. He influenced policy, and in a thoroughly murderous fashion, delaying the liberation of Eastern Europe by several decades. So, an accessory to murder. And should we acquit someone of that just because it happened a while ago?
There is “something new” about all this, which is that people like you are trying to make everyone forget about it.