Fauvet misleads when he hides his status from the readers of this blog, but he violates one of the most fundamental principles of journalistic ethics when he reports on Mozambique for the media without disclosing that he is paid by the Mozambique government.

Fauvet illustrated his standards of journalism when he accused me of receiving a dossier about him from South African military intelligence. Now he says he doesn’t care if there’s a dossier. In other words, he peddled a libellous hoax and he doesn’t care that it was a hoax. That may prove relevant if, in lying about Cabrita, Fauvet has chosen a more litigious victim.

Fauvet protests that he wasn’t alive when his party supported Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Presumably he was alive when he decided to join the party that had supported Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Presumably he was still alive when he decided to stay in the party that sent a delegate to the regime of Ceausescu (The Guardian, December 8, 1990). Just as Fauvet was alive when he decided to work for the dictatorship of Machel. Or does Fauvet want us to think that he has been brain-dead all along?

According to Bogdanor, anyone who contributes comments to blogs must preface them with a mea culpa disclosing their political affiliation and their present and past employment. That would be fun, particularly in an environment where the great majority of contributors don’t even reveal their names.

Bogdanor, it seems, has a really inquisitorial mindset, and would have made a great hatchet man for the late Joseph McCarthy. And, in addition to knowing nothing of the subjects he writes about, other than what he cribbed from the writings of a far-right enthusiast for the apartheid regime’s wars against its neighbours, he is distinctly deficient in any sense of irony.

As for whether Bogdanor has a dossier or not, I really don’t care. I am, however, mildly flattered that anyone would plough through yellowing copies of CPGB publications to find articles which he imagines will dish the dirt on me.

Bogdanor makes much of my quoting him as saying I am a “longstanding” rather than a “longtime” member of the CPGB. This is a ridiculous exercise in hair-splitting, since my dictionary tells me that these words are synonyms.

As for the CPGB being “the party of Stalin”, based on its support for the Hitler-Stalin pact, you can no more blame members of the CPGB who weren’t even alive at the time for that, than you can blame David Cameron for Winston Churchill’s repugnant views on Gandhi and Indian independence.

Before you do that, think about making a trip to Mozambique and doing a bit of on-the-ground research. The striking difference between Fauvet and you is of someone who was and is there and has seen for himself and is relaxed about things (his nicely ironic remark about internet access), and someone who is stuck at a computer terminal in the UK and is – let’s put it like this – unrelaxed.

1. Fauvet doesn’t even pretend to explain why he wrote about Mozambique in the British media (and on this page) without disclosing the rather important fact that he was (and is) being paid by the government in question.

2. Fauvet alleges that I received a dossier about him directly or indirectly from South African military intelligence. This defamatory invention tells us what we need to know about the kind of journalism Fauvet produced on behalf of the Frelimo dictatorship while concealing his Frelimo status.

3. I can set his mind at rest: there is no dossier. The sources on his conduct are available in university libraries (7 Days) and newspaper databases (Guardian). In fact the evidence is remarkably easy to find:-

we no longer have what used to be called our safe rear guard: we no longer have the Soviet bloc to fall back on.

Let me assure him that I did not learn of this quotation from South African military intelligence either.

4. Fauvet offers another example of his journalistic standards:

he says that I am (present tense) a “longstanding member”. Afraid not – the CPGB voted to dissolve itself at a congress in 1991 (much to my dismay).

I wrote that Fauvet

is, in effect, a Mozambique state propagandist, as well as a long-time member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Fauvet cannot even render a quotation accurately when it appears on the same page.

5. Of course, someone who wrote in 1960:-

Johann von Leers is, in effect, an Egyptian state propagandist, as well as a long-time member of the National Socialist German Workers Party

would in no way be asserting the continued existence of the Nazi Party. Fauvet’s deductive powers are as impressive as his talent for quotation.

6. Fauvet admits that he joined the party that championed Stalin’s pact with Hitler. He claims that he spent much of his time in that party fighting Stalinists. And then he denies that it was the party of Stalin. He would like us to believe that Stalinists infiltrated the CPGB in the same way that Trotskyists tried to infiltrate the Labour Party.

7. I don’t doubt for a moment that there were hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million, war-related deaths in Mozambique. Nor do I doubt that the guilt is shared equally by the Renamo rebels and Fauvet’s paymasters in the Frelimo dictatorship.

Fauvet is proud of joining the party that championed Stalin’s pact with Hitler, proud of joining the propaganda arm of a dictatorship, and proud that he published news reports in the British media while violating the basic full-disclosure principle of journalistic ethics.

He is dismayed at the dissolution of the CPGB, dismayed at the collapse of the USSR, and dismayed at the failure to build communism in southern Africa.

But even Fauvet has his moments. How often does the head of a government news agency complain in public about the “conspiracy” that denies him access to a functioning computer?

Bogdanor has comprehensively proved that he knows next to nothing not only about Mozambique, but also about the Communist Party of Great Britain. Apparently he believes the Party still exists, for he says that I am (present tense) a “longstanding member”. Afraid not – the CPGB voted to dissolve itself at a congress in 1991 (much to my dismay). There is a joke outfit that has tried to steal the name, and publishes something called the “Weekly Worker”, but I assure you I have nothing to do with that.

Bogdanor seems to have serious problems with the English language. He thinks there is a contradiction between Mike S’s denial that the CPGB was “the Party of Stalin”, and my reference to fighting Stalinists within the Party.

Bogdanor may be unaware of it, but there are Trotskyists inside the Labour Party. Does that make the Labour Party “the Party of Trotsky”?
Does the presence of racists aming the Tories make the Conservative Party “the party of racism”?

Bogdanor says my party “championed the pact with Hitler”. Yes, I’m afraid it did – unfortunately I was in no position to vote against this aberrant policy since it happened 11 years before I was born.

Mike S suspects Bogdanor has kept a dossier on me. No, Mike, Bogdanor didn’t draw up that dossier – he doubtless got it from Cabrita or from Cabrita’s friends in South African Military Intelligence, who certainly did keep tabs on anti-apartheid activists all over the world.

But it doesn’t worry me – as a journalist, my writings are in the public domain. Since I’m rather proud of most of them, I don’t mind Bogdanor quoting them. Perhaps he’d like to send me a copy of the dossier, since I didn’t keep copies of all my earlier scribblings.

And no, I am not the same person as Mike S. Can’t Bogdanor tell that the style is completely different? Since I am proud of what I write, I see no reason to use pseudonyms.

Most of Bogdanor’s disinformation about Mozambique does indeed come from Cabrita – though, to give it a patina of respectability, he has leavened it with a few quotes from western press articles. Had he looked a little further he would have found literally thousands of articles in the western press over the years since Mozambican independence that say very different things about the country.

He is, of course, quite silent about the apartheid regime’s war of destabilisation against Mozambique. In that war, by 1989, some 900,000 people had perished (UN figures). Most, of course, were not killed by bombs or bullets, but by famine when food aid could not get through because the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels had destroyed roads, railways or bridges, or by disease – around half the fragile health network was destroyed, sometimes by apartheid’s surrogates literally dynamiting clinics.

By the end of the war, in 1992, the death toll could easily have been a million or more. And when Mozambique was able to hold a census (in 1997), when the figures are compared with the 1980 census and the population growth rate of that time, we do indeed find that there are about a million missing people.

To sum up – I am proud that I played a role, however minor, in the struggle aainst colonialism and apartheid. I am proud that I took part in an attempt to build socialism in southern Africa, an attempt which Bogdanor’s allies drowned in blood.

Sidebar: About “giving” power to an anti-colonial force that did not “win” on the battlefield. Most colonial wars of liberation do in fact end this way. The liberation movement and its army only rarely ends up, as in the US War of Independence or the Viet Minh War against the French, dealing the Imperial Army a decisive military defeat. Usually colonial wars drag on until the Imperial govt at home realizes that their effort to subdue the rebellion is proving far more costly in human and financial terms and growing unpopularity among their own people, then can be justified by any eventual “victory” over the rebels. Or to roughly paraphrase Edmund Burke’s famous attack on the British govt’s persistance in fighting the American Patriots, when the home govt. gains the wisdom to grant what is no longer in their power to withhold. (Burke’s attack was that George III & Lord North did NOT have this wisdom.) As to turning power over to the liberation movement that only makes sense. After all the liberation movement is usually the one with both popular support as well as the weapons. If they did not have support of the populace, they would have been flushed out & destroyed by the colonial army. This has historically been the pattern from the Maccabee Rebellion* against the Greek Seculids,** in the 2nd Century BCE to the Russian withdrawl from Afghanistan in 1989.

*the real Judean Peoples Front!
**not the Syrians as my Jewish high school classmates said.

But why would “Mike S” (or Paul Fauvet for that matter, if they are distinct individuals) defend my rights in Britain, while supporting a dictatorship in Mozambique?

And why would he (or they) impute such double standards to this blog? If you can’t find Stalinism in the Communist Party, is it logical to look for it on Harry’s Place?!?

I defend your right to hold your views, but the fact you’ve been permitted to post them on this site indicates to me that the nature of it has changed considerably since I started looking at it.
Adieu