Letters | 14 November 2009

Good relations

Sir: Timothy Garton Ash writes (‘I was the man from Spekta’, 7 November) that Britain had a good name in central Europe. Perhaps the British Council played some small part in that. Uniquely in communist countries, the Council in Poland worked independently of the embassy, and with the encouragement of many Polish academics and others and — for all the compromises that had to be made — helped to keep alight the flame of independent cultural relations which are intolerable to totalitarian government. Poles were also grateful to Margaret Thatcher for creating the Know-How Fund. The Council was well placed to help quick and widespread progress to be made with that.

Charles Chadwick
(Director of the British Council, Poland 1989-1992), London NW3



Short circuit


Sir: Ted Short? I mean, we all know that there was a large pro-Soviet faction within Labour (‘Labour’s Soviet secrets’, 7 November). And some of us know that it, with the Communist party itself and with the Trots, created New Labour, having followed academic Marxism’s transition from economic to social, cultural and constitutional means.