> Who with his homophobic rants against the, "pansy left, " (W.H.
>Auden, Stephen
>Spender, Christopher Isherwood), isn't very PC either.
> See, George Orwell," by Raymond Williasms in the Penguin/Viking Modern
>Masters series, published about 1970 and, "orwell;The Politics of a Literary
>Reputation, " by John Rodden, Oxford Univ. Press.
Or Frances Stonor Saunders' The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters:
>But Orwell himself was not entirely innocent of such Cold War
>manipulations. He had, after all, handed over a list of suspected
>fellow travellers to the Information Research Department in 1949, a
>list which exposed thirty-five people as fellow travellers (or 'FT'
>in Orwell-speak), suspected front men, or 'sympathizers', amongst
>them Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman and Nat, 'on
>('Decayed liberal. Very dishonest'), Paul Robeson (Very anti-white.
>Wallace supporter'), J. B. Priestley ('Strong sympathizer, possibly
>has some kind of organizational tie-up. Very anti-USX), and Michael
>Redgrave (ironically, given his later appearance in the film 1984).
>Deeply suspicious of just about everybody, Orwell had been keeping a
>blue quarto notebook close to hand for several years. By 1949, it
>contained 125 names, and had become a kind of 'game' which Orwell
>liked to play with Koestler and Richard Rees, in which they would
>estimate 'to what lengths of treachery our favourite betes noires
>would go'. The criteria for inclusion seem to have been pretty
>broad, as in the case of Stephen Spender, whose 'tendency towards
>homosexuality' Orwell thought worth noting (he also said he was
>'very unreliable' and 'Easily influenced'). The American realist
>John Steinbeck was listed solely for being a 'Spurious writer,
>pseudonaif', whilst Upton Sinclair earned the epithet 'Very silly'.
>George Padmore (the pseudonym of Malcolm Nurse), was described as
>'Negro [perhaps of] African origin?', who was 'antiwhite' and
>probably a lover of Nancy Cunard. Tom Driberg drew heavy fire, being
>all the things Orwell loved to fear: 'Homosexual', 'Commonly thought
>to be underground member', and 'English Jew'.
>
>But, from being a kind of game, what Orwell termed his 'little list'
>took on a new and sinister dimension when he volunteered it to the
>IRD, a secret arm (as Orwell knew) of the Foreign Office. Although
>the IRD's Adam Watson would later claim that 'Its immediate
>usefulness was that these were not people who should write for us',
>he also revealed that '[their] connections with Soviet-backed
>organizations might have to be exposed at some later date'. In other
>words, once in the hands of a branch of government whose activities
>were not open to inspection, Orwell's list lost any innocence it may
>have had as a private document. It became a dossier with very real
>potential for damaging people's reputations and careers.
>
>Fifty years later, Orwell's authorized biographer, Bernard Crick,
>stood firmly by Orwell's action, claiming it was 'no different from
>responsible citizens nowadays passing on information to the
>anti-terrorist squad about people in their midst whom they believe
>to be IRA bombers. These were seen as dangerous times in the late
>forties.' This defence has been echoed by those determined to
>perpetuate the myth of an intellectual group bound by their ties to
>Moscow, and united in a seditious attempt to prepare the ground for
>Stalinism in Britain. There is no evidence that anybody on Orwell's
>list (as far as it has been made public) was involved in any illegal
>undertaking, and certainly nothing which would justify the
>comparison to Republican terrorists. 'Homosexual' was the only
>indictment which bore any risk of criminal conviction, though this
>does not seem to have deterred Orwell in his bestowal of the word.
>British law did not prohibit membership of the Communist Party,
>being Jewish, being sentimental or stupid. 'So far as the Right is
>concerned Orwell can do no wrong,' Peregrine Worsthorne has written.
>'His judgement in these matters is trusted absolutely. So if he
>thought the Cold War made it justifiable for one writer to be
>positively eager to shop another, then that is that. End of
>argument. But it shouldn't be the end of argument. A dishonourable
>act does not become honourable just because it was committed by
>George Orwell.'
>
>This is not to say that Orwell was wrong to be concerned about what
>he called 'the poisonous effect of the Russian mythos on English
>intellectual life'. He of all people knew the cost of ideology, and
>the distortions performed in its name by 'liberals who fear liberty
>and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect'. But by
>his actions, he demonstrated that he had confused the role of the
>intellectual with that of the policeman. As an intellectual, Orwell
>could command an audience for his attacks on British Russomania,
>openly, by engaging his opponents in debate on the pages of Tribune,
>Polemic, and other magazines and papers. In what way was the cause
>of freedom advanced by answering (suspected) intellectual dishonesty
>with subterfuge?
>
>'If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the
>line from Milton: "By the known rules of ancient liberty",' Orwell
>wrote in the preface to Animal Farm. The phrase, he explained,
>referred to his strong faith in the 'deep-rooted tradition' of
>'intellectual freedom . . . without which our characteristic Western
>culture could only doubtfully exist'. He followed with a quote from
>Voltaire: 'I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your
>right to say it.' Months before his own death, Orwell seemed to be
>saying, 'I detest what you say; I will defend to death your right to
>say it; but not under any circumstances.' Commenting on what she saw
>as Orwell's move to the right, Mary McCarthy remarked it was a
>blessing he died so young.