reviews 'Strawberry & Chocolate' by Tomas Gutierrez Alea. The Cuban film 'Strawberry and Chocolate' is a cultural export of which Castro should be proud, but probably isn't.
The film, about Diego, a gay artist living in Cuba, could hardly fail to be a critique of the state's attitude towards homosexuality.
However it is much more than this. Diego and the young communist student David, with whom he is in love, share a genuine passion for Cuban independence and culture.
David at first mistrusts Diego because he is gay, because he talks ironically cause he enjoys art and whisky not sanctioned by the bureaucrats.
But it is the ironic Diego who teaches David, the committed communist, to appreciate the true beauty of his country.
Out of suspicion grows friendship and it soon becomes clear to David that Diego is also part of Cuba, and should be a part of the revoluOther members of the Party don't see things the same way and just as Diego has been excluded from participation in the revolution, he will soon be 'kicked out' of the country.
'Strawberry & Chocolate' is a tragic film. The economic decay of Cuba forms the backdrop to a story of love, betrayal and finally - too late -understanding. that the revolution cannot simply be defended but must also be extended to include the participation of all Cuba's people if the revolution is to survive, not only to do so physically but also politically.
Like the strawberry and chocolate ice cream of the title, this film is made in Cuba and there is a message in that fact also.
Alan Thornett reviews The Enemy Within - MI5, Maxwell and the Scargill affair by Seumus Milne (Verso £16.95). "The Enemy Within" is both a deafter the 1984-5 strike and a crucially important expose of the subversive role of the security over the past two decades.
The book contains a rigorous and detailed account of the campaign by the Thatcher administration to destroy the NUM and its leadership during the course of the 1980s. This offensive was the spearhead of its campaign against ment to destabilise the NUM and to "get Scargill" from their pre-strike preparations through to their bitter year long struggle against the miners. After the strike it details the continuing campaign to destroy the NUM and the coal industry itself. It shows the effects of their support for nuclear power, the privatisation of electricity generation, and the rigging of the market. It carries and account of the final blitzkrieg against the industry by Heseltine in 1992.
Milne graphically shows how the government miscalculated coal stocks scabbing, the miners were on the verge of victory in October 1984. It details the preparations made at that time, but in the event not used until much later, to discredit and vilify the leadership of the union - Scargill in particular - in order to bolster the government's position.
Penetration
Of special interest to activists will be the new information on the role of the state security service MIS before during and after the strike - how they set out to penetrate the NUM at the highest level. This was systematically carried out by MIS's trade union section F2, long presided over by Stella Rimmington - now director of the agency.
Rimmington controlled the F2 operation throughout the year reporting directly to the government. Throughout she organised subversion into the strike and provocations into the picket lines.
Leaks emanating from GCHQ and other security sources in the early 1990s make it clear that MI5 set out to use the staff changes before the strike to penetrate NUM national office staff. They were acting on direct instructions of Margaret Thatcher. Ironically the NUM office in Euston was right oppo site Rimmingtons office in the MIS building on the corner of Gower Street next to the RMT headquarters. explain how the moves to penetrate the "Cathy Massiter, then a desk office with a long time MI5 agent, his handler and another F-branch officer at a security service safe house in London. The agent was Harry Newton, a Yorkshireman and a well respected left-wing academic in the northern labour and peace movements. In his other persona, he was a paranoid anti-communist who had worked undercover for Mil5 for nearly 30 years".
Newton was a long time friend of Scargill since YCL days. In the early 1980s MI5 moved Newton to London to work in the CND national office. This meeting planned to penetrate the NUM at "the highest level". They desperately wanted someone close to Scargill prior to the immanent strike.
Newton never got to the stage of applying for a job with the NUM in Sheffield because his health began to fail. Scargill, however, told Seumas Milne that had he applied he would have stood a very good chance of getting it.
Newton's health did not stop the penetration of the NUM by MIS. Michael Bettany, an MIS officer, told his secret state worked to undermine Scargill much more to the story. solicitor, who was also the NUM's solicitor, that MIS had in fact succeeded NUM and that the NUM leadership Retired CIA agent Miles Copeland, no political friend of Scargill's, phoned him to further say that an agent had been successfully placed at the top of the union. This penetration took place at exactly the time Roger Windsor was Windsor became one of the four most influential people in the union by the time the strike took place. In 1990 he suddenly left the union and quickly swiftly became a paid informant, to the tune of £80,000. Robert Maxwell's Mirror and the Cook Report launched one of the biggest attacks on a trade union leader ever seen in this country.
Libya
Windsor alleged that Scargill had used money from Libya to pay off his mortgage and those of Peter Heathfield and himself, and that Scargill had misappropriated huge sums of money donated by Soviet miners. All these allegations fell in court and Scargill was roundly vindicated. There is, however, Milne's book makes a convincing case that Windsor was in fact the agent concerned with a brief to "fuck up the NUM". Scargill is clearly convinced of the truth of this. Windsor was the architect of the plans to move NUM funds SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 73-74, December 1994, Page 15 into foreign secure bank accounts. Sources from GCHQ suggest that it was cracked because of tip-offs providgramme demolish the Daily Mirror's campaign against Scargill - particularly over the Libyan money. backed the story to the hilt at on the instructions of Maxwell is no longer convinced of the accuracy of the material supplied by Windsor. He told Milne that they may have been victims of an nally cast himself over the side of his boat, began to think that this may have been the case - although, says Greenslade, it never bothered him very much. Tam Dayell accused Windsor in Parlia working directly with Stella Rimmington. He claimed that this came from an impeccable source in the secupared to name. The source told him that Windsor had been an agent of MIS Correspondents Milne's book, which also shows the extent to which the labour correspondents of the various newspapers were targeted and penetrated by MIS, is a real service to the trade union movement. MI5 dirty tricks have extended far beyond the NUM - although this was clearly been one of their biggest operations.
I have personally experienced their extensive intervention in the car industry, a major target through the 1970s.
While getting a lift from a guy in Oxford, active for several years in revolutionary politics, a concealed police radio blurted out a message. He stopped the car and told me to get out.
I néver saw him again.
The miners lost, and the trade union movement is still suffering from the defeat. But the more that is known about the way that defeat took place, who was involved, and how it was not inevitable. the more the trade unions will be armed for the future.
Milne has helped make this possi ble. His is an important contribution -this book will make a good Christmas holiday reading for all labour movement activists.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 73-74, December 1994, Page 16