1987. november (125-143. szám) / HU_BFL_XIV_47_2
Mii 2.A/0 Little Roisell Street, LONDONI, WiC.t ■ Tel. Oí-^ao H 2.6 ■ G. Rros-si 128/1987 /E/ 10th November, 1987 Hungarians in London Two years ago the philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás spent somé weeks in London on his first visit to the west, and gave valuable interviews to British Rádió. Now he is staying here again, although this time his trip is a persona! one, he is to get married this month on the lAth. However he will alsó use his time here fór educational purposes, on the evening of Tuesday lOth November at 6 pm there was an Eastern-Euro- pean seminar in the London School of Economics (he in fact stepped in at short notice as István Kémény was on the original agenda, a sociologist who was to have spoken about the significance and role of an altemative Hungárián economy, bút due to unforseen circumstahces he could nőt come over from Francé). Gáspár Miklós Tamás, who moved to Hungary from Transylvania in 1978, is a speciálist on East and Central European political movements and ideological trends; he has already produced a collection of his own essays in Románia and in Hungary three of his studies have appeared in samizdat publications. In the London lecture Gáspár Miklós Tamas spoke about the sort of role the West plays - as a metaphor - in East- European political strugglewhich to a great extent is of an ideological type: the choice between the liberal and authoritarian moaels appears as a fightbetween symbols. As these symbols are accepted or rejected as metaphorical weapons in the hands of different political groups it is important to clarify wnat is understood by Western civilization and Western values. In Gáspár Tamás’s opinion one result of a long communist reign is the strengthening of authoritarian and already existing anti- Western tendencies, the weakening of liberal traditions and the world view of the people - including the intellectuals - is mostly a strange mixture of bolshevism and old romantic conservatism as well as having a cock-eyed view of "consumer society", humán rights and lawfulness. The lecture was followed with great interest and raised a number of objections from the audience, many brought up the point that in recent decades radical Hungárián,Czech and Polish movements have fought fór Western Demo- cratic values, that Western political and cultural representatives have always recieved greater sympathy and interest in Eastern Central Europe than their Eastern counterparts; one speaker was of the opinion that a turning away from the West - if it exists - cannot be explained by the forswearing of Western civilization bút rather by the fact that the West has left Eastern European countries in the lurch. On Saturday 7th November representatives and activists belonging to the English Labour Party’s left wing organized a public conference in London entitled "Solidarity with Eastern Block Workers". In the conference’s opening plenary meeting held before an audience of several hundred Zbigniew Kowalewski - who was one of the leaders of Polish Solidarity - , the parliamentary representative Robin Cook, Mark Thompson, sub-editor of the European Nuclaer Disarmament paper and a Salford striker all spoke. After this eight work groups continued the conference, among them were two dealing with Hungárián themes, "Hungary Today" was the subject of one work group meeting led by György Krasso, after his account those present had many questions about the contamporary situation of the labour movement in Hungary, the links between the opposition and the workers and about the traditions of workers councils.
