Moscow mules and Aeroflot diplomacy

Here’s another take on the so-called ‘Moscow mules’ (see previous two posts).

Writing for Conservative Home today Harry Phibbs describes his own experience, which included getting arrested.

He was 16 at the time.

A year or two later he joined a small demo I organised at the old Aeroflot office in Piccadilly, opposite the Ritz.

I was working as the UK representative of a Frankfurt-based human rights’ group that had close links with NTS, the Russian emigre group that recruited me and other young activists to go to the USSR to distribute magazines, books, letters etc to dissidents.

The International Society for Human Rights (to give it its English title) was founded in Germany after the Berlin Wall was built and its principal function was to reunite families divided by the wall.

I’m not sure why it had a UK chapter (I guess they wanted to expand into the English-speaking world as a right of centre version of Amnesty) but the UK operation was either inactive or had gone rogue so I was asked to take over.

That is a story in itself. What basically happened is that a group of us registered as members then turned up at the UK chapter’s AGM and voted out the existing office holders.

It wasn’t difficult because there was hardly anyone there and we outnumbered them four or five to one.

The coup d'état was over in a matter of minutes and afterwards we went to the pub leaving behind some rather shell-shocked former committee members.

(This is one of the reasons Forest has never been a membership organisation. You cannot trust the members!)

Anyway, one of the first things we did was to get behind the campaign to free the Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov who was in exile in the Soviet Union.

I described our Aeroflot demo in ‘A very British protest’.

The very grainy photo above shows us standing behind a large plate glass window waving a homemade banner and placards.

The man in the Soviet military uniform (bottom left), which we hired from the BBC costume department, is my good friend Gary Ling.

Gary was another Tory activist who went to the Soviet Union. He describes his experience - “I was an enthusiastic ideologue but not an idiot” - here.

Apart from Gary and Harry Phibbs there are several more Tory activists in that photo including one who became a high-ranking adviser to a subsequent Conservative government.

The barely visible camera on the right belonged to Channel 4 News so although it wasn’t the largest demo ever it did attract some media attention.

Several ‘Moscow mules’ were at Forest’s 40th anniversary dinner in 2019 so we’re still in touch.

Perhaps we should reunite the whole gang. A long weekend in Moscow, perhaps?