'It was never a black and white affair' The Tory: Alfred Sherman Jonathan Glancey The Guardian Friday November 10, 2000 What happened in 1453?" The fall of Constantinople? "Exactly." Having assured himself that a Guardian journalist has some vague knowledge of history, Sir Alfred Sherman plunges into a gloriously complex, yet lucid exploration of world history, making connections between peoples, cultures, religions and trade routes where few fellow government and public affairs policy advisors are likely to make them. Sherman is best known as Margaret Thatcher's guru, co-founder of the rightwing Centre for Policy Studies and the man who did as much as anyone else to roll back of the frontiers of the Tory state from 1979. Privatising the railways? This onetime Daily Telegraph leader writer would have converted them into express bus lanes. If one takes Sherman's anti-state philosophy to its logical conclusion, one might well be arguing for the withering away of the state itself. This, of course, is an idea of Karl Marx, nemesis of Thatcherism. Sir Alfred, however, was a member of the communist party from his teenage years to 1947. "I was expelled," he says, "for attacking Stalin over Yugoslavia, and much else beside." By then, Sherman, had decided that Stalin was, to put it bluntly, "a bastard". "Communism and socialism were walls that stood in front of me after the Hitler war. I took them down brick by brick until I could see the clear light beyond." This conversion from youthful communism to arch-liberalism in his 50s seems logical enough. Sherman is, at heart, a man unwilling to put up with bullies, whether Spanish fascist generals of the 1930s or democratic superpowers that choose to throw their weight around in the Middle East and elsewhere today. In 1937, his bogey states were Italy, Germany and Spain. Today, the problem is the United States. Sherman was born to Jewish emigre parents in Hackney in 1919. His father was a left-wing Russian tailor. There were books in the house, although on the day Sherman junior left Victoria station with a dozen or so young colleagues for Spain in 1937, he had yet to read Marx. "My politics were driven by emotion. That's how you see the world at 17. It's all black and white, painted in broad brushstrokes. I was studying chemistry at the time at Chelsea Polytechnic. I was appalled by the rise of fascism, followed the civil war in the papers and wanted to do my bit." With no military training? "No. I'd never picked up a gun. What I could do, though, was speak Spanish, and French. Came in handy. "When we arrived in Spain - train to Perpignan and then on foot over the Pyrenees - we were given three weeks basic military training by Red Army volunteers. We'd teamed up by then with a wide mix of fellow brigaders - miners, shipbuilders, many of them world war one veterans - and went into action on the Zaragoza road." Like many soldiers who have been involved in the bloody business of killing and being shot at but have no love of bloodshed, Sherman is not interested in talking about the actual fighting he took part in. What he does talk about is the weaponry. He can name the parts and assess the effectiveness of Mexican Mausers, Soviet-made first world war Remingtons, water-cooled Maxims, and air-cooled Soviet machine guns. He wasn't hurt. "Lucky." What did he think of shooting to kill? "What's a soldier for?" he retorts as the sun sinks over the Chelsea horizon and his comfortable flat, all books and papers, sinks into the dark, an age and a geography away from the sun-scorched Aragon front. "Bloody cold in winter," adds Sherman in case I begin to wax romantic, which he refuses to do at any time in our conversation. Sherman says he was involved in three major actions. It took him some while, though, to build up a reasonably detailed picture of the internecine nature of his own side. It was never exactly pointillist at the time. Hindsight, he suggests, is a handy gift for those who wish to remember the past as it wasn't for them at the time. "If you want to know about the civil war in detail, read Hugh Thomas's history," he suggests. "We were stretched out along straggling fronts with little in the way of modern communications. Information was there, but sparse." Was he surprised that there were so many Catholics fighting Franco? No. He was generally well informed. "The Basques were zealous Catholics and were fanatically anti-Franco. There was even a Loyola brigade [Ignatius Loyola, 1491-1556, an aristocratic soldier wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, founded the Society of Jesus]. And, of course, there were Germans fighting Franco too. The Spanish civil war was never a black and white affair. Bloody complicated." And very bloody. Back off the train at Victoria station in 1938, Sherman took a job in a London electrical factory. He hadn't told his parents he was going to Spain; they were pleased to see him back and in one piece. What did he feel about his part in the war? "Betrayed, by the west. We were given no real picture of Stalin's motives. We were pawns in many ways. It took me nearly another decade before I realised what a cheat and liar Stalin was." What would he advise a 17-year-old today willing to fight for a cause in a far-off country of which most of us know little and care less? "Spain was a special case; a few more good divisions and I still think the tide could have been turned against Franco. But, today?" In recent years, then. "Biafra was one example. But that was Africa and who cared or cares about Africa?" Che Guevara, I suggest, in the Congo. "In the pay of bloody Moscow; directly or indirectly, doesn't matter." Sherman stops to serve Earl Grey tea, no milk, and to play me and my Slovenian colleague, Sonja Merljak, some old Yugoslavian marching songs on the stereo. "East Timor," he suggests suddenly. "We really should have done something there, but that would have offended US interests and no one is allowed to do that..." Knighted in 1983 for services to the rolling-back-of-the-state, Alfred Sherman remains at heart a crusader. Behind the bluff and wilfully contrary exterior beats the heart of a romantic who would much prefer to call himself a rationalist. He would, I can't help feeling, like all politicians of all creeds and states, to wither away, so the rest of us can get on with our lives, whether as tailors, students or government advisers with a passion for history. And no one would have to fight. Full article at: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4088957,00.html
