A heavy heart for Budapest

Budapest, my spiritual and emotional home during so many months of 1956 when I was absolutely passionate and committed in my opposition to Russian oppression, against the Hungarian stooges who had sold their heritage, culture and souls for the trappings of power. Yes, power they had; of credibility, they had none; of authority, they had none! But on the other hand, my heroes, my colleagues, we had not only the authority of the people, of true democracy, but the will to change our world forever, to claim our country back. Morning and evening, from my bedroom, I would listen to the radio from independent stations covering the growing conflict. I would clamber on captured tanks, travel at speed down those wide and cobbled avenues, cross bridges over the Danube, climb lampposts to hear my heroes proclaim, wave our flag, free of hammer and sickle for the first time in twenty years, and all this from my bedroom fifteen hundred miles away. 

How I love the news with its film of men and women, old and young, flushed with their victory as the Russians retreated out of the city. We were free! And the after that awful foreboding, came that Sunday morning when they returned, spewing death and disaster at any movement along the street. Radio Free Danube, Radio Free Budapest, they all appealed for help. “We need guns, help us,” they cried, while the West watched and waited for reality to return. A sad, sad day as the radios fell silent, and Western reporters crossed back into Austria. The Iron Curtain was back in place. Unable to speak the language, knowing nothing of the country, untouched by or at least unaware of the history of this country, its literature, philosophy and architecture, I had become Hungarian through and through. What of me now? How could those youthful hopes change to absolute commitment to the socialist cause? How could I ignore what I had seen of evil regimes in Budapest, to see in socialism a hope for my world? 

Easy, very easy! My world was class-ridden and controlled by a clever and arrogant elite. They did not need tanks, guns or secret police to impose their will. They did not need to invade in order to oppress across the world. They knew the score, that patronage and sharing a little of their wealth would win them power. Their promises of peace and justice, of wealth distribution and the dangers of socialism, kept them in power and with the shield of democracy. After all we usually voted the capitalists (Tories we called them) back, afraid that we might lose what comforts we had. Forty-nine years later, what has changed? Still a socialist, still committed to the cause, still with Marx on my office wall, I wait for tomorrow, the 5th May, when exercising my democratic right, I shall help return New Labour, a pale pink reflection of its past, to power once again. My only choice? Well yes; I hate those bloody capitalists.