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[ repost | The Australian ]

by Tibor Meray | March 22, 2008

THE long discussion over Wilfred Burchett’s activities is still alive in Australia and there are questions that have not yet been satisfactorily answered.
Was he a Communist Party member? Did he serve any foreign governments? Was he given money by foreign governments or party organisations? Was he a journalist or propagandist?

Throughout his life, Burchett always declared himself to be an independent and free journalist. He maintained that he had never been a propagandist for any party or state, and in his 1981 book At the Barricades he wrote this: “Alan Winnington (a colleague of Burchett’s and Meray’s in covering the Korean War and armistice talks from the north’s side) was a member of the British Communist Party, but neither Chu Chi-ping (a Beijing journalist) nor I had ever been Communist Party members.”

Up to now the questions listed above were always discussed without any evidence.

Those taking part either took Burchett’s declarations on the matter as valid or, if they were on the other side, tried to refute them on the basis of logical conclusions or by analysis of his writings.

Let me enter the arena of this discussion.

For me, two things were never in doubt. First of all, I always knew Burchett was a communist. He told me so without delay, right after we first met. He hastened to add that although he was a member of the Australian Communist Party, this was a secret as far as non-communists were concerned and the outside world should know him as an independent who did not belong to any party.

This did not surprise me at all. Within the communist parties it is a well-known method to pretend that certain card-carrying members are independents. This way they can be used to carry out outside tasks. For example, they can be infiltrated more easily into other organisations. Their usefulness to the party is much enhanced by their being known as non-party members.

In Hungary there were dozens of such crypto-communists, not only between the two world wars, when the party was banned, but also after World War II, when the communists held most of the power. During the postwar coalition period these secret party members were used to weaken the other parties and mislead public opinion.

As I mentioned, Wilfred told me at our first meeting that he was such a party member disguised as an independent. However, those who wish to doubt my words may do so. Our conversation was entirely private.

Now to the second point. The other thing clear to me, or shall I say became clear to me in Kaesong (for a time the scene of armistice talks during the Korean War), was that Burchett - just like Winnington - was a man attached to the Chinese during the Korean War. From the beginning they both lived with the Chinese journalists. When in October 1951 I returned to Kaesong with Lucian Pracki, the Polish correspondent, we were put together with the Korean press corps while Burchett and Winnington remained with the Chinese. They were allocated Chinese bodyguards, we had Koreans. A further sign was that Burchett and Winnington regularly supplied reports to Chinese press chief Shen Chen-tu about everything they might have heard from Western journalists, and they also gave him an evaluation on every Western pressman who happened to turn up at the armistice talks.

In return they received daily instructions from Shen on what to say to Western correspondents and what questions to put to them. Another thing: when, during the summer of 1952, Pracki and I were awarded a state decoration by the Korean People’s Republic, Burchett and Winnington were not granted this honour. Not that they had not deserved it just as much, but the Koreans regarded them as China’s men, as I did. I could go on listing these obvious signs, but I know that their co-operation with the Chinese could be seen as a comradely act, and, even if I were to list twice as many instances and facts, none of these could be construed as proper proof to answer the four questions posed above.

The answer, the proof, came to me by accident. Three months after my escape from Hungary, in February 1957, a left-wing American-Irishman, John O’Kearney, with whom I had become friendly in Belgrade at the end of 1956 and who was working for the US paper Nation, took a suitcase full of my belongings out of Budapest as a favour. He was the first US reporter to go to Hungary after the Russian intervention in November 1956. He was lucky to be let in and luckier to get out.

In the suitcase he brought various articles of clothing, but also books, documents and eight of my notebooks and diaries from the Korean and Chinese days. Hundreds and hundreds of tightly packed handwritten pages: facts, names, addresses, interviews and personal notes.

Among them were diaries. The Kaesong armistice talks broke up after an August 22, 1951, bombing incident and I was told by Shen that, while Burchett and Winnington could stay, I had to leave the place. Let me quote my diary of the day’s events: “August 23. Liaison officer of the press corps, Shen, described the situation as serious. He said that the number of reporters had to be cut and those remaining should be army personnel. Nine people can stay, including four journalists; Caj-Pen, Csu Csi Pin and the two Westerners, Burchett and Winnington. After the briefing I had a private chat with him: ‘I want to know why I could not be included in the group allowed to remain. I have to explain this to my party and to my editor.’ ‘We have to cut the number of personnel on every level, including our delegation. There are safety reasons. We cannot guarantee your safety. We have told the Polish journalists, too, not to continue their mission.”‘

A further note: “October 31. I had a chat and a drink with Burchett in Kaesong. He was a little bit tipsy when he told me that he and Winnington were employed by the Chinese state. They receive their pay not from Ce Soir and the Daily Worker but from the Chinese. W. works for them openly, he does not. They are prop. advisers to the delegation. In reality they are part of it. That’s why they stayed in Kaesong. But their stay was planned only for a couple of extra days in order to be able to write about the final events. For the West!”

The August incident was still on my mind a long while later. I had another talk with Burchett, one I had left unrecorded but referred to in a diary note dated November 11, 1951. If I quote it now, it is not because of my irritation at the time. This would no longer be of any interest. But it casts a light on Wilfred.

“November 11. Today I brought up the matter while having a talk with Winnington in Panmunjom (where talks had been moved from nearby Kaesong) and he saw it quite differently. Our conversation began by Winnington telling me that two days after I left they sent a memorandum to the delegation asking permission to withdraw to Peking.

“They wanted to spend some time there in order to write a book on the Korean situation. The delegation did not grant them the permission. They were asked to wait. At this I remarked: ‘I should have waited too.’

“Winnington countered this by saying that the Chinese regarded the informing of the West a priority. Hungary had received enough information through the New China or Tass agencies. And the radio facilities were rather limited. Winnington then told me that I was more of a responsibility; after all, I was a guest, while they had their party directives from the British and Australian parties to obey instructions of the Chinese party.”

* Was Burchett a communist party member? I repeat: he did tell me that he was, on the very first day of our meeting. Winnington confirmed this; otherwise he could not have said to me that both of them had their party directives from the British and Australian parties respectively, to obey instructions from the Chinese party. Burchett therefore was a member of the Australian Communist Party, who had been given two party directives. First, to pretend for reasons of convenience to the outside world that he was a non-party independent; second, to obey the Chinese Communist Party, at least for the duration of the Korean War.

As an ex-communist myself, let me say here that I cannot see anything wrong or be ashamed about being a Communist Party member, be it the case of Burchett or anyone else. Everyone must be free to follow any party or ideology.

Having an intimate knowledge of the rules and practices of the communist parties, I find it natural that Burchett denied his party membership to outsiders once he had a party directive ordering him to do so. If one wants to remain in the party, it is impossible to resist party directives.

* Did Burchett serve any foreign government? What matters is that Burchett and Winnington were regarded by the Chinese as their own men. In addition Shen made the point on August 23, 1951, that the nine people, including four journalists, who were allowed to stay in Kaesong on the Chinese side, belonged to the “army personnel”. So the Chinese described Burchett and Winnington as parts of their army. Army personnel are soldiers in real terms; if there is a war action such a person can be wounded or killed; there is no special responsibility on the army’s side for their fortune or misfortune. This was the position of Burchett and Winnington while they were serving the Chinese government inKorea.

* Was Burchett given money by foreign government or party organisations? There is no doubt about this, taking into account Burchett’s own statements. He told me quite clearly, together with Winnington, that they received pay from the Chinese state and not from those newspapers to which they sent their reports, the Paris Ce Soir and the London Daily Worker.

I must add that in Korea these payments could not have been substantial. Money, in any case, had little value since in that poor and ruined country there were few things to buy: a half-kilogram of apples, a few English books at the Kaesong market and those who liked it - like myself - corn on the cob sold by peasant women at the roadside. The Chinese therefore paid mostly in kind: Burchett and Winnington had their lodgings and full board. For more than two years they had no need to draw their actual pay.

How much money awaited them in Beijing, after the Korean War ended, as their undrawn salaries, only the Chinese Government could tell. In the Chinese capital money definitely had its value: the small businesses had not been nationalised by then and the shops were full of Western goods left from the Kuomintang times: there was plenty of tinned food, as well as drink, jewellery, cameras, ivory carvings and precious objets d’art.

* What was Burchett: journalist or propagandist? In communist ideology and practice there is no difference between the two. The party maintains that all journalists should be propagandists even if not all propagandists happen to be journalists. Journalists have a duty to propagate the political message of the party. It is by no means accidental that the so-called press departments of the central committees are always part of the agitprop; that is, the agitation and propaganda departments to which they are subordinated. In communist thinking, non-communist journalists are also propagandists - of the bourgeois ideologies - whether they like it or not.

Still, it is not sheer coincidence that Wilfred told me during one of our conversations that he and Winnington worked as “propaganda advisers” to the Chinese delegation in Kaesong. (It is worth noting how accurately he defined their role, despite his tipsiness. Had he said that they were advisers, one would consider this an absurd and unbelievable statement. Neither Burchett nor Winnington was on a level to advise the Chinese in a political sense.) But as propagandists, their job was not merely to write articles for their papers but to advise the Chinese on how to shape their propaganda in connection with the talks towards the West.

Taking into consideration what large-scale propaganda war accompanied the armistice talks, one could see the importance of such work. It went on at various levels: liaison with Western journalists, continuous observation and reporting on their behaviour, assistance in measuring the effect of the Chinese “kites” (ballons dessai), all with the purpose of influencing the UN delegation through the Western pressmen and straightforward propaganda lecturing. I do not think that it would be an understatement to say that the Chinese had at least as much esteem for the propagandist role of Burchett and Winnington as for the articles they sent to their low-circulation and scarcely read newspapers.

It would have been an almost impossible task to find two other English-speaking communists of the same calibre. They were well prepared, ready to work, reliable and obedient. Both were talented and laborious as journalists and Burchett had the advantage that he could be presented as an independent. They were worth their weight in gold: Winnington more for his cool head and for his sense of logic, Burchett for his wide experience in Western journalism. After all, his fame was still intact as an old Daily Express and The Times correspondent and he was also a man with many old friends, a man of charm, inspiring confidence. It would not surprise me to hear that once the Korean War was over the Chinese did reward them with something like their weight in gold.

This is an edited extract from On Burchett by Tibor Meray, published by Callistemon Publications, PO Box 293, Belgrave, Victoria 3160.

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