On the centenary of the Russian revolution, Daniel Hannan remarks that in ‘the crude mathematics of murder’, communism must be the most lethal ideology ever devised, responsible for 100 million deaths. He says that after a century of ‘asymmetric longevity, abortion and migration, there are now twice as many Americans as Russians’, yet people still fall for communism.
Communism lost the Cold War, but its most effective weapon against the West – abortion – is still claiming lives. From 1917 Russia embraced sexual freedom, underpinned by the right to abortion. Western campaigners followed suit much later, with 1960s cultural Marxists regarding abortion as the perfect way of undermining Western culture in a secret war against capitalism.
Historically, in the UK, abortion was not a priority even among the far-Left, let alone working-class voters. The Labour Party opposed communism and saw abortion as a weapon against the working classes. It was only in 1966 that Harold Wilson’s general election victory brought an ‘influx of new Labour MPs . . . professionally qualified and articulate’. Among them was Peter Jackson, a noted campaigner for David Steel’s abortion Bill, who remarked that following the Soviet repression of rebellion in Hungary, disillusioned Left-wingers were ‘seeking a new identity: a new ethos integrating humanism and socialism’. These ‘new’ Labour MPs ‘retreated from the confusions of hard-core traditional issues (such as public ownership) into furthering the “easier” social causes like family planning’.
As to the Soviet powers of the time, they must have been delighted. The Bolsheviks decriminalised abortion in 1920, [Jones, p.175] but within a few years their experiment with sexual revolution was so unpopular and had caused such social upheaval – rape, desertion, feral children – that even Lenin was moved to denounce sexual revolutionists’ ideology. Despite this, English leftists who witnessed the horrors of Russian abortaria continued to campaign for the Soviet model. These included Dr Joan Malleson and political radical Naomi Aitchison.
The Russian population never fully recovered, and it was obvious that sexual revolution, underpinned by abortion, could reduce the population of their Western enemies and so make their fighting forces less effective.
Today’s Labour’s Marxist leadership and many of its MPs are demanding the complete decriminalisation of abortion. Conciliatory to our avowed enemies, they are happily waging war against their unborn fellow citizens.
The communist revolution did indeed start a hundred years ago; but the wheel is still turning.
