Editing Rebecca West (section)

==Politics==

West grew up in a home filled with discussions of world affairs. Her father was a journalist who often involved himself in controversial issues. He brought home Russian revolutionaries and other political activists, and their debates helped to form West's sensibility, which took shape in novels such as ''The Birds Fall Down'', set in pre-revolution Russia.<ref>{{harvnb|Schweizer|2006|loc=Rollyson, Carl p. 10}}</ref> But the crucial event that moulded West's politics was the [[Dreyfus affair]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|p=25}}</ref> The impressionable Rebecca learned early on just how powerful was the will to persecute minorities and to subject individuals to unreasonable suspicion based on flimsy evidence and mass frenzy.<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|1996|p=286}}</ref> West had a keen understanding of the psychology of politics, how movements and causes could sustain themselves on the profound need to believe or disbelieve in a core of values—even in contradiction of reality.<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|2005|pp=51–52}}</ref>

Although she was a militant feminist and active suffragette, and published a perceptive and admiring profile of [[Emmeline Pankhurst]], West also criticised the tactics of Pankhurst's daughter, [[Christabel Pankhurst|Christabel]], and the sometimes doctrinaire aspects of the Pankhursts' [[Women's Social and Political Union]] (WSPU).<ref>{{cite book |first=Rebecca |last=West |editor1-first=Jane |editor1-last=Marcus |title=The young Rebecca: writings of Rebecca West, 1911–17 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wcnyAAAAMAAJ |year=1982 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-23101-7 |pages=108–110, 206–9, 243–62}}</ref>

The first major test of West's political outlook was the [[October Revolution|Bolshevik Revolution]]. Many on the left saw it as the beginning of a new, better world, and the end of the crimes of capitalism. West regarded herself as a member of the left, having attended [[Fabian Society|Fabian socialist]] summer schools as a girl. Yet to West, both the Revolution and the revolutionaries were suspect. Even before the [[Bolsheviks]] took power in October 1917, West expressed her doubts that events in Russia could serve as a model for socialists in Britain or anywhere else.<ref name=Treason-Review /><ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|2005|pp=51–57}}</ref>

West paid a heavy price for her cool reaction to the Russian Revolution; her positions increasingly isolated her. When [[Emma Goldman]] visited Britain in 1924 after seeing Bolshevik violence firsthand, West was exasperated that British intellectuals ignored Goldman's testimony and her warning against Bolshevik tyranny.<ref>{{harvnb|Glendinning|1987|pp=105–8}} {{harvnb|Rollyson|2005|p=53}}</ref>

For all her censures of communism, however, West was hardly an uncritical supporter of Western democracies. Thus in 1919–1920, she excoriated the US government for deporting Goldman and for the infamous [[Palmer Raids]].<ref>Rebecca West, Introduction to Emma Goldman's ''My Disillusionment with Russia'', Doubleday, 1923</ref> She was also appalled at the failure of Western democracies to come to the aid of [[Republican Spain]], and she gave money to the Republican cause.

A staunch [[anti-fascist]], West attacked both the Conservative governments of her own country for [[Appeasement of Hitler|appeasing Adolf Hitler]] and her colleagues on the left for their [[pacifism]]. Neither side, in her view, understood the evil Nazism posed. Unlike many on the left, she also distrusted [[Joseph Stalin]]. To West, Stalin had a criminal mentality that communism facilitated.<ref>Rebecca West, "The men we sacrificed to Stalin," Sunday Telegraph, n.d.</ref> She was outraged when the Allies switched their loyalties as to Yugoslav resistance movements by deciding in 1943 to start backing the Communist-led [[Yugoslav Partisans|Partisans]] led by [[Josip Broz Tito|Tito]] in Yugoslavia, thus abandoning their support of [[Draža Mihailović]]'s [[Chetniks]], whom she considered the legitimate Yugoslav resistance. She expressed her feelings and opinions on the Allies' switch in Yugoslavia by writing the satirical short story titled "Madame Sara's Magic Crystal", but decided not to publish it upon discussion with [[Orme Sargent]], Assistant [[Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs|Under-Secretary of State]] at the [[Foreign Office]].<ref>It was published posthumously in ''The Only Poet'' (1992), edited by Antonia Till, Virago, pp. 167–78.</ref> Writing in her diary, West mentioned that Sargent had persuaded her that "the recognition of Tito was made by reason of British military necessities, and for no other reason." Following Sargent's claim, she described her decision not to publish the story as an expression of "personal willingness to sacrifice myself to the needs of my country."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N-2LiZHdszAC&pg=PT150|title=The Only Poet: And Short Stories|first=Rebecca|last=West|date=21 December 2010|publisher=Open Road Media|isbn=9781453206867|via=Google Books}}</ref> After the war, West's anti-Communism hardened as she saw [[Poland]], [[Czechoslovakia]], [[Hungary]], and other Eastern and Central European states succumb to Soviet domination.

In 1951 she provided a critical review of [[Alistair Cooke]]'s sympathetic portrait of [[Alger Hiss]] during his postwar trials from a [[classical liberalism]] point of view.<ref>[https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=uclrev ''Book Review''], West, Rebecca (1951) "Review of A Generation on Trial: U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss by Alistair Cooke," University of Chicago Law Review: Vol. 18: Iss. 3, p. 662-677. Article 18.</ref> It is not surprising in this context that West reacted to US Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]] differently from her colleagues. They saw a [[demagogue]] terrorising liberals and leftists with baseless accusations of Communist conspiracy. West saw an oaf blundering into the minefield of Communist subversion. For her, McCarthy was right to pursue Communists with fervour, even if his methods were roughshod, though her mild reaction to McCarthy provoked powerful revulsion among those on the left and dismay even among anti-Communist liberals. She refused, however, to amend her views.<ref>Rebecca West, "McCarthyism," ''U.S. News & World Report'', 22 May 1953; "Miss West Files and Answer," ''The Herald Tribune'', 22 June 1953, p. 12; "Memo from Rebecca West: More about McCarthyism," ''U.S. News & World Report'', 3 July 1953, pp. 34–35</ref>

Although West's anti-communism earned the high regard of conservatives, she never considered herself one of them. In postwar Britain, West voted [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] and welcomed the [[1945 general election (UK)|Labour landslide of 1945]] but spoke out against domination of the Labour Party by British trade unions, and thought left-wing politicians such as [[Michael Foot]] unimpressive. She had mixed feelings about the [[Callaghan government]]. West admired [[Margaret Thatcher]], not for Thatcher's policies, but for Thatcher's achievement in rising to the top of a male-dominated sphere.<ref>Rebecca West, "Margaret Thatcher: The Politician as Woman," ''Vogue'', September 1979</ref>

In the end, West's anti-communism remained the centrepiece of her politics because she so consistently challenged the communists as legitimate foes of the status quo in capitalist countries. In West's view, communism, like fascism, was merely a form of authoritarianism. Communists were under party discipline, and therefore could never speak for themselves; West was a supreme example of an intellectual who spoke for herself, no matter how her comments might injure her. Indeed, few writers explicitly acknowledged how much West's embrace of unpopular positions hurt her on the left. A whole generation of writers abandoned West and refused to read her, as [[Doris Lessing]] suggested.<ref>{{harvnb|Rollyson|2005|p=54}}</ref>