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Looking Backwards  (June 1980)  From Socialist Review, 15
June-12 July 1980: 6, p.12.  Conservative cabinet ministers are
holding a festival of hypocritical speechifying. “Release the 51
individuals seized from the US-Embassy in Teheran”, they shriek,
yet all this talk about respecting diplomatic procedures and
practices relies upon one essential thing – a lack of knowledge
on the part of their listeners.  For the British government
behaved in 1918 with much less courtesy towards Soviet diplomats
than the Iranians are doing today, The Russian ambassador, Maxim
Litvinov, was arrested and imprisoned in Brixton jail. So was
George Chicherin who, like Litvinov, was later to become Russian
foreign minister. Similarly, John Maclean, that great Scottish
socialist, found the Foreign Office not prepared to recognise
his appointment as Soviet Consul in Scotland. He, too, was
quickly pushed behind bars.  At that time, a large number of
people from Eastern Eu