HAS ALAN LITTLE JUST SMEARED THE LATVIANS?

*
The Labour Party must have loved this morning's Today programme.
*
The BBC continues its endless crusade against the Conservative Party's new allies in Europe, whilst completely ignoring the revolting aspects of some of Labour's allies - 9/11 denial, anti-semitism, homophobia, corruption, terrorism, secret police activity, Communist pasts. (Please click on the label European allies for more on this.)
*
This morning's programme featured a long piece from Latvia by Alan Little, which had in its sights the country's For Fatherland and Freedom party, now allied to David Cameron's party in the European parliament. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8349000/8349786.stm.

It was an extraordinary piece of polemic that strayed well beyond mere reporting. If what Little implies is true, it is indeed appalling that the Conservative Party should be allied to such a party, and they should be shamed into breaking with them and also denounce them in no uncertain terms. If what he implies is not true, this will rank as one of the most disgraceful and biased reports ever to appear on the BBC.
**
The Today website records much of Justin Webb's introductory remarks, including yet another darkening of the name of Michal Kaminski: "The row over whether or not the Conservatives should be allied in the European Parliament with Michal Kaminski, a polish MEP with a far right background," (long ago, when he was a teenager) "has overshadowed some of the other members of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group to which British Tories now belong. Allan Little reports from Latvia on the activities and views of the For Fatherland and Freedom Party."
*
Little recalled Nazi crimes against Latvia's Jewish population, and noted that Latvians as well as Germans were responsible. On March 16th each year members of the Latvian Legion march through Riga. "These men marched alongside Hitler's Waffen SS." The main governing party at the height of Latvia's "ethnic triumphalism" (1998) was For Fatherland and Freedom. "They declared March 16th Latvian Legion Day and a public holiday". When the party's only MEP Roberts Zile claims that "there is no historical evidence that the Latvian legion fought alongside the Waffen SS" Little challenges him on the point. Zile points out that the US and UK governments of the time (Truman and Atlee) accepted the truth of this, and Little concedes the point and features a man whose family was murdered in the Holocaust but who believes that, as Little puts it, "the Latvian Legion parade, in itself, is inoffensive." So what exact point is Alan Little trying to make here? Is this not smoke-without-fire?
*
Dan Hannan has pointed out something that Little did not mention: "They don’t “celebrate Waffen SS veterans”. They attend an annual commemoration of all Latvia’s war victims, a commemoration attended by every party in Latvia except the Russian ones. Let me repeat that: attended by every party in Latvia, from the Christian Democrats to the Greens." Why did Little fail to mention this? We hear time and time again (not least from David Miliband and the BBC) that it's For Fatherland and Freedom that 'celebrates the Waffen SS', but we aren't told that 'every party in Latvia except the Russian ones' attends the 'celebration' too. Knowing that casts things in a very different light, doesn't it?
**
Little moved on the discuss the anti-Soviet sentiment that swept Latvia when Communism fell (though he didn't explain why there was such a strong anti-Soviet feeling): "For many Latvians the fall of the Soviet Union was a chance to take their country back from the Russians. This was the popular sentiment that For Fatherland and Freedom thrived on. Many turned on Latvia's Russian-speaking minority." A clip of an old Latvian soldier followed, egged on by Little, saying that all Russians should leave Latvia. Little said slowly and carefully: "Be clear about this. It is a call for mass deportations. There are nearly a million Russians living in Latvia, 40% of the population. In the 1990s For Fatherland and Freedom introduced a law that would deny citizenship to most of those Russians, leaving them stateless." (This is not the same thing as mass deportation). But, Mr Little, can we be clear about this too: Did (or does) For Fatherland and Freedom also call for the mass deportation of Russians? Was what this old soldier says what the party said (or says) too? Or not? That was not at all clear from your report. If they didn't say that then why forcefully imply that they did? That would be a lie and a smear. If you say they did say that, please provide some evidence to support it. (Little, incidentally, forgot to mention that the Russians mass-deported Latvians to Russia at the end of the war).
*
We then heard from Miroslav Mitrophanov. He is, according to Little, "a member of Latvia's parliament and an ethnic Russian" who "remembers the atmosphere of ethnic intolerance in the Fatherland and Freedom years of the late 1990s." What Little fails to mention is that his own party has a pretty dark past of its own, as For Human Rights in United Latvia is a left-wing party many of whose main leaders were members of the old Communist Party and that it's widely hated by ethnic Latvians for that very reason. (The party is allied to our very own Greens).
*
Little goes on, "The Latvian parliament is a noisy, chaotic, irreverent place. The main centre-right party is called New Era. It sits in the mainstream bloc in the European parliament." ('Mainstream', of course, as opposed to 'extreme' -we know who sits there!!) Little's characterisation of the party is sharply at variance with Wikipedia: "New Era has later been characterized as a social democratic party, but it does not call itself social democratic. Until 2007, New Era Party used to define itself as "right-of-centre" in its program, but it no longer does that now." Which is right - Alan Little or Wikipedia? Whoever's right, we heard from one of its spokemen in Little's report. Little asked him what he thought of For Fatherland and Freedom now. He slagged it off something rotten.
*
Having set up a lot of smoke but no fire whatsoever, Little moved to this remarkable statement: "For Fatherland and Freedom appeals rhetorically to much that is dark and dangerous in Latvian popular sentiment." Well, that's Alan Little's opinion. "It drags its World War Two baggage heavilly into the present day." Well, that's also Alan Little's opinion. These are both heavy charges which needed a lot more evidence than Little actually provided to justify.
*
Maris Riekstins, the socialist foreign minister of Latvia has complained about all this party-political mud-slinging at For Fatherland and Freedom and the other allies of the Conservative Party in Eastern Europe. The BBC will doubtless ignore him and continue to insinuate that David Cameron is in bed politically with a bunch of far-right extremists.