Helen Szamuely
Russian-born Eurosceptic activist who joined the Anti-federalist League but was ousted from Ukip
HELEN SZAMUELY, an influential voice in the early years of the Eurosceptic movement who has died aged 66, was a former head of research for the Bruges Group and a founder member of the Anti-federalist League (AFL), the forerunner to Ukip.
She was well known in conservative circles both for the fierceness of her intellect and the unrelenting viciousness of her arguments. She had a talent for recruiting new blood to the cause – she encouraged an initially reluctant Nigel Farage to hand out leaflets in the early days of the AFL – but her sharp temper (one ally described it as a tendency to be “impatient with the less gifted”) meant that she was not well suited to public life.
Nevertheless, Farage would later write in his autobiography, Flying Free (2011), that her expulsion from Ukip in 1993, the year of its official birth, was “a sore loss to the party”.
Helen Szamuely had first become involved in anti-eu activism in 1991, when she met a fellow historian, Dr Alan Sked, at a tea in Oxford held by the widow of
AJ P Taylor, who had supervised both their doctorates. Sked later asked her if she would like to join the committee of the AFL. “I was mildly surprised,” Helen Szamuely recalled, “but I think, to be frank, that he wanted to avoid the accusation of founding an all-male organisation of middle-class, non-intellectual Little Englanders. I was female, of Hungarian origin and had a doctorate.”
She was indeed the only woman at the early committee meetings, which prompted her to suggest, with irony, that “you’ll expect me to keep the minutes”. But her relationship with Sked was volatile and within months of the AFL’S transformation into Ukip she was ousted from the party. She later blamed her expulsion on her firm belief that any future Ukip MEPS should take up their seats in the European Parliament so that they could report back on its proceedings from within.
She continued, however, to be politically active on behalf of the movement; in 2002 she was appointed head of research for the Bruges Group, and she also wrote for Richard North’s blog, Campaign for an Independent Britain. Straight-talking and tenacious, at a rare public engagement in 2007 she was asked to give a gathering of anti-eu protesters some cause for optimism. “The government,” she said, “inevitably is inefficient. So however afraid we are, they are always going to screw up.”
Helen Szamuely was born on June 25 1950 in Moscow to a Russian mother, Nina Orlova, and a Hungarian father, Tibor Szamuely, both academics. The family moved to Hungary when Helen was three, and her parents became increasingly involved in anti-communist activities, taking part in the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
In 1963 the Szamuelys moved to Ghana, where Helen’s father taught for a year before they decided to leave for Britain.
They settled in west London and Helen was educated at a grammar school in Willesden before going to St Paul’s Girls’ School to do her A-levels. She went on, in 1970, to the University of Leeds, where she took a First in History and Russian. From 1975 to 1979 she was a research student at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and was awarded a Dphil in 1984 for her thesis, “British Attitudes to Russia 1880-1918”.
She was a prolific writer and translator, and worked as a political researcher and part-time tutor in Oxford in the 1980s and 1990s. Her intellectual hinterland was vast. She had a great love of Russian poetry and would quote Pushkin whenever the
opportunity arose. She contributed to The Reader’s Companion to Twentieth Century
Writers, had numerous articles published in literary and political journals and worked for many years as an interviewer and scriptwriter for the BBC Russian Service. She was appointed editor of the
Conservative History Journal in 2005. She was also co-author of the influential Eureferendum blog, providing stories on Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey.
As a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research into Post-communist Economies (CRCE) from 1997 until 2017, she coauthored A “Coming Home” or Poisoned
Chalice? (1998) with Bill Jamieson, which was about EU enlargement. This was one of the CRCE’S most successful publications, so much so that the number of orders coming through to The Daily Telegraph led Jamieson to suggest that he thought it must have been confused with a cookery book.
As well as writing, editing, giving talks and taking part in seminars for the CRCE, Helen Szamuely regularly made food for the meetings. She called this “Central European Snacks Unlimited”; her cabbage pie was particularly famous.
Helen Szamuely worked for many years as a researcher and political brief writer in the House of Lords, collaborating with several peers on issues relating to the EU and its relationship with other countries, such as Russia and Turkey. She was a strong believer in the importance of the Lords, and always regarded herself as patriotically British – although in later life she acknowledged the value of her Russian and Hungarian background.
She also threw her intellectual energy into campaigning for the release of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, including the poet Nizametdin Akhmetov, whose work she translated. She named one of her cats after him and when the poet was released he came to stay with her at the book-filled house in Shepherd’s Bush which she shared with her daughter, Katharine. She never spoke of Katharine’s father.
She had the ability to be anywhere in Oxford or London where Russia, foreign policy or history were being discussed, and she argued with everyone – friends, foes and colleagues – about anything and everything. She had a long-running row with a close friend about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (she was convinced that they were Soviet agents) and the merits (or otherwise) of Horsham in Sussex. But she was fiercely loyal and was often the first to rekindle a friendship after a period of furious silence. When a blog post she had written attracted much comment she remarked that “it’s always fun to know just how many idiots there are in the world. But do they all have to comment on what I say?”
She could invariably be found in the London Library and anyone she knew who entered the building would be persuaded to drop what they were doing and have lunch or coffee “under the skylights” in the members’ room, in the establishment of which she was a driving force.
In the little spare time that she had, Helen Szamuely enjoyed walking in the city, reading detective stories and scouring old cookery books, from which she would reproduce ancient recipes. She was thoroughly urban and did not like to leave London unless it was to get the train to Paris. Her friends therefore found it very amusing that for several years she worked for the Countryside Alliance.
She is survived by her daughter.
Helen Szamuely, born June 25 1950, died April 5 2017