Castro’s hero-worshippers have their blinkers firmly in place

Amid the outpourings of grief following the death of Fidel Castro, few recalled his savage treatment of his opponents and the inhumanity of his prisons

To Ken Livingstone, on the BBC Radio 4’s programme, the ruthless former dictator of Cuba was “an absolute giant”, a “beacon of light”. To George Galloway, he was “the greatest man” he had ever met (even greater, it seems, than Saddam Hussein). As for Jeremy Corbyn, he could say little more of this “champion of social justice” than that they “shared many of the same values”.

All this recalled an interview 50 years ago with Tony Benn, who had been the most excitable cheerleader for Harold Wilson when he took power as the first Labour prime minister in 13 years. “I have often thought,” Benn said, “of the parallel between Castro entering Havana and a new government entering power here, and thought that the two events should be as similar as possible.” He seemingly overlooked the fact that one of Castro’s first acts, on seizing power in 1959, had been to shoot 500 supporters of the old regime.

The Left later took a similarly one-sided view in deploring the savage treatment meted out by US governments to all those supposed terrorists held without trial in Guantanamo Bay. It showed strikingly less concern for the tens of thousands of trade unionists and other dissidents being treated with equal inhumaniity in Castro’s own vile prisons across the rest of that same unhappy island.