Alfred Sherman
Encyclopedia
Sir Alfred Sherman, KBE
, (10 November 1919 – 26 August 2006) was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he began life as a Communist soldier in the Spanish Civil War
but later changed views completely and became a hawkish adviser to Margaret Thatcher
.
Sherman was a co-founder of the Centre for Policy Studies
, a consultant to the Western Goals Institute
, and the founder of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.
Sherman was born in Hackney
, London
, to Jewish immigrants, Jacob Vladimir and Eva Sherman. He married Zahava Zazi née Levin in 1958, and they had one son, Gideon. After her death of cancer in 1993 he married Lady Angela Sherman in 2001.
as a teenager and left his studies at Chelsea Polytechnic at the age of 17 to fight for the Major Attlee Battalion
of the International Brigades
during the Spanish Civil War
, 1937–38, where he was taken prisoner and repatriated to Britain. After returning home, he worked in a London electrical factory.
Between 1939 and 1945 he served in the Middle East in the Field Security and Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. After the war, in the summer of 1948 he was expelled from the CPGB for "Titoist deviationism" and subsequently spent some time in Yugoslavia as a volunteer in a "youth work brigade". In 1950 he graduated from the London School of Economics
.
. Already fluent in the language known as Serbo-Croatian
at that time, he acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history, culture and politics of the South Slavs
. He also developed a life-long affinity for the Serbs
, comparable to that of Dame Rebecca West
. That affinity was rekindled in the 1990s, when Sherman became a leading critic of the Western policy in the Balkans
.
During a subsequent protracted stay in Israel in the late 1950s Sherman was a member of the economic advisory staff of the Israeli government and had a close relationship with David Ben Gurion. After returning to London, in 1963, he joined the Jewish Chronicle as a leader writer, later writing for the Daily Telegraph from 1965 (leader writer from 1977). About 1970 he joined the Conservatives
and the following year was elected as a councillor for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
(1971–78).
's Conservative government because of its public spending and its failure to implement free market
policies. In 1974 he co-founded the Centre for Policy Studies
with Sir Keith Joseph
and Margaret Thatcher
. Sherman was subsequently Director of the CPS and a member of the Conservative Philosophy Group
. The CPS was the real launching pad for Margaret Thatcher, gradually transforming her from the untried party leader of 1974 into a prime-minister-in-waiting. More than any one man, Sherman provided her with the strategy for capturing the leadership of the Party and winning the general election of 1979.
In her memoirs, Lady Thatcher herself paid tribute to Sherman's "brilliance", the "force and clarity of his mind", his "breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist". She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister: in July 2005 she declared, "We could have never defeated socialism if it hadn't been for Sir Alfred". But his unwillingness to make compromises with the establishmentarian consensus never enabled him to fit into the clubbable world of British politics.
Sherman's star shone briefly after Thatcher became prime minister. His breadth and depth of vision and willingness to say the unsayable provided a vital stimulus to her, giving her the intellectual confidence to proclaim her radical free-market vision in her early years at the helm.
By 1982, the latent strains in his relationship with Mrs. Thatcher became fully apparent. She complained that he was dismissive of the obstacles she was encountering in dismantling the legacy of decades of socialism, while he berated her for betraying the promise of her early years. (In the 90's he said of her, "Lady Thatcher is great theatre as long as someone else is writing her lines; she hasn’t got a clue".) After his exclusion from her inner circle she nevertheless continued to regard him with "exasperated affection", and rewarded him with a knighthood in 1983. In July 2005 they were reunited at a reception marking the publication of Sherman's last book with a revealing title, Paradoxes of Power: Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude.
From about 1986 he and his son Gideon were members of Western Goals (UK), Gideon serving on the Directorate.
In 1992, writing in London's Jewish Chronicle, Sherman warned against "the lapse of logic" in confusing the Bosnian Muslims with the European Jewry under Hitler. "It does us no good to claim a locus standi in every conflict be equating it with the Holocaust", he wrote, "or when third parties in their own interests take the name of our martyrs in vain; Bosnia is not occupied Europe; the Muslims are not the Jews; the Serbs did not begin the civil war, but are predictably responding to a real threat. . . Since 1990, the independent Croatian leadership—with its extreme chauvinist and clericalist colouring — and the Bosnian Muslim leadership — seeking, in its Islamic fundamentalist programme, to put the clock back to Ottoman days—have threatened to turn the Serbs back into persecuted minorities".
By the end of the decade Sherman saw the US policy in the Balkans as inseparable from the drive for global hegemony
. In 1997, he noted that the American century began with the Spanish-American War
, and that it was ending with American penetration of the Balkans. But in contrast to the Spanish-American War, he argued, US intervention in the Balkans has no clear strategic aim, but is allegedly a moral crusade on behalf of the "international community
":
Well before Iraq and 9-11, Sherman argued that Washington had "set up the cornerstone of a European Islamistan in Bosnia and a Greater Albania, thus paving the way for further three-sided conflict between Moslems, Serbs and Croats in a bellum omnium contra omnes . . . Far from creating a new status quo it has simply intensified instability." The U.S. may succeed in establishing its hegemony, in the Balkans-Danubia-Carpathia and elsewhere, "but it will also inherit long-standing ethno-religious conflicts and border disputes without the means for settling them." As he wrote in May 2000,
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, (10 November 1919 – 26 August 2006) was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he began life as a Communist soldier in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
but later changed views completely and became a hawkish adviser to Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
.
Sherman was a co-founder of the Centre for Policy Studies
Centre for Policy Studies
The Centre for Policy Studies is a British right wing policy think tank whose goal is to promote coherent and practical public policy, to roll back the state, reform public services, support communities, and challenge threats to Britain’s independence...
, a consultant to the Western Goals Institute
Western Goals Institute
The Western Goals Institute was a conservative pressure group in Britain, re-formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which originated in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation...
, and the founder of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.
Sherman was born in Hackney
Metropolitan Borough of Hackney
The Metropolitan Borough of Hackney was a Metropolitan borough of the County of London from 1900 to 1965. Its area became part of the London Borough of Hackney.-Formation and boundaries:...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, to Jewish immigrants, Jacob Vladimir and Eva Sherman. He married Zahava Zazi née Levin in 1958, and they had one son, Gideon. After her death of cancer in 1993 he married Lady Angela Sherman in 2001.
Young communist
Alfred Sherman joined the Communist PartyCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
as a teenager and left his studies at Chelsea Polytechnic at the age of 17 to fight for the Major Attlee Battalion
British Battalion
The British Battalion was the 16th battalion of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.- Early volunteers :A number of British volunteers, including Tom Wintringham and Nat Cohen, arrived in Spain during August-September 1936 and formed the Tom Mann Centuria - a rifle company in...
of the International Brigades
International Brigades
The International Brigades were military units made up of volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939....
during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, 1937–38, where he was taken prisoner and repatriated to Britain. After returning home, he worked in a London electrical factory.
Between 1939 and 1945 he served in the Middle East in the Field Security and Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. After the war, in the summer of 1948 he was expelled from the CPGB for "Titoist deviationism" and subsequently spent some time in Yugoslavia as a volunteer in a "youth work brigade". In 1950 he graduated from the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
.
Professional and political changes
In the early 1950s Sherman returned to Belgrade as a correspondent for The ObserverThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
. Already fluent in the language known as Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
at that time, he acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history, culture and politics of the South Slavs
South Slavs
The South Slavs are the southern branch of the Slavic peoples and speak South Slavic languages. Geographically, the South Slavs are native to the Balkan peninsula, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps...
. He also developed a life-long affinity for the Serbs
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
, comparable to that of Dame Rebecca West
Rebecca West
Cicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
. That affinity was rekindled in the 1990s, when Sherman became a leading critic of the Western policy in the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
.
During a subsequent protracted stay in Israel in the late 1950s Sherman was a member of the economic advisory staff of the Israeli government and had a close relationship with David Ben Gurion. After returning to London, in 1963, he joined the Jewish Chronicle as a leader writer, later writing for the Daily Telegraph from 1965 (leader writer from 1977). About 1970 he joined the Conservatives
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
and the following year was elected as a councillor for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is a central London borough of Royal borough status. After the City of Westminster, it is the wealthiest borough in England....
(1971–78).
Relationship with Thatcher
Sherman was critical of Ted HeathEdward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
's Conservative government because of its public spending and its failure to implement free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
policies. In 1974 he co-founded the Centre for Policy Studies
Centre for Policy Studies
The Centre for Policy Studies is a British right wing policy think tank whose goal is to promote coherent and practical public policy, to roll back the state, reform public services, support communities, and challenge threats to Britain’s independence...
with Sir Keith Joseph
Keith Joseph
Keith St John Joseph, Baron Joseph, Bt, CH, PC , was a British barrister and politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet under three Prime Ministers , and is widely regarded to have been the "power behind the throne" in the creation of what came to be known as...
and Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
. Sherman was subsequently Director of the CPS and a member of the Conservative Philosophy Group
Conservative Philosophy Group
The Conservative Philosophy Group was formed in the UK in 1974 by Sir Hugh Fraser, a Conservative MP, to provide an intellectual basis for conservatism at a time when the Conservative Party had just lost two general elections and elected a new leader, Margaret Thatcher...
. The CPS was the real launching pad for Margaret Thatcher, gradually transforming her from the untried party leader of 1974 into a prime-minister-in-waiting. More than any one man, Sherman provided her with the strategy for capturing the leadership of the Party and winning the general election of 1979.
In her memoirs, Lady Thatcher herself paid tribute to Sherman's "brilliance", the "force and clarity of his mind", his "breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist". She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister: in July 2005 she declared, "We could have never defeated socialism if it hadn't been for Sir Alfred". But his unwillingness to make compromises with the establishmentarian consensus never enabled him to fit into the clubbable world of British politics.
Sherman's star shone briefly after Thatcher became prime minister. His breadth and depth of vision and willingness to say the unsayable provided a vital stimulus to her, giving her the intellectual confidence to proclaim her radical free-market vision in her early years at the helm.
By 1982, the latent strains in his relationship with Mrs. Thatcher became fully apparent. She complained that he was dismissive of the obstacles she was encountering in dismantling the legacy of decades of socialism, while he berated her for betraying the promise of her early years. (In the 90's he said of her, "Lady Thatcher is great theatre as long as someone else is writing her lines; she hasn’t got a clue".) After his exclusion from her inner circle she nevertheless continued to regard him with "exasperated affection", and rewarded him with a knighthood in 1983. In July 2005 they were reunited at a reception marking the publication of Sherman's last book with a revealing title, Paradoxes of Power: Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude.
From about 1986 he and his son Gideon were members of Western Goals (UK), Gideon serving on the Directorate.
appearance
A stikingly handsome man in his youth, with black hair, thick spectacles and a lantern jaw, Sherman suffered the ravages of a life lived to the full. In his declining years, his face became wizened and pock-marked, and his fine bone-structure increased in prominence.Views on the Balkans
In the 15 years of his life, Sherman was an outspoken critic of western policy in the former Yugoslavia. In 1994 he co-founded The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies as a research institute. In Sherman's words, it was "designed to correct the current trend of public commentary, which tends, systematically, not to understand events but to construct a propagandistic version of Balkan rivalries, designed to facilitate the involvement of outside powers".In 1992, writing in London's Jewish Chronicle, Sherman warned against "the lapse of logic" in confusing the Bosnian Muslims with the European Jewry under Hitler. "It does us no good to claim a locus standi in every conflict be equating it with the Holocaust", he wrote, "or when third parties in their own interests take the name of our martyrs in vain; Bosnia is not occupied Europe; the Muslims are not the Jews; the Serbs did not begin the civil war, but are predictably responding to a real threat. . . Since 1990, the independent Croatian leadership—with its extreme chauvinist and clericalist colouring — and the Bosnian Muslim leadership — seeking, in its Islamic fundamentalist programme, to put the clock back to Ottoman days—have threatened to turn the Serbs back into persecuted minorities".
By the end of the decade Sherman saw the US policy in the Balkans as inseparable from the drive for global hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
. In 1997, he noted that the American century began with the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
, and that it was ending with American penetration of the Balkans. But in contrast to the Spanish-American War, he argued, US intervention in the Balkans has no clear strategic aim, but is allegedly a moral crusade on behalf of the "international community
International community
The international community is a term used in international relations to refer to all peoples, cultures and governments of the world or to a group of them. The term is used to imply the existence of common duties and obligations between them...
":
"This begs many questions. First, is there such a thing as 'the international community'? Do people in China, which accounts for a fifth of the world’s population, and the Buddhists, who account for another fifth—among others—really want the US and its client states to bomb the Serbs or Iraqis? And who exactly, and when, deputed the US to act on behalf of this 'world community'? . . . Secondly, can the blunt weapon of force, of whose use US Secretary of State Madeleine AlbrightMadeleine AlbrightMadeleine Korbelová Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99–0...
boasted, balance contlicting and competing ethnic, religious, economic and political interactions over this wide and conflictive region? Can the US raise the expectations of the Albanians and Slav Moslems without affronting Macedonians, Greeks, Italians, Bulgars and Croats, as well as Serbs? . . . Thirdly, can force be a substitute for policy? It was a wise German who said that you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. The same goes for gunships, the modern equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. Bomb and rocket once, and it has an effect. But if the victim survives, the second bout is less effective, because the victim is learning to cope."
Well before Iraq and 9-11, Sherman argued that Washington had "set up the cornerstone of a European Islamistan in Bosnia and a Greater Albania, thus paving the way for further three-sided conflict between Moslems, Serbs and Croats in a bellum omnium contra omnes . . . Far from creating a new status quo it has simply intensified instability." The U.S. may succeed in establishing its hegemony, in the Balkans-Danubia-Carpathia and elsewhere, "but it will also inherit long-standing ethno-religious conflicts and border disputes without the means for settling them." As he wrote in May 2000,
"The power and prestige of America is in the hands of people who will not resist the temptation to invent new missions, lay down new embargoes, throw new bombs, and fabricate new courts. For the time being, they control the United Nations, the World Bank, most of the world’s high-tech weapons, and the vast majority of the satellites that watch us from every quadrant of the skies. This is the opportunity they sense, and we must ask what ambitions they will declare next . . . Instead of rediscovering the virtues of traditionally defined, enlightened self-interest in the aftermath of its hands down cold war victory, America’s foreign policy elites are more intoxicated than ever by their own concoction of benevolent global hegemony and indispensable power.
Publications
- Sherman, Sir Alfred, The Paradoxes of Power: Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude, (Imprint Academic, 2005).