Unicorn
15th July 2008, 00:02
The £20.5m windfall that has showered Anita Halpin, chairman of the Communist party of Britain, has left many tankies pondering Karl Marx’s dictum: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” So what will she do with the cash?
The 62-year-old hardline Stalinist became a multi-millionaire last week after selling a German expressionist painting that was seized by the Nazis from her Jewish grandmother. It went for twice its pre-sale estimates in a frenzied New York auction that also saw four Gustav Klimt paintings fetch a total of $192.7m (£101m).
Halpin and her husband Kevin were dubbed tankies for supporting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The thigh-slapping joke in left-wing circles is that now they can afford to buy his’n’her tanks.
The disparity between Halpin’s sudden wealth and the party’s distressed south London headquarters in Croydon has prompted more serious reflections.
“She put members through the wringer to get money out of them and now she’s one of the wealthiest women in Britain,” said a detractor. “If she doesn’t give the money to this barmy party, there’s the entertaining possibility of political fireworks.”
At her medium-sized slightly ramshackle house in east London, Halpin was giving no hostages to fortune. “Thanks for your courtesy, dear colleague,” she said in the hoarse tones of a heavy smoker before declining to say more.
Her automaton-like voice has encouraged enemies to cast her as Rosa Klebb, the grim Russian villain in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love, although friends speak of a warm and thoughtful person.
The mystery is why she kept those friends and her colleagues in the dark while her lawyers secretly negotiated for two years with officials in Berlin to get the painting released. The 78in by 59in canvas of Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had hung in the city’s Brücke Museum for 30 years. For someone who trained in PR before becoming a member of the TUC’s general council, it was a surprising lapse to let the unspun news leak out in German and Swedish newspapers and before hitting The Guardian’s front page.
Halpin’s legal case was that her Jewish German grandparents, Alfred and Tekla Hess, were persecuted by the Nazis, who forced Tekla to hand over works of art. Keen supporters of German expressionist art in the late 1920s and 1930s, they accumulated more than 4,000 paintings.
Halpin’s grandfather, a shoe factory owner, died in 1931, but five years later his widow was visited by the Gestapo while she was with relatives in Bavaria. Her signed affidavit in 1958 stated: “During the late evening hours, two agents of the secret police from Nuremberg coerced me under threat to have the pictures in the Hess collection . . . returned to Germany immediately. I had no choice other than to give in to pressure . . . in the hope that my own life and that of my family would not be further jeopardised.”
However, it appears that most of the confiscated collection was either lost or sold at artificially low prices as Tekla Hess fled the country. In the same year, Berlin Street Scene went to Switzerland and was sold to a Frankfurt collector. After the war, the German state bought it as an example of the nation’s best expressionist art.
Some Berlin art specialists have questioned Halpin’s right to “the most significant work of German expressionism ever put up for auction”. It is claimed that her grandfather, in common with many other German businessmen, was made bankrupt by the economic crash in 1929, and his art collection represented the family’s remaining wealth. However, the principle of restitution was established when Halpin’s father Hans was awarded 75,000 Deutschemarks in the 1960s in compensation, a fraction of the collection’s worth.
Halpin could become a lot richer. Her lawyers have refused to rule out the possibility that she would pursue the restitution of many other works of art.
Brought up in the south of England, where her father was professor of art at Sussex University, Halpin had a cultured background, an abiding interest in philosophy and a passionate commitment to communism. Her friend, Francis Beckett, author of Enemy Within, the history of the party in Britain, said: “There’s not a lot of mystery about why somebody of that generation, very conscious of injustices and also Jewish, joined the Communist party. Right up to 1956 it was still seen as the bulwark against fascism and the persecution of Jews.”
The Communist party of Britain (CPB) which Halpin leads today is a tiny remnant of the Communist party of Great Britain (CPGB) that was founded in 1921. “You are really into Monty Python land here,” said Nick Cohen, author of What’s Left?, a critique of left-wing organisations.
“They’re a very odd bunch. They’ve gone over to the Islamist far right in the Stop the War coalition and effectively control CND. They’ve bought the whole package of supporting the Iraqi insurgents and North Korea.”
Colleagues say Halpin has expressed reservations on this score, although at anti-Iraq demos she has been seen in dufflecoat and bobble hat handing out copies of the Morning Star, the party’s mouthpiece.
“What she does is the grindingly boring meetings that are the lifeblood of the left wing,” said a trade union activist who knows her. “The modus operandi is to attend every single meeting and get yourself into positions where you control the agenda. She’s done that very well.”
Halpin is a former president of the National Union of Journalists, dominated by an alliance of communists, Trotskyists and others. As the union’s honorary treasurer for the past nine years she is credited with turning around its dire finances.
Jim Corrigall, a former NUJ president, said: “She’s done a tremendous amount of good in bringing financial discipline to the union. At first she was a target, but she has shown herself capable of working with people who disagree with her.”
For many years, when she was a PR officer with the Wellcome Foundation, she was overshadowed in the Communist party by her husband, an engineering shop steward and industrial organiser. They have a son, Boris, who works as a chef.
In the early 1980s the Halpins became increasingly alarmed at the Euro tendency’s domination of the CPGB and the couple helped to create a faction known as the Communist Campaign Group. Matters came to a head in 1982.
Martin Jacques, then a proselytiser of Euro-communism as editor of Marxism Today, recalled: “There was a big attack on Marxism Today that resulted in a split. The Halpins absolutely hated Marxism Today and me. It was like civil war and the party was never put together again.”
In the mid-1990s the Halpins and other hardline party members formed a new party, the CPB, leaving the CPGB to be wound up. However, the CPB itself has become faction-ridden. “One faction supports George Galloway and the Stop the War movement,” an activist said. “Those on the Halpin side say you should vote for the Labour party and persuade it to be more left wing.”
Halpin recently urged unions to cast their block votes in support of the left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell’s campaign to succeed Tony Blair as leader of the Labour party.
So what is Halpin like to work with? John Haylett, editor of the Morning Star, was not effusive. “Very efficient and effective,” he said. Did she have warmth? “Absolutely.” Not a Rosa Klebb, then? “It’s one of those clichés that writes itself,” he added.
Linda Rogers, who worked with her at the NUJ on various cases and negotiations, was more forthcoming: “She likes a bit of a laugh. I didn’t know her political work very well, but she was always very keen on making sure everything was done fairly.”
It seems she enjoys social occasions, likes fine wine and is an accomplished cook, as is Kevin, who also excels at property renovation. “She likes living well,” Beckett said. “She has a well stocked mind and knows a lot of philosophy, which goes far wider than Marx.”
The question is why such an intelligent person would stick with communism long after the Soviet Union collapsed under its own contradictions. “To be a communist today you would have to be a person who feels uncomfortable swimming with the current,” Beckett said. “For somebody like Anita, the reasons that she became a communist would still be valid. It’s a more unequal society than when she was young.”
Even more so, now she is an aspiring member of the Rich List. Activists hope she will devote the money to enlightening the proletariat. But not all. “So much loot,” one said thoughtfully, “might have a surprising effect on even the most diehard Stalinist.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article634163.ece
Her net worth is actually about £100 million as she sold just one of the seven valuable paintings she acquired. It is mindboggling why this individual still acts as the chair of the Communist Party of Britain. She donated just £9,310 to her party according to the Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/pandora/pandora-cherie-is-brought-to-book-834311.html
The 62-year-old hardline Stalinist became a multi-millionaire last week after selling a German expressionist painting that was seized by the Nazis from her Jewish grandmother. It went for twice its pre-sale estimates in a frenzied New York auction that also saw four Gustav Klimt paintings fetch a total of $192.7m (£101m).
Halpin and her husband Kevin were dubbed tankies for supporting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The thigh-slapping joke in left-wing circles is that now they can afford to buy his’n’her tanks.
The disparity between Halpin’s sudden wealth and the party’s distressed south London headquarters in Croydon has prompted more serious reflections.
“She put members through the wringer to get money out of them and now she’s one of the wealthiest women in Britain,” said a detractor. “If she doesn’t give the money to this barmy party, there’s the entertaining possibility of political fireworks.”
At her medium-sized slightly ramshackle house in east London, Halpin was giving no hostages to fortune. “Thanks for your courtesy, dear colleague,” she said in the hoarse tones of a heavy smoker before declining to say more.
Her automaton-like voice has encouraged enemies to cast her as Rosa Klebb, the grim Russian villain in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love, although friends speak of a warm and thoughtful person.
The mystery is why she kept those friends and her colleagues in the dark while her lawyers secretly negotiated for two years with officials in Berlin to get the painting released. The 78in by 59in canvas of Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had hung in the city’s Brücke Museum for 30 years. For someone who trained in PR before becoming a member of the TUC’s general council, it was a surprising lapse to let the unspun news leak out in German and Swedish newspapers and before hitting The Guardian’s front page.
Halpin’s legal case was that her Jewish German grandparents, Alfred and Tekla Hess, were persecuted by the Nazis, who forced Tekla to hand over works of art. Keen supporters of German expressionist art in the late 1920s and 1930s, they accumulated more than 4,000 paintings.
Halpin’s grandfather, a shoe factory owner, died in 1931, but five years later his widow was visited by the Gestapo while she was with relatives in Bavaria. Her signed affidavit in 1958 stated: “During the late evening hours, two agents of the secret police from Nuremberg coerced me under threat to have the pictures in the Hess collection . . . returned to Germany immediately. I had no choice other than to give in to pressure . . . in the hope that my own life and that of my family would not be further jeopardised.”
However, it appears that most of the confiscated collection was either lost or sold at artificially low prices as Tekla Hess fled the country. In the same year, Berlin Street Scene went to Switzerland and was sold to a Frankfurt collector. After the war, the German state bought it as an example of the nation’s best expressionist art.
Some Berlin art specialists have questioned Halpin’s right to “the most significant work of German expressionism ever put up for auction”. It is claimed that her grandfather, in common with many other German businessmen, was made bankrupt by the economic crash in 1929, and his art collection represented the family’s remaining wealth. However, the principle of restitution was established when Halpin’s father Hans was awarded 75,000 Deutschemarks in the 1960s in compensation, a fraction of the collection’s worth.
Halpin could become a lot richer. Her lawyers have refused to rule out the possibility that she would pursue the restitution of many other works of art.
Brought up in the south of England, where her father was professor of art at Sussex University, Halpin had a cultured background, an abiding interest in philosophy and a passionate commitment to communism. Her friend, Francis Beckett, author of Enemy Within, the history of the party in Britain, said: “There’s not a lot of mystery about why somebody of that generation, very conscious of injustices and also Jewish, joined the Communist party. Right up to 1956 it was still seen as the bulwark against fascism and the persecution of Jews.”
The Communist party of Britain (CPB) which Halpin leads today is a tiny remnant of the Communist party of Great Britain (CPGB) that was founded in 1921. “You are really into Monty Python land here,” said Nick Cohen, author of What’s Left?, a critique of left-wing organisations.
“They’re a very odd bunch. They’ve gone over to the Islamist far right in the Stop the War coalition and effectively control CND. They’ve bought the whole package of supporting the Iraqi insurgents and North Korea.”
Colleagues say Halpin has expressed reservations on this score, although at anti-Iraq demos she has been seen in dufflecoat and bobble hat handing out copies of the Morning Star, the party’s mouthpiece.
“What she does is the grindingly boring meetings that are the lifeblood of the left wing,” said a trade union activist who knows her. “The modus operandi is to attend every single meeting and get yourself into positions where you control the agenda. She’s done that very well.”
Halpin is a former president of the National Union of Journalists, dominated by an alliance of communists, Trotskyists and others. As the union’s honorary treasurer for the past nine years she is credited with turning around its dire finances.
Jim Corrigall, a former NUJ president, said: “She’s done a tremendous amount of good in bringing financial discipline to the union. At first she was a target, but she has shown herself capable of working with people who disagree with her.”
For many years, when she was a PR officer with the Wellcome Foundation, she was overshadowed in the Communist party by her husband, an engineering shop steward and industrial organiser. They have a son, Boris, who works as a chef.
In the early 1980s the Halpins became increasingly alarmed at the Euro tendency’s domination of the CPGB and the couple helped to create a faction known as the Communist Campaign Group. Matters came to a head in 1982.
Martin Jacques, then a proselytiser of Euro-communism as editor of Marxism Today, recalled: “There was a big attack on Marxism Today that resulted in a split. The Halpins absolutely hated Marxism Today and me. It was like civil war and the party was never put together again.”
In the mid-1990s the Halpins and other hardline party members formed a new party, the CPB, leaving the CPGB to be wound up. However, the CPB itself has become faction-ridden. “One faction supports George Galloway and the Stop the War movement,” an activist said. “Those on the Halpin side say you should vote for the Labour party and persuade it to be more left wing.”
Halpin recently urged unions to cast their block votes in support of the left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell’s campaign to succeed Tony Blair as leader of the Labour party.
So what is Halpin like to work with? John Haylett, editor of the Morning Star, was not effusive. “Very efficient and effective,” he said. Did she have warmth? “Absolutely.” Not a Rosa Klebb, then? “It’s one of those clichés that writes itself,” he added.
Linda Rogers, who worked with her at the NUJ on various cases and negotiations, was more forthcoming: “She likes a bit of a laugh. I didn’t know her political work very well, but she was always very keen on making sure everything was done fairly.”
It seems she enjoys social occasions, likes fine wine and is an accomplished cook, as is Kevin, who also excels at property renovation. “She likes living well,” Beckett said. “She has a well stocked mind and knows a lot of philosophy, which goes far wider than Marx.”
The question is why such an intelligent person would stick with communism long after the Soviet Union collapsed under its own contradictions. “To be a communist today you would have to be a person who feels uncomfortable swimming with the current,” Beckett said. “For somebody like Anita, the reasons that she became a communist would still be valid. It’s a more unequal society than when she was young.”
Even more so, now she is an aspiring member of the Rich List. Activists hope she will devote the money to enlightening the proletariat. But not all. “So much loot,” one said thoughtfully, “might have a surprising effect on even the most diehard Stalinist.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article634163.ece
Her net worth is actually about £100 million as she sold just one of the seven valuable paintings she acquired. It is mindboggling why this individual still acts as the chair of the Communist Party of Britain. She donated just £9,310 to her party according to the Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/pandora/pandora-cherie-is-brought-to-book-834311.html