Alexander Tomský

“I was terribly exploited by the English. They had a terrible conflict with the trade unions in the 1960s and 1970s, that is they had a conflict with labourers, who, at that time, were still organised in trade unions, and then Thatcher destroyed the unions. But this was still distant. I served as a kind of connection between the management, who spoke quite different English from those at the bottom. The communication between the two layers was desperate and I was a kind of easy connection, I went and learned cockney, the city slang, the speech of these people. As a foreigner, I was more acceptable for them than a young boy with a tie, and Englishman who worked up there with the masters. In the 1960s and 1970s there was really a class antagonism which later caused the tragedy that was the collapse of the English economy. It was nationalised by socialist governments and then came Thatcher, who turned it the other way round.”

“This was an international group indeed, one of my colleagues was Latvian, there were Russians, Americans. But he was absolutely enthralled that I could speak Polish, as a Pole was just elected the pope and he had no department for Poland. So I had Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and in a year or two I was the director of the whole Central European department. The institution, financed by charity, soared with Poland and I became a key author. I was invited to BBC and then to TV. The so-called Easter Europe business started. Our Central Europe was suddenly very interesting not just for the Soviet-focused experts but for mainstream media too.”