“who among us has not committed treason to something or someone more important than a country?” – Graham Greene
And, furthermore, the nation state is not one’s country.
Most western narratives on the Cambridge spies are from a British Establishment viewpoint still processing the very idea of one of their own turning on them. The inquest begins with a “How could he?” rather than a “Why wouldn’t he?” As posted before, my theoretical starting point for this song was that no one who betrays the British Establishment can be all bad.
More important and interesting to me was the human story here, far more so than any propaganda, judgement or ideology. The lives caught up in and destroyed by that old euphemism “events” have names most of which will not appear in history books, far less write them.
As James Joyce wrote “ I fear those big words . . . which make us so unhappy. ” The price for those big words will, as always, be paid by those of us with the least.
bx