Shelepin Visit a Fiasco

Alexander Shelepin, the Soviet trade union boss, Politburo member and former head of the KGB (secret police) left Britain today almost surreptitiously by way of Glasgow, cutting what was to have been a four-day visit to two days and leaving the general impression of a fiasco, especially on the part of the leaders of the Trade Union Congress who had invited him here.

At his only press conference, to which several of Britain’s most important newspapers were not invited, Shelepin blamed “Zionists” mainly for the widespread demonstrations against him. “There was a noisy campaign against me and the Soviet Union by Zionists and others,” he charged. Although British Jewry was bitterly opposed to the visit of the man they hold largely responsible for the anguish of many Soviet Jews seeking exit, visas, the biggest and noisiest demonstrations against Shelepin were staged by Ukrainians, Lithuanians and other Soviet ethnic minorities in Britain.

They carried placards branding the ex-KGB chief a “murderer.” Relatively few Jewish groups demonstrated because of the Passover holiday. A small group of Jewish women carried placards urging the release of “prisoners of Zion”–Russian Jews imprisoned for seeking exit visas.

MASS RALLY SLATED

The Board of Deputies of British Jews plans to hold a mass demonstration Friday. Participants will march from a London synagogue to the Soviet Embassy where they will try to meet with the Ambassador. A spokesman for the Board told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency “We are demonstrating against the treatment of Jewish activists in the Soviet Union and not against Shelepin in particular, though his visit here is most unwelcome.”

Labor MP Greville Janner, described Shelepin’s visit as “a Ruritanian farce,” alluding to the use of decoys to divert the attention of demonstrators as the Russian official moved about London. The visit did not strengthen detente but in fact, weakened it, Janner claimed. Len Murray, secretary general of the TUC, was booed and mocked by a large crowd today. He was derided as the man who was fooled by a former KGB chief posing as a trade unionist.