The electronic version of the book is created by http://www.enverhoxha.ru ************************ ENVER HOXHA The Anglo - American Threat to Albania Memoirs of the National Liberation War THE INSTITUTE OF MARXIST-LENINIST STUDIES AT THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE PARTY OF LABOUR OF ALBANIA THE «8 NËNTORI» PUBLISHING HOUSE TIRANA 1982 «THE ANGLO-AMERICAN THREAT TO ALBANIA» is another book in the series of Comrade Enver Hoxha's memoirs from the time of the National Liberation War. It reflects events he lived through, his personal impressions, and gives conclusions, which provide lessons for all periods, drawn from the hostile activity carried out openly or behind the scenes, against our National Liberation Movement, our people's revolution and socialist Albania by the Anglo-American bourgeoisie. It brings out clearly the clash between the diabolical plans, attempts, manoeuvres and concrete activities of Anglo-American imperialism to put Albania under its sway, on the one hand, and the vigilance, the blow for blow struggle of the Communist Party of Albania and its General Secretary, the leader of the Army and the National Liberation Front and the whole patriotic Alba• nian people, Comrade Enver Hoxha, on the other hand, to discover, unmask, defeat and destroy the imperialist strategy and tactics in regard to Albania. These memoirs now being published, were written in 1975. The book is available in Albanian and several foreign languages. 3 I A LITTLE HISTORY Albania — a token for barter for the «Brit- ish Lion». Disraeli and Bismarck: «We are not interested in a few Albanian cottages.» Zog — the «open-door» policy. Chamberlain and the fascist occupation of Albania. The anti-fascist coalition. Vigilance of the CPA. Intelligence Service prepares its contingents for Albania. Section D and the SOE. Alarm in London. New plans, old aims. Both the imperial governments of Great Britain of past centuries and its royal governments in recent years have always been hostile to the Albanian people. The Tories and the different political currents that kept the Empire going, and the two parties, the Tory Party and the Labour Party, which have taken turns in running the country more recently, have always regarded Albania as a token for barter in their countless 5 deals with the other great powers to maintain the world hegemony of the «British Lion». Like many other countries, Albania has not been recognized by any of those different British governments which have safeguarded the domi• nation of British capital over the peoples and the world, as a state and a country which, through innumerable efforts and sacrifices through the centuries, have fought against various invaders, to be free and sovereign, but on the contrary, the inhabitants of this «Land of the Eagles» have been considered a savage, barbarous people, without culture, at a time when, despite their small num• bers, these people have been indomitable and no less cultured than the people of Scotland or Cornwall. It took a long time before a few publicists, some occasional amateur scholar or great poet of the romantic era, such as Byron, spread a little light among the British people about Albania and the Albanians, about their culture, their strong and generous character, their hospitality and kindness towards friends, as well as about the stern, unyielding fighting spirit in the face of many savage enemies which has always characte• rized them. The enslaving imperialist colonial policy of Britain prevailed over many countries and peo• ples. Britain engaged in a thousand and one mano- 6 euvres to get the riches of the world into its clutches, in order to fatten the lords and the barons and build up the «glory» and power of the Empire. Britain encroached on other countries, extending its influence like a noxious weed. Under the cloak of science, teams were sent to discover Africa, and wherever they went, the British «scientists» planted the flag of John Bull, and after them came the lords with their soldiers, who put down the mutiny of the Sepoys (1) and occupied India, people like Kitchener (2), who exterminated the Boers with fire and steel. Indeed Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) and Gladstone added the title of Empress of India to the other titles of Queen Victoria. This was colonialism, which plundered the fabulous riches of India, the rubies and emeralds of Burma and the diamonds of South Africa, looted the gold of those countries and enslaved their peoples spiri• tually, economically and physically. The inhabi• tants of the countries which came under its yoke, Britain used as cannon fodder for its own aims. In the various colonial wars which Britain waged against other imperialist powers, it put the Indian detachments, the Bengal Lancers, the Afghans and other oppressed peoples in the front ___________________________ 1 National uprising in India (1857-1859) against the British overlords in which the Indian peasants, craftsmen and espe• cially soldiers (Sepoys), etc. took part. 2 H. Kitchener (1850-1916) - British earl and field-mar• shal, war minister (1914-1916), savage colonizer of Africa. 7 line to deal the first blow for the benefit of their masters. All these colonial wars were fought so that the fields of England could be turned into golf courses for the lords, so that the food for the British Isles and all the raw materials for industry there would come from these colonies and the entire Empire on which, as Kipling, that ardent supporter of British expansion and colonialism, the bard of this Empire and author of the Jungle Books wrote, «the sun never sets.» The law of the jungle was applied in this empire. Everything had to serve it. The British bourgeoisie even used Darwin's scientific theory to justify the monstrous crimes it committed. Distorting this theory, it invented «social Darwinism» to «prove» that a bigger and more powerful people should eliminate or assimilate a smaller people, hence, it supported the reactionary concept that «the big fish eats the small.» In such conditions and with such methods Britain insinuated herself everywhere by means of its Intelligence Service (SIS), discovered oil fields, captured Persia and other countries, count• ered the ambitions of Czarist Russia, defended the Ottoman Empire, and when the latter truly became «the Sick Man of the Bosporus», collaborated with Bismarck's Germany at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, attacked the Peace 8 Treaty of San Stefano, jealously guarded the strategic positions of the Mediterranean such as the Dardanelles, Suez and Gibraltar, guarded the Persian Gulf and made herself the «Queen of the Seas», the protagonist of the gunboat policy. It provoked the «Fashoda incident» (1) and many other such things. When Britain had become one of the main colonial powers, when the British dukes were wallowing in gold and the duchesses could barely support the weight of their diamond necklaces, diamond rings and diamond tiaras, what impor• tance would they give to Albania and its heroic struggle for freedom and independence? At every crucial moment of our history, and especially when the Albanian people were fighting heroically, arms in hand, against the Ottoman Empire, Britain always took the side of Turkey. At the Congress of Berlin, the Prime Minister of Britain, Queen Victoria's favourite, Lord Beacons- field, who, when he returned to London from Berlin, made the pompous declaration that he had brought «peace with honour», and the Chancellor of Germany, Prince Bismarck, the founder of _______________________________ 1 In September 1898, the British army, aiming to occupy the whole of the Nile Valley, threatened the French army at Fashoda, the Sudan, and demanded its immediate evacuation of that inhabited centre. In March 1899, the British and French governments reached agreement that Britain would hold the Nile Valley and France the western regions of the Sudan. 9 the Second Reich, did not even deign to listen to the Albanian delegation which the Albanian Lea• gue of Prizren (1) had sent to Berlin to demand and defend the rights of our people. At those difficult moments, when our long-suffering people had taken up arms in the insurrection against the Turks and the Serbian chauvinist running-dogs in the service of imperialists, to oppose the parti• tioning of our Homeland amongst the Serbs, Montenegrins, Turks and others, to win their autonomy, Bismarck and Disraeli disdainfully told our glorious forebears: «We are not interested in a few Albanian cottages.» Later the delegates of our people, Ismail Qemali and Isa Boletini, went to London and demanded of the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, that Albania should be defended. «We shall not allow you to partition Albania.» our great diplomat Ismail Qemali told him. «We shall take up arms and fight, as we have always done.» The British minister turned a deaf ear. ________________________________ 1 On the eve of the Congress of Berlin, which was to revise the decisions of the Treaty of San Stefano, delegates from all the Albanian regions gathered in the town of Prizren on June 10, 1878, and decided to form a political and military union which took the name «The Albanian League of Prizren» and fought for self-government, national unity and for the defence of the territorial integrity of Albania which was threatened by the chauvinist ambitions of the neighbouring states. 10 Later at Versailles, Lloyd George with his henchmen, acting like his predecessors in London, partitioned Albania and so, our parents were, as always, obliged to take up arms to fight the invaders of our country. After the First World War, too, the British took the lead in intriguing against our country, meddling in our affairs and infiltrating the spies of their Intelligence Service into Albania. They were unable to change the direction of the Vlora uprising in 1920 which drove the Italian occupation troops into the sea.