| Letter: Noor Inayat Khan I watched with great interest the piece by Ruth Goodman on the BBC One Show on August 2 about Noor Inayat Khan GC, the SOE undercover agent in Nazi-occupied France, held in chains for ten months, cruelly abused and finally murdered by the SS at Dachau in September 1944. The piece vividly portrayed her supremely brave and ever-inspiring stand against fascism and war, and amply justified her biographer Shrabani Basu's campaign to have a statue erected in London honouring her sacrifice.* But I was outraged that the piece was run in conjunction with a jokey interview with former MI5 chief Stella Rimington, as if being a spy against Nazi fascism equated with a career of spying on your own people, especially and ironically, as records show, on anti-fascist and anti-war activists! It seemed the crudest attempt to nullify the impact of the Noor piece, unsuccessful I am sure to all but the most gullible, and further, given Rimington's lauding of MI5 as an equal-opportunity and woman-friendly employer, a virtual recruiting drive for the secret services of today's warmongers. Stella Rimington claimed she knew nothing of Noor Inayat Khan. Is she really so ignorant? Was she not aware of the great Indian independence fighter Tipu Sultan, Noor's direct forebear, in all her years at the British High Commission in New Delhi? Did she not know of Noor's father being hounded out of Britain by her predecessors because of his views and contacts regarding Indian independence? Had she not read of Noor telling her wartime superiors she might well be fighting against them for Indian independence post-war? Hard to believe! Nevertheless, Noor's spirit and sacrifice in the face of fascism and war as an inspiration for today shone through like a shaft of sunlight. West London reader *See also www.noormemorial.org and Workers’ Weekly, July 1, 2006: "Noor Inayat Khan: Anti-Fascist Heroine and Indian Patriot" |