A mea culpa on the Conservative Home website following the death of Nelson Mandela. “Back in the Eighties and earlier, parts of the Right got Nelson Mandela completely wrong,” says Paul Goodman, the former Tory MP and executive editor of Conservative Home.
“In some cases, this was because they had real doubts about his commitment to democratic politics, given his previous support for violence against the South African state. They also had doubts about whether the ANC would govern South Africa well ... But in other cases, reasons were less creditable.
“In some quarters of the Right when I was a student, there was sympathy for apartheid (on the racist ground that black people are the inferiors of others) and, in a few cases, outright support. It felt foul then, and the memory of it is no nicer now.”
