Peter: Your reader’s account of the CIA operation agrees with my recollection, though I’m away from my materials. There was a guerilla resistance movement in Tibet through the 1950s and early 1960s, and the CIA provided assistance and training till JFK stopped it.

What should we have done? Made a fuss, and gone on making one. Helped the Tibetans keep their case alive. They had their country stolen from them by an aggressive, imperialist communist nation. That’s not nothing, and we should not have stood by in silence. The Chinese Communists should never have been allowed to think they had got away with a fait accompli. At a bare minimum, we should have hosted Tibetan governments-in-exile, as we did for the Baltic states.

In 1984 I went with some other Tory party activists for some face time with a govt. minister at the House of Commons. It was Timothy Raison, then Minister for Overseas Development. (I.e. foreign aid.) I was involved with the Tibet Society, so I asked him why the govt. hadn’t been more outspoken about the continuing Chinese occupation. This, I should say, was a point in time when the Chinese govt. still (after the post-Mao liberalization) seemed to be thinking of real talks with the Dalai Lama.

The Minister rolled his eyes, gave me a look that said “The cranks and weirdos I have to put up with!” and said: “The govt. has no policy on Tibet. My understanding is, it’s always been a part of China.”

To hear a Minister in a Tory government (Mrs. Thatcher’s) parroting the propaganda lies of the Chinese Communist Party was … disconcerting.

There were things we could have done. Especially in those post-Mao years, when the ChiComs were seriously thinking of some accommodation with the Tibetans. (In 1980, I think it was, they even invited a party of exiles — the Dalai Lama’s people — back into Tibet for some meetings. The story is told in John Avedon’s book.) Some gentle prodding from Britain and the U.S. might really have achieved something. We did nothing, because nobody in either of our governments gave a damn. That’s what we did, Peter: nothing, nada, zippo, zilch, diddley-squat. When we might have done something.