HALF a century ago, on November 17 1974, a general election took place in Greece. Former prime minister and far from socialist Konstantinos Karamanlis then returned to the premiership with more than 50 per cent of the vote.  

Little publicity about the event and the outcome touched the British press, massively contrasting with the centre stage media treatment given to the turbulence in Cyprus which had given the fascist Athens’s colonels’ regime its come-uppance the previous July.  

Nor was the election an occasion for bringing into greater public consciousness the terrifying seven year rule of the military junta. 

As for the Churchill-directed British army suppression of fundamental socialist change in Greece in December 1944, sustained by Greek reactionary forces until the civil war ended in autumn 1949, with democracy much curtailed in the years that followed, that was best overlooked.

The November 1974 Greek general election marked the formal end of the horrific episode which had begun with the junta’s coup on April 21 1967.

During that dark period many Greek anti-fascists had suffered physically and mentally from the brutality, and not a few had been killed.

One remarkable opponent of the junta’s rule was the widely known and popular communist musician-composer Mikis Theodorakis, who in 1967 was in his early forties.  

From the moment of the seizure of power he went into hiding, heavily disguised. He immediately co-authored an appeal to the citizens of Greece.  

It declared: “Fascism has struck the country. The king, his generals and the CIA believe that our people will be reduced to silence by violence and terror … People of Athens, demonstrate in the streets Patriots, meet up in Constitution Square! … Fascism will not pass!”

But the manically high level of state intimidation and arrests deterred mass public opposition. Theodorakis managed to avoid security police custody until August.  

One mad-cap decision on the junta’s part was to outlaw radical culture as much as it outlawed overt political dissent. A decree dated May 12 1967 is cited in a resume of the life of Theodorakis (published in 2018) three years before he died at the age of 96, by Wassilis Aswestopolous.  

Abbreviated, the decree reads: “We have decided to order the country-wide prohibition of the music and songs of Mikis Theodorakis, because this music is employed in the service of communism. Contravention of this order will be dealt with by the military authorities under martial law.” 

On August 21 1967 the musician was arrested, handcuffed with his hands high up his back, blindfolded, beaten and his immediate execution was promised.  

A bare prison cell was his for the next five months and more promises of execution were uttered. Between late January until August 1968 he was free but closely watched. He was then confined with his family to a tiny mountain village, and in October 1969 was transferred to a prison camp.  

Finally released on health grounds on April 13 1970, he was soon joined in Paris by his wife Myrto and their children, who had managed to escape from Greece in a small boat.   

Theodorakis wrote up in Paris his personal story of these junta years in the form of a detailed and moving diary, published as his Journal of Resistance and before long translated into English.  

The account he gives, in which poetry, music and politics all feature, tells us with compassion of the torture other detainees suffered. Though personally shielded from this by his international fame, his own detention (wholly unjustified by democratic standards) was far from comfortable.  

His journal is riveting, told with great commitment to poetry and music, and to determined opposition to the regime. 

The book’s introduction addresses the years before the coup. The Greek communist party had existed in conditions of illegality (with leaders abroad), and the parliamentary general election which took place in October 1961 was deeply marred by electoral abuses, such as much “voting” by the dead and multiple voting by members of the armed forces.  

In July 1965 the youthful King Constantine sought to dismiss Greece’s then prime minister, Georgios Papandreou, by telling him to resign. Papandreou complied immediately.  

Had he refused, thereby displaying himself as a servant of a democratic nation rather than as a tool of the monarchy, Theodorakis suggests that Greece’s history thereafter would have been very different: a broad progressive front would have been possible.

A right-wing coup was feared by two British Labour MPs who took part in an anti-US, anti-Nato protest rally in Greece on May 22 1966. Britain’s ambassador to Athens, contemplating the possibility of a coup in a telegram to Labour’s foreign minister George Brown on January 31 1967, was sanguine. A coup should not, he wrote, be “necessarily regarded … as disastrous.” 

The colonels, fearing a radical regime would follow the general election scheduled for late May 1967, once in power prohibited democratic elections and public protest, but not arrests without trial or torture by its police.  

Internationally, while it lasted, the colonels’ regime remained safely part of Nato and therefore a creature of the US.

This prolonged contempt of parliamentary democracy and human rights did not find much favour among Britain’s population, but did not meet hostility from the Harold Wilson and Edward Heath governments.

Labour MPs who visited Greece in May 1967 recommended “ostracism of this fascist-type dictatorship,” but cool acceptance rather than ostracism was the Downing Street approach.  Brown’s suggestion to the Greek ambassador in September that arrests be discontinued, detainees released and democracy restored, was waved away. 

On October 4 1967 the Labour Party conference, defying a plea from Brown, voted for Greece’s expulsion from Nato, but this vote, predictably, was waved away likewise by the Wilson government, reminding us that defending democracy has never been Nato’s function. 

Foreign secretary Michael Stewart, Brown’s replacement, put a paper before the Wilson cabinet on July 12 1968, suggesting that the regime was “the best you could expect in that country,” and that Britain should do nothing publicly about it, having regard to the risk of a communist takeover.  

The latter risk, objectively, was non-existent. Stewart went on to assure his Cabinet colleagues that “there was every sign that the regime would … switch over to democracy in the course of the summer.” Five more summers were to come and go before the sixth summer showed the regime the door.  

The one significant step taken against the colonels’ regime by Britain was to join in the vote for its suspension from the Council of Europe, an organisation much less significant than Nato. Greece’s membership was restored in late 1974. 

Within Greece itself dissent never disappeared. A huge turnout of people shouting: “Democracy” accompanied the cemetery burial of ex-premier Papandreou in November 1968.  

From 1971 strikes were frequent. A student occupation of Athens Polytechnic on November 14 1973 (joined by workers) was answered three days later by army commandos and tanks, with dozens killed and hundreds injured.  

A change of Junta leadership followed.

But the regime’s end was not far off. A sudden takeover of independent Cyprus (of which Archbishop Makarios was president) on July 15 1974 by pro-junta national guardsmen was followed swiftly by a landing of Turkish troops.  

The Turkish government was determined to oppose Greek rule over the island, where a Turkish minority had long been present. The coup was promptly exposed as sponsored by the Athens junta, which at one stroke had constructed its own coffin instead of consolidating its own increasingly precarious position in Greece.

On the July 23, as reported by the Morning Star next day, many demonstrators assembled in Athens’ Constitution Square, informed that ex-premier Karamanlis had been asked to return from Paris, and ignoring police threats of force if the Square was not cleared.

Shouts included: “Democracy, democracy, Makarios, Makarios,” and “Out with the Americans.”

Karamanlis was back, the Greek Communist Party was legalised, a November general election went ahead, and parliamentary democracy, at last, was restored.  

On top of that the music of Theodorakis was no longer penalised and continued to be “employed in the service of communism” — and humanity — and continues to be so employed today.