Tag Archives: gareth jones

Mr Jones – a film about a Liberal fighting for liberal values in 1930s Soviet Union


If you were told about a researcher for Lloyd George, who had links with George Orwell, who became a journalist and flew with Hitler and then discovered a famine in Ukraine, which Stalin wish to keep secret, you would have believed it was the plot for a film. It is, but it is also based on fact.

The film “Mr Jones” is on General Release from 7th February. It shows how a young Welshman (and a Liberal), Gareth Jones, who had worked for Lloyd George, in 1933 gained a visa to visit Moscow to seek to obtain an interview with Stalin for an explanation of his five-year plan. Whilst, as a journalist, he was officially confined to Moscow, he evaded Soviet security to travel to Hughesovka (Donetsk) and discovered the Holodomor; the deliberate starvation of between five and 10 million Ukrainians by the Soviet regime. On leaving the Soviet Union, he seeks to expose the truth in a story taken up by many newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Evening Post.

Posted in Liberal History and TV and film | Also tagged and | 5 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • John B Grout
    Excellent piece, Josh. As for seeking others' thoughts on the pitch, here are mine: Labour and the Greens want to do things for you, the Conservatives and R...
  • David Evans
    It's an interesting article, which gives us more to think about, but when it ends with "Government and politics can strive toward this platform ... giving ind...
  • Neil Sandison
    This one of a series of articles recently published in the Liberal Democrat Voice that defines our social liberal values . Frequently the hot house of Westminst...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This is the right problem to be working on, and I think the answer may be less about the words than about the moments. In my experience people learn what we sta...
  • Simon Robinson
    It's good to have an MP putting herself forward for this. The manifesto seems a bit vague though. All good thoughts and nothing you can really disagree with, b...