Nigel Short: 'Economically I am right wing'

After winning the Commonwealth Championship Nigel Short has now taken the strong Gibraltar Open. In an interview with the winner we spoke less about chess and more about the historical and political background of British colony – and the conservative Nigel Short.

Immediately after the tournament we had an opportunity to speak to the winner Nigel Short. We asked him about the tournament and its location, but never really got around to talking about the chess. Instead we delved into the historical and political background of Gibraltar, and into the historical and political background of Nigel Short. We hope that the following candid interview will clear up some common misunderstanding.

ChessBase: Nigel, congratulations on your second fine victory in succession. How does it feel?

Nigel Short: Very good. Maybe some people are beginning to realise that there is still a lot of fire in my veins. I actually played better here than at the Commonwealth Championship in January. There I gained I believe 1.2 Elo points, here it was about nine. So on the next list I should be 2712. I hope this will catch the eye of the organisers of the stronger events. I know I said some years ago I was tired of playing in these super-strong tournaments, but now I am ready to return. Incidentally this was my second Gib Telecom Chess Festival. Last year I won it with Vasilios Kotronias, my neighbour. Actually he plays for Cyprus for some unknown reason – I’m not quite sure whether he’s ever been to Cyprus. He lives in Athens, just like me. This time Dreev was the big star, and there were lots and lots of Indians.

Well, Gibraltar is a place which you either love or hate. I quite like it. It’s a rock, that is essentially what it is. It’s a British colony. When we were talking about the British Empire the other day I forgot to mention it. It’s celebrating its tercentenary this year. We prised it out of the Spaniards after the treaty of Utrecht in 1704, I think during the war of the Spanish succession. It was a British naval base which was very important for controlling the entrance to the Mediterranean. From here you can see Africa, even with the naked eye, and so you could see any ships entering the Mediterranean. Historically it was just a garrison town, now the military presence has been wound down quite significantly, and financial services are extremely important.

Gibraltar is tiny, the population numbers in the tens of thousands, maybe thirty thousand. We are in a hotel on the east side of the rock. The main town is on the other side, so we are actually a bit isolated. But nothing is really far away, you can walk around the rock if you like. The runway of the airport is actually longer than the width of the peninsular, so it actually extends out into the sea. There was a James Bond movie that was shot here, a couple of hundred meters from this hotel. The Living Daylights, I believe, with Timothy Dalton.

I would like to mention that this is a very nice tournament. I look outside and it is very sunny, about as good as it gets in Europe at this time of the year. The tournament is gradually building up, this year the number of participants is up by about 40%. They lost a few players because people did not get their visas on time. It’s complicated because you usually need two visas. For instance Zhu Chen was supposed to play here but didn’t make it.

The Spaniards have not played their cards very well on the subject of Gibraltar. You know there was a referendum here in 2002, and about 98% of the population voted to remain British. The population is a mixture, with Gibraltarians coming from many different countries. Most of the people are bilingual and speak English and Spanish. If you are in town you might see a group of people chatting away in Spanish, all holding their English newspapers.

When Franco was in power in Spain the peninsula was completely blockaded. If you wanted to travel from Gibraltar to Spain you had to take a ferry to Morocco and then go from Morocco to Spain. The border was sealed. The Gibraltarians were not particularly impressed by that, and they have long memories. Now it’s easy to cross the border, but there are still a lot of problems. For instance there are no direct flights from Spain. For me to arrive here the easiest way would have been to fly from Athens to Madrid or Barcelona and then to Gibraltar. Instead I flew from Athens to London and then from London to here. These sort of things irritate the people. I think that if the Spaniards were just to take a much more conciliatory approach Gibraltar would become Spanish in a matter of decades. It’s not as if there would be a huge change. Everyone speaks Spanish, the Pound is the official currency but the Euro is accepted everywhere. But there has been such a lot of ill will from Spain. They looked at this place, which is a historical anomaly, and instead of just accepting it as it is, they put pressure all through the years. The British were negotiating with the Spanish government about some kind of joint sovereignty, because you know we are not really great imperialists any more. We’ve been trying to wind down our activities in this area. But the Gibraltarians didn’t like it at all, they harbour a deep resentment.

Nigel, after our last interview we received a number of letters complaining about the tone of your remarks. Some people thought you spoke in a deprecatory fashion about countries like Uzbekistan or Cambodia. Are you racist or right wing?

Of course I'm not a racist, but I’m certainly right wing, there’s no question about that. I was always considered the most right-wing chess player in the British team...

Plaskett was not always on the British team. I think Jim would have pipped me. But I must mention that I am only economically right wing. I have no problems with Uzbekistan; it’s probably a lovely country. I just didn’t see why players from Uzbekistan should have been playing in the Commonwealth Championship.

One complaint was that you said “a few random Russians and Uzbeks”. It was the choice of words.

Yes, but that was not directed against Russians or Uzbeks. If there had been American or German players and I didn’t know their names I would have said exactly the same, “a few random Americans and Germans”. This has nothing to do with Russia or Uzbekistan. I have traveled all over the world, about 70 countries, and meeting so many foreign people leads to a greater appreciation of their culture.

But do you feel that you were lucky to be born in Britain, that Britain and England are somehow superior to many other countries?

No, of course not. Naturally you could be born in a country with a much lower life expectancy, or low levels of literacy, or in an unstable country, things like that. In that sense I am fortunate. But there are also many, many countries where things are as good as if not better than in Britain. Besides I don’t live in Britain anymore. I live in Athens, because I am married to a Greek wife. I also happen to like it there. People are very friendly, friendlier than in Britain, where people are not as immediately welcoming. We have a large underclass in Britain, and a fairly low standard of education. Our best universities are extremely good, but a very significant proportion of the British population that comes out of compulsory schooling with very low standards of education. We have these “Untermenschen”, this subclass of virtually illiterates. This is one of the problems we have in Britain, and there are many countries in Europe and elsewhere in which things are much better.

I speak Greek, but rather poorly. I can carry on simple conversations. My children are completely bilingual; they go to an English school. My daughter sounds just like an English girl, and also just like a Greek girl in Greece. My son doesn’t sound like an English boy; he still has some Greekisms.

So you are basically a right-wing British conservative who is living abroad with a Greek wife. Is that normal for British conservatives?

I should emphasize again that I am only economically right wing. In the Conservative Party you have traditionalists who believe Sunday is a day of rest, and at the same time there are free marketers who believe that shops should be allowed to open anytime they want to, including Sunday. So you have these two different strands which uneasily coexist within the same party. I am not a traditionalist. My position on abortion and on sex and on drugs and various other things is very liberal. But economically I am right wing.

The current Labour government has been, from an economic point of view, by far the best Labour government for years. The Labour Party of the 1980s was just a socialist party, and as we know, socialism impoverishes nations. But the current Labour government has really abandoned socialism. This is Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. She essentially won the argument, but ironically she won it and now Labour is in power. They are wearing her clothes.

I must stress that I don’t like the current British government, but not because of their economic policies. I dislike them because Tony Blair happens to go to war with whoever he feels like. We’ve been bombing Yugoslavia, and we’ve been bombing Afghanistan, and we’ve been bombing Iraq. He doesn’t seem to stop. I’ve been opposed to every single one of these actions. So you see I am not a hawkish right winger, just an economic right winger, a free marketer. And on most other issues I would be termed liberal, in the American sense.

I just came across this interview with Nigel Short (at one time the world's second strongest chess player after Garry Kasparov, and still the strongest player in Britain). It seems that Short had complained about the fact that players from countries like Russia or Uzbekistan were playing in the "British Commonwealth" Chess Championships ... this then prompted the interviewer to ask whether Short was "racist or right wing?"

While the interview is otherwise pretty unexceptional, this question really struck a nerve with me. Clearly, on some level, the generally accepted and politically correct views of the mainstream European press have gone completely off the deep end.

People who are socially "liberal"(in the classic sense) and fiscally conservative are usually considered libertarian. Though the label is somewhat inaccurate.

It is impossible to be a modern liberal and be fiscally conservative. Modern liberalism has totalitarian govt with confiscatory taxes and crushing regulation as its main core belief.

It seems that Short had complained about the fact that players from countries like Russia or Uzbekistan were playing in the "British Commonwealth" Chess Championships ... this then prompted the interviewer to ask whether Short was "racist or right wing?"

If other people had already raised those questions about Short, then that could have been the factor that prompted the interviewer to ask him. It is only fair to give him a chance to respond to such criticism.

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