Malcolm Caldwell

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Malcolm Caldwell (1931-1978) was a British academic and a prolific Marxist writer. His works include: "The Wealth of Some Nations", "Marx and the Third World", and "Ten Years' Military Terror in Indonesia" [1].

He was a consistent critic of imperialism, a writer on Asian liberation and socialist movements, and a strong supporter of Pol Pot. Despite his vocal support for his Kampuchean revolution, Malcolm Caldwell was murdered on the orders of Pol Pot[2], a few hours after meeting him, in 1978.

Malcolm Caldwell was born in Scotland on 27 September 1931. He was a coal miner's son. He obtained degrees from Nottingham and Edinburgh Universities. He served in the British army for two years, becoming a sergeant in the Army Education Corps. In 1959 he joined the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University as a Research Fellow. Although he met with conservative opposition within the School, he remained on its faculty throughout his life. As well as being an academic, he was an energetic and committed political activist. He was a founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Asia, a journal concerned with revolutionary movements in Asia.

Caldwell was sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge. Along with Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman, he was part of the first group of Westerners invited to visit Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge closed the country. They were given 10-day structured tours of the country and a private audience with Pol Pot, experiences that apparently only intensified Caldwell's support for the regime. He was murdered by Khmer Rouge soldiers on the eve of the Vietnamese invasion in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1978 (Short, 2004:393-4).

[edit] References

• Short, Philip. Pol Pot The History of a Nightmare. John Murray, 2004. ISBN 0-7195-6569-3

Preceded by Sheila Oakes

Chair of CND 1968–1970

Succeeded by April Carter

[edit] External links

• An account of the night Caldwell was killed excerpted from Becker's When the War was Over
• Extract from a biography of Malcolm Caldwell in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (vol. 11, 1979).