Alan Winnington Add a review

Alan Winnington (16 March 1910 – 26 November 1983) was a British journalist, war correspondent, movie actor, anthropologist, and Communist activist, most notable for his coverage of the Korean War and the Chinese revolution. In 1950, Winnington authored I saw the truth in Korea, an anti-war pamphlet containing photographic evidence of the mass graves of civilians executed by the South Korean police. The publishing of this leaflet led to the British government debating whether to have Winnington tried for treason, a charge which carried the death penalty, though it was instead decided to make him stateless by refusing to renew his passport.

As a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and an Asian correspondent for the Daily Worker, Winnington travelled to China and witnessed the defeat of the KMT by the Chinese Communist Party. Now living in China, he grew close to many leading Chinese politicians including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhu De. During the Korean War he worked closely with Wilfred Burchett, as the only two English-speaking journalists to cover the war from the North's perspective. Winnington helped to secure the fair treatment of British and American POWs captured by Chinese and North Korean forces.

Now permanently living in China, Winnington undertook an ethnographic study of isolated regions in South-West China. He travelled to Norsu territory in Sichuan to document the abolition of slavery by the Chinese Communist Party, interviewing freed slaves and former headhunters, becoming the first European to live within a Norsu community and return alive. He also lived among the Wa people, interviewing their shamans and headhunters. His findings were published in his book Slaves of the Cool Mountains (1959). Winnington also travelled to Tibet as an honoured guest of both the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, experiences which he recorded in the travelog Tibet (1957). His positive reputation with both Chinese communists and Tibetan Buddhist placed Winnington in a position to obtain a greater insight into Tibetan life in the 1950s than most other journalist. After becoming disillusioned with Chinese politics and suffering constant harassment, he left China in 1960 with the help of Harry Pollitt and moved to East Germany. He spent the remainder of his life in East Germany, working as an author of crime-fiction, children's books, and starring as a movie actor in various films. His autobiography Breakfast With Mao (1986) was published posthumously.

Currently Winnington's work is being used by activists and historians to uncover the location of mass graves in Taejon in preparation for an upcoming peace park.