I think the bit of Penguin Egg's omelette that got up people's noise was "We do not live under a totalitarian nightmare that they envisaged."

There is no justification for the suggestion that the people mentioned envisaged (or in the case of Dick Gaughan, envisage) any kind of "totalitarian nightmare". People across the Atlantic sometimes refer to Britain's "socialised medicine" with shock and horror. That's much the same fallacy as Penguin Eggs falls into.

The kind of "communist society" envisaged by the aforementioned was one been very much akin to the National Health Service - less than perfect, a bit over-bureaucratised, but basically pretty fair, and in a lot of ways far better than most of the alternatives on offer.