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The Wilson government and the Davies peace mission to North Vietnam, July 1965

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1998

JOHN W. YOUNG
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Abstract

The British Labour government under Harold Wilson was involved in several attempts to negotiate an early end to the Vietnam War. Such efforts helped to satisfy critics of the war on the Labour left and in the Commonwealth, to neutralize US pressure to join in the conflict and to emphasize Britain's importance on the world stage. The Davies mission, in which a left-leaning junior minister was sent to Hanoi, was Wilson's most unusual peace bid which ended as a much-criticized fiasco. This story helps to illuminate Wilson's approach to foreign policy-making, the difficulty of pursuing talks without normal diplomatic relations and the obstacles preventing a Vietnam settlement in 1965. The reluctance of both Washington and Hanoi, as well as flaws in the mission's execution, condemned it to failure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , October 1998 , pp. 545 - 562
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am very grateful to the British Academy for providing financial support for my research in Britain and America to Mrs Janet Smith, for typing up the text and to the two anonymous reviewers who commented on an earlier draft of this article.