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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
The thinking of Left Wing Labourites on foreign policy since 1945 reveals the frustration, and, withal, the persistence of Utopian hopes in a period of particularly rapid and alarming change on the world stage.
The victory of the British Labour Party in the elections of July, 1945 opened up to Left Wing Labourites intoxicating vistas of permanent peace and socialist brotherhood. The moment of triumph was ironically favorable to the fervor of Socialist Utopian hopes. Fascist military power in Europe had been crushed, and thb feat had been accomplished by the combined endeavors of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union. Russia, so long the Janus of the socialists, socialist state and enemy of socialists, appeared to be ready for cooperation. Labourites gladly abandoned their “red-baiting” suspicions, and looked for the building of a socialist Europe, aided by the Resistance parties, whose work was generally exaggerated and, just as generally, claimed for socialism. Problems of economic reconstruction were of a magnitude to encourage believers in planning that the capitalist world would itself become socialist in its solutions; and the apparently imminent liquidation of old colonial empires made the radiance of freedom's dawn even more dazzling.
* In preparing this paper for the Notre Dame Committee on International Relations I have enjoyed the assistance of Mr. Bernard J. Norling.
1 The New Statesman and Nation expresses the views of the intellectual Left Wing of the Labour Party. Its editorials and news comments from July 28 to August 18 reveal these Utopian hopes. Similar opinions may be found in the monthly magazine, Left, May to September, 1945. The Communist Labour Monthly championed superpower unity and after the deadlock in the London meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (September, 1945) blamed Bevin and Byrnes for disrupting the wartime cooperation with the Soviet Union. An excellent analysis of Labour Party attitudes on foreign policy is Shils, Edward A., “Britain and the World,” Review of Politics, VII (1945), 505–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Dalton sounded the official note that the Labour Party would be able to deal with Russia in a more trusting fashion than the Conservatives. “Left understands Left” was the Party line, but only Dalton among the top leaders made that point at the Blackpool Conference of the Labour Party in May. Report of the 44th Annual Conference of the Labour Party(London,1945), p. 104.Google Scholar
3 Many Labour Party members did not share the delusion that the advent of a Socialist Government would end the world power struggles. Two of them, oddly enough from the intellectual Left Wing, were critical of the lack of realism in socialist dunking about foreign policy but wavered between the hope that the end of capitalism would mean the end of wars and the recognition that foreign policy could not be shaped simply by ideology. Crossman, R. H. S., “Some Elementary Principles of Socialist Foreign Policy” in Catlin, G. E. (ed.), New Trends in Socialism (London, 1935),Google Scholar and Brailsford, H. N., “A Socialist Foreign Policy” in Problems of a Socialist Government (London, 1933).Google Scholar Earlier attitudes of the Labour Party towards foreign policy are described in Maddox, William P., Foreign Relations in British Labour Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1934)Google Scholar and in Brand, Carl F., British Labour's Rise to Power (Stanford University, 1941).Google Scholar
4 Clement Attlee at the Southport Conference of the Labour Party(October, 1934)Google Scholar said: “We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty.” Wheeler-Bennett, John W., Munich: Prologue to Tragedy (New York, 1948), p. 244.Google Scholar Attlee's moderation is more evident in his discussion of foreign policy in The Labour Party in Perspective (London, 1937).Google Scholar But at the end of his discussion he noted that his socialistic logic compelled him to believe “that there is no agreement on foreign policy between a Labour Opposition and a Capitalist Government.” Ibid., pp. 226–227.
5 Brailsford, H. N., who has generally supported the Left Wing, wrote in 1933: “Again, there are values in life superior even to the interest, or the supposed interests, of Socialism.” Problems of a Socialist Government, p. 256.Google Scholar
6 The Parliamentary Labour Party and, ultimately, the Cabinet determine Labour policy when the Party holds office. This is a fact, although Winston Churchill chose to ignore it in the election campaign of 1945 when he charged that Labour Ministers had to take orders from and to impart government secrets to the National Executive Committee, including Harold Laski.
7 McHenry, Dean E. in His Majesty's Opposition (Berkeley, 1940), pp. 25–35,Google Scholar describes the structure of the Party during the Thirties and the contrast between the organized and moderate policies of the Trade Unionists and the more radical tendencies of the Constituent Labour Parties.
8 “The Labour Party's organization is one of the most complicated designed by the mind of man.” Carter, Gwendolen M. and Ranney, John C., The Major Foreign Powers (New York, 1949), p. 62.Google Scholar The statement does justice to the complexity of the Party, but it should be added that die complexity is less the product of design than of adaptation and growth.
9 Lenin at first did not expect the Bolshevik regime to last, later he argued that the Soviets stood on the advance post of world revolution and would only hold the fortress if the Russian example was followed elsewhere. In 1919 and 1920 he indicated that the establishment of a communist state in an advanced country would probably mean “that Russia will cease to be the model country.” Presumably, communist leadership in world affairs would also pass from Russia to the advanced country. Lenin, , Selected Works, edited by Fineberg, J. (London, 1938), vol. X, 35, 57. Today the true communist foreign policy is Russian foreign policy.Google Scholar
10 Wheeler-Bennett, , op. cit., p. 382,Google Scholar note 2, remarks: “It is ironical to remember that when industrial conscription was eventually introduced in 1940 it was carried out with admirable and ruthless efficiency by a trade union leader—Mr. Ernest Bevin.” The Labour speakers who defended conscription in the parliamentary debates (November, 1946) argued that conscription was necessary under conditions of full employment, whereas the unemployment prevailing in the days of Tory governments made possible a dependence on voluntary enlistment.
11 The avoidance of a policy of continuity has been an obsession with all the Left Wing groups. Thus, Brockway, Fenner in Socialism Over Sixty Years (London, 1946), p. 217,Google Scholar makes it a reproach to the Tories that they did not subseqendy follow the “open diplomacy” of Macdonald's Government of 1924. But this only proved to him that the principle of continuity was a fraud and a cheat.
12 The leaders of the Labour Government in 1945 knew that their socialism would have to be a national socialism. But the Leftists could not accept that. John Strawhorn, writing in Left, No. 101, March 1945, pp. 352–354, argued that British socialism had no future save as a part of European socialism. “The struggle against British capitalism and against the suppression of the European revolution is also a struggle against Yankee Imperialism. And it is in Britain diat the decisive struggle may take place.”
13 An exception should be made of such extreme products of revolutionary anger as Strachey's, JohnThe Coming Struggle for Power (New York, 1934)Google Scholar and Socialism Looks Forward (New York, 1945).Google Scholar
14 Bevin then reminded his Labour colleagues that, if their party won the next general election, they would learn that “you cannot govern the world by emotionalism.” New York Times, December 14, 1944, p. 8.Google Scholar
15 Fabian Publications: Research Series, No. 71 (London, no date), p. 3.Google Scholar The point is a good one, for implicit in some Labourites' unconcern about armaments and power was a pathetic trust in the determination of the Conservatives to provide for such matters. Labour's later emphasis on the need of new men in the Foreign Service derives from the argument in the quotation. It is also a revelation of the bankruptcy of Leftist thought, for, though partly justified, it comes perilously close to the slogan “men, not measures.”
16 Woolf, Leonard, “The International Post-War Settlement,” Fabian Publications: Research Series, No. 85 (London, 1944), p. 3.Google Scholar Woolf and other Leftists later ignored the fact that the very ambiguity of which he complained helped to win die middle class vote for Labour.
17 Report of the 44th Annual Conference of the Labour Party(London,1945), pp. 107–108, 112, 114.Google Scholar
18 Williams, Francis, Socialist Britain (New York, 1949), pp. 55–57.Google Scholar Williams, as Adviser on Public Relations to Attlee, was very close to Attlee, and his book presents the moderate Labour approach characteristic of Attlee, Bevin and Herbert Morrison. The story that Hugh Dalton had been appointed Foreign Secretary only to have Attlee change his mind within a few hours is confirmed by some of Bevin's later speeches. The change was well-advised, for Dalton has a genius for unpopularity, and die support of the Trade Unions, which Bevin could all but assure, was essential to the Government in its firm policy towards Russia.
19 Ibid., pp. 115, 117–8.
20 Ibid., p. 83.
21 New Statesman and Nation, July 14, 1945, p. 17; July 21, 1945, p. 33; August 4, 1945, p. 69.Google ScholarThe New Statesman and Nation believed that Bevin was one of the few men tough enough to reform the Foreign Office and to widen effectively the scope of its work. Ibid., August 4, 1945, p. 72, and August 11, 1945, p. 90. Editorials in Socialist Commentary wavered between statements that Labour foreign policy must be radically different from that of the Tories and that regretfully there must be a certain continuity, which would also involve tragic committments made by the Tories at Yalta and Potsdam. Ibid., X (1945), 143, 162–165.
22 Eden's reply to Bevin made this point more explicit. “During that period [the Coalition Government] there were many discussions on foreign affairs, but I cannot recall one single occasion when there was a difference between us. I hope I do not embarrass the Foreign Secretary by saying that.” MrBevin, : “No.” MrEden, : “There were no differences on any important issue of foreign policy.” Parliamentary Debates, 413, House of Commons, August 20, 1945, clmn. 312.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., clmn. 287. In this concern with living standards Bevin revealed his trade union background. Much of his personality has been shaped by that. He expects loyalty and is inclined to consider Labour attacks on himself as a stab in the back. He has a great capacity for winning the affection and confidence of the workers and as great a capacity for ruthlessness in using his strength against opposition. His vanity partakes of the pompous, as may be seen in the following exchange in the House of Commons; Mr. Ivor Thomas: “While I cannot press my hon. Friend at this moment in view of what he has said, will he bear in mind his own words of 22nd January⃜” MrBevin, .: “All my words bear very heavily on me at all times.” Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons (Weekly Hansard), May 26, 1948, clmn. 181.Google Scholar
24 Quoted in Round Table, No. 143, June 1946, p. 270.Google Scholar
25 Silverman commended Bevin not for all he had done, not for his lines of approach but because he had approached world affairs from the level of humanity and had worked for world prosperity. “It would be a pity if that great work of his should be bedevilled by ideological strife between the Social Democracy in which we all believe and the Communism which has given one of our Allies a different approach. It would be a still greater pity if it were bedevilled by outworn ideas on individual national security.” Harold Laski, as Chairman, complimenting Bevin for his “Unresting zeal,” and for his willingness to liquidate imperialism in India and Egypt, resumed: “Let capitalist governments mistrust one another; that distrust is inherent in capitalist society. But governments like the Russian and our own, are the surest hope of peace where they find the road to the same ends and combine their strength to fight whatever dangers they encounter on the way⃜The common people, both in Great Britain and in Russia, have the right, based upon a massive experience, to say to their leaders that cooperation is the alternative to destruction.” Report of the 45th Annual Conference of the Labour Party(London,1946), pp. 128, 106.Google Scholar
26 Five Parliamentary Private Secretaries, who are usually associated with the Ministers whom they serve, signed the Order Paper, which made the debate possible.
27 The Conservative Captain H. F. C. Crookshank noted that only two of the fifty-eight signatories of the Order Paper had been manual workers, “the core, so long respected in this House, of the old Labour Party. This is a mutiny of the intellectuals. Here are the dentists, the doctors, the solicitors, the accountants, the professors, the dons, the Socialist capitalists and the company directors. What is more, they appear to be the intellectual news boys.” Parliamentary Debates, 430, House of Commons, November18, 1946,Google Scholar clms. 544–545.
28 The Third Force Policy was implicit in the thinking of most socialist writers who were not communist dupes. An early expression of it may be found in an editorial “Britain and Europe,” New Statesman and Nation, August 25, 1945, p. 119. In later studies the present author hopes to deal with Labour and the Third Force and with Labour's part in Western Union.Google Scholar
29 “Marginal Comment,” Spectator, December 20, 1946, p. 671.Google Scholar
30 Fabian Publications: Research Series, No. 121 (London, 1947), pp. 3, 7–9, 13.Google Scholar Rita Hinden, who was a member of the Fabian International Bureau, reviewing the pamphlet, criticized the timidity and naīveté of Woolf and the dangerous power politics of Ewer, and, without mentioning Laski, obviously disagreed with him. Her conclusion was: “In the anarchy of the present world we cannot—unless we plump for neutrality—simply contract out of power politics—detest it as we may. Yet Socialists must inject some other element into their foreign policy as well. They must, wherever possible, apply in international conflicts, the principles of justice and agreement, rather than arbitrariness and force. As Big Power strife intensifies, this is becoming more and more difficult. Herein lies our dilemma; the search for a foreign policy which solves it has only just begun.” Socialist Commentary, XIII (1948), 81–83.Google Scholar
31 “I am not going to be a party to voluntarily putting all British interests in a pool and everybody else sticking to his own. The standard of life and the wages of the workmen of this country are dependent upon these things, as indeed they are upon other things.” After speaking of the ravages of modern war he said that on entering office he had no expectation of achieving great results in less than four or five years. “I know things are going to be difficult, and that is why I have cultivated for the first time in my life, as all my colleagues wilt agree, a quite remarkable patience. I must have been born again.” His weary hope was “that by next November we [the Foreign Ministers] shall have said so much to one another that we shall be tired of talking and will be ready to agree instead.” Report of the 46th Annual Conference of the Labour Party(London;1947), pp. 176, 182.Google Scholar
32 Report of the 48th Annual Conference of the Labour Party(London,1949), p. 122.Google Scholar
33 Socialist Commentary's editorial did not propose the abandonment of Labour Britain's friendliness to world socialism. Almost all Leftist critics stressed the necessity of fostering by diplomatic and other means the international association of socialists. But the Labour Party rarely sent a top Cabinet leader to international socialist meetings.
34 Socialist Commentary, XIII (1949), 180–181.Google Scholar
35 The New Statesman and Nation in December 1949 and January 1950 returned to the theme of Sept. 22, 1943, calling for an end to suspicion and for an agreement of the powers to disagree.