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Foreign Affairs

[MR. ZILLIACUS.]

HOUSE OF COMMONS

In relation to the countries against which this half-war policy is being practised, it has not brought about the solution of any differences. On the con- trary, it has turned them all into contests of prestige and so made them insoluble. It has not made those countries more amenable to reason, but on the contrary tougher and more intransigent. It has not helped the cause of democracy and freedom, but on the contrary has aggravated and spread the evils of the police State." It has certainly not brought us nearer to peace, but on the contrary within sight of another world

war.

On our side, that policy and I am now talking about Anglo-American policy, because it has become practically impossible to separate the two-is being defeated in China, and that defeat is as important in world history as the ending of intervention in Russia after the first world war. Those who console them- selves with the delusion that revolutionary China will go back to the China of the war lords, based on a number of separate provincial Governments will, I think, find that they are as wrong in that respect as they have been in every other respect. Because revolutionary China, nationalist China, believes in unification as well as modernisation. I am very glad that some of our merchants and businessmen out there have had the good sense to get into touch with the new China, and to make the best terms they can. I hope that that common-sense spirit will spread in this country, and might perhaps even infiltrate into the Foreign Office, although I have no very sanguine hopes of that.

In the Middle East, the Foreign Secrc- tary, who wisely passed the subject over in silence, has managed-and I must say, if I had not seen it with my own eyes I should have thought it would have been impossible in Palestine he has managed to alienate and separate us from the Dominions, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Nations, the Arabs and the Jews. A really remarkable result. Greece is a Fascist-ridden shambles in which trade unionists are being butchered freely for having done too well on our side in the war, thereby offending those who worked and fought under Hitler.

In Italy, France and Western Germany the workers' standard of living has been

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pushed down to a point where they are becoming desperate. The French Govern- ment is deeply alarmed and indignant at a policy which puts France in a dis- astrously illogical and paradoxical position. The French want security against their traditional enemy, Germany. One might think that their way of going about it is perhaps not always the right way. Their fear is, perhaps, sometimes exaggerated. But no one can deny the legitimacy of that sentiment, nor its pre- valence and strength in France. Instead they are being forced, largely by the United States, into a combination where Western Germany is more and more openly spoken of in the United States as one of the bastions of the American

security system against the Soviet Union. Franco is another of the bastions, and this country is a third. France is looked upon as a rather second line of defence in the set-up. That, of course, is not a situation that any French Government can, in the long run, accept.

As for this country, we are being in creasingly urged and solicited to throw in our lot with a capitalist Western Union- capitalist because the United States has seen to it that the Governments in France and Italy are based solely on the pro- pertied classes, and that the working- class representatives are excluded from any share in Government. We are told by the Press that Mr. Paul Hoffman has recently been telling the Chancellor of the Exchequer that if we would only let up a bit on austerity and let in some French and Italian motor cars, wines, silks and perfumes we should thereby be offering incentives to workers in this country to produce more, which merely shows that Mr. Hoffman does not really understand the situation here.

The American Security system-the Atlantic Pact-incorporates us in an American strategic plan which cannot win the war and at the same time makes us subservient to an American foreign policy that cannot preserve peace. The whole of this policy is, of course, contrary to the Labour Party's principles and pledges, Government declarations and Party deci- sions on foreign policy. I have no time to go through the melancholy tale of those broken pledges. But there is some interest still perhaps in the resolution of the last conference of the Labour Party -the Scarborough resolution on Western

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9 DECEMBER 1948

Foreign Affairs Un-which contained the following passage:

"The Conference believes that the Conser- vative conception of Western Union on a capitalist basis and under a military alliance with the U.S.A. against the U.S.S.R. cannot solve Europe's economic problems and will only lead to a third world war.”

That is precisely the policy on which we have embarked. In addition to that I feel bound to say--and that is the most serious part of it-that this policy means that we have officially abandoned-we de facto abandoned it a long time ago- we have now officially and openly aban- doned any attempt to base our policy on the Charter of the United Nations. The fundamental principle of the Charter is that the permanent Security Council members should trust each other to the point where they do not contemplate or prepare for war against each other and where they are ready to settle all their differences peacefully. That whole assumption has gone by the board and with it any attempt to base our policy on the Charter. We are told that we cannot help it; that there is no alter- native; that we had to do this. That is an admission of failure and tantamount to filing our petition in bankruptcy in world affairs. It means that we have given up the business of trying to make peace as a bad job, and have fallen back helplessly on the balance of power and an arms race. That is where I came in.

are

As a League official, I spent all the years between the wars fighting that heresy. One lesson which the peoples learned after the first world war was that if we go back to the balance of power and an arms race, another war, sooner or later, is inevitable. We have gone back to them under conditions which hopelessly unfavourable to this country. For the first time in our history, we are the weaker ally on our side of the balance, which means that our national independence is sacrificed to the stronger partner, in this case, the U.S.A., and that it is decisions in Washington and not in London which will determine for what, when and against whom our conscripts have to fight and this country has to go through the horrors of another world

war.

The issues at stake in this new balance of power are issues of social organisa- tion and political ideology and outlook

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Foreign Affairs which are inherently incapable of solution by the methods of power politics, that is by diplomatic bargaining backed by threats of force. War itself has become so destructive that the mere preparations for war will bankrupt this country even if the United States lend-lease us goods and money and war will destroy us.

Mr. T. Reid: I agree with what the hon. Member said about ideological and other considerations, but what is his policy for solving these ideological differences?.

Mr. Zilliacus: I am coming to that. But first, I want to warn both the Govern- ment and the Opposition against making the dangerous assumption that the people of this country are still stuck at the cannon fodder level of citizenship and are still ready to fight in any war under any Government against any odds and for any cause. I do not believe that our people are any more ready to do that than the workers of France and Italy, although our methods are more decorous in expressing opposition to such a thing.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the recent steel Debate, said that if democracy proved incapable of dealing with the fundamental challenge of the private industrial empires, then the people would be forced to resort to other and more violent means. The issue of peace or war is a more fundamental challenge even than the challenge to democracy of the private industrial empires. Our people are not a Victorian Light Brigade that can be called on to do and die with- out asking the reasons why, because some V.I.P.S have blundered. If the Govern- ment fail to carry out their pledges to make peace, and prove that they cannot do the job which the people ask them to do, then I think they may easily find themselves in the painful position of the man in the old song who was carrying a grand piano up the stairs. The song says that:

"He trod on a stair that wasn't there

And his day's work was done."

begin with I want to put before the And now I come to the alternative. To

House a different intellectual and moral foundation for a different policy. Our intellectual foundations should be at least as advanced as those of the official organ of the Vatican, Osservatore Romano," in June of last year, nearly

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