Universities & Left Review 7 Autumn 1959 NATO, The Bomb and Socialism

Peter Sedgwick

N the September of 1948, the United States Secretary now. As, for example, that between Lord Russell, the sage I of Defence, James Forrestal, conversed with the Am- of C.N.D., and the Russell who in the late 1940's could bassador to Moscow. The Senate's Vandenberg Resolution advocate crude atomic blackmail to force Soviet totali- of June had committed the United States to seeking a tarianism to heel; or between the Priestley who contributed regional military arrangement with Europe; NATO was to Collier's Magazine's notorious Cold-War issue with in gestation. Forrestal heard the Ambassador's estimate prophecies of a Russia devastated and poisoned by of Soviet possibility, and noted afterwards: "The Russians American bombardment, and the Priestley of Doomsday cannot possibly have the industrial competence to produce for Dyson and anti-nuclear sanity; or between George the atomic bomb now, and it will be five or even ten years Kennan, advocate of "disengagement" in the Reith Lec- before they could count on the manufacture of it in tures of 1957, and the NATO strategist of "containment", quantity". "Mr. X", of ten years earlier; or between "the Labour Nine months after the Vandenberg Resolution, the North Left's honeymoon with American foreign policy" of 1948- Atlantic Treaty was duly published. "Democracy", 50 (documented in Leon D. Epstein's Britain—Uneasy proclaimed Ernest Bevin at the christening, "is no longer Ally, whence the above phrase originates), and The Paper a series of isolated units". The Portuguese Foreign That Leads The Anti-H Bomb Campaign of recent times. Minister hailed the signatories as "the depository of the (It is curious now to note that Ian Mikardo's attack on ideals of Western civilisation". And in September, 1949, NATO in the Tribune of April 20th, 1949, was in the one year after Forrestal's contented forecast, the first form of a lone-voice dissent from the editorial line.) nuclear explosion was detected in Soviet Russia. These perhaps embarrassing reminders are not set down for the sake of wisdom after the event or destructive heckling at the platform speakers. It is necessary to recall such facts in order to capture the flavour of those nineteen- forties, when the political and strategic framework for To a generation whose apathy or protest has defined today's thermonuclear poise was laid down, with hardly a itself against an ever-present background of "nuclear stale- murmur of opposition. The pacifists objected, of course, mate", "calculated risk", "massive retaliation", and all the and so did a few Trotskyists; and there was Mikardo and cliches of annihilation, it is hard to believe that all this is Zilliacus; and naturally, the Communist Party and the "something that no one willed". The Great Deterrent, British Peace Committee. But even apart from the fact together with the political and military arrangements which that these last sources of protest were tainted by their make its delivery possible, is so often and so highly extolled acquiescence in frame-up, murder, and all-round political by our diplomats and generals that we might be forgiven thuggery, the very language of the Stalinist "struggle for for thinking that our danger was the outcome of deliberate peace" harboured certain deficiencies of principle whose high policy, pursued with single-minded foresight since the consequences will be examined later. Cold War began. It is true that the New Statesman at the time devoted For the officialdom of the United States (and, we may several hostile editorials to the conclusion of the Treaty. presume, of Western Europe), the Atom Bomb was, at the But within a fairly short period that journal had reverted time of the Atlantic Treaty, not a present threat to their to its role of giving progressive advice from within the own populations. That possibility could be safely relegated political assumptions of the Establishment. "The American to (say) 1958, according to the estimate they made at the presence in Europe" was one of those assumptions: "the time. What President Truman, in authorising its develop- danger of a third world war—we dismiss as unreal the ment, in early 1950, was to call "the so-called hydrogen or theoretical alternative of western capitulation without super-bomb" (an outlandish term, quite clearly), was not fighting—would be diminished by large-scale reinforcement yet begun when the airstrips that would house it were laid of Western armies by American troops" (New Statesman, down. "Fall-out" was something that had happened at October 28, 1950). Hiroshima or might happen (mainly to the Russians) if war The default of the independent Left over the initiation ever started; not something that was there, in your glass of NATO made possible, or easier, a whole chain of of milk and the bones of your children. The Inter- appalling effects which the Left was then forced to contest Continental Missile and even its Intermediate junior did in piecemeal and rearguard fashion. not exist. The Bomb was horrible, yes; but horrible for The most immediate of these effects were not entirely Them if They overstepped the mark, not horrible for Us novel. "The military definition of reality", to use one of and Them and Everybody if some fool, Here, There or Wright Mills' most memorable phrases, did not begin with Anywhere blundered or bluffed just once too often. "What- NATO. But the foundation of NATO undoubtedly ever happens, we have got/The Gatling gun, and they have helped to fix that particular disorder of ruling-class per- not": only bigger. ception, strengthened its international and official status as This is possibly a misinterpretation of the mood of the latest brand of sanity and, in the name of Security, Western foreign policy at the time. Yet it seems hard, rationalised the mental barriers which its victims erected without assuming some such gigantic complacency, to round themselves. Interestingly enough for the student of account for certain significant contrasts between then and elite psychology, the West's military paranoia grew side by 7 side with a parallel psychosis in the East: what might be regarded as the main base for the deployment of American called "the police definition of reality". Intertwined in a power, and the chief offensive against Russia must be by global folie a deux, the two sicknesses fed upon each other air" (Forrestal Diaries, p. 460). with a painful ferocity. Each engineered coup, each faked All the same, NATO formalised and internationalised trial by which the collectivist bureaucracy marked its military relationships which had so far been nationally progress, was viewed by the privately endowed wards of separate and largely unacknowledged. A character in the lunatic West through the haze of military hallucination. Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins states that the Soviet On the other hand, the bellicose threats of Western Union is superior to all other kinds of Socialism, simply generals, the construction of armed alliances and encircling because it exists. The formation of NATO made possible bases, served to intensify the bloodthirsty introversion of a somewhat similar defection of the ideal before the march the Kremlin: free from the treason of opposition, single of brute fact. "The military definition of reality" was now in its purged purity, the Camp of Peace renewed its incarnate in the world, here to stay. The Socialists' vigilance. definition of reality wasn't, except in the heads of a few Among the rulers of each bloc, the nightmare took its idealists whose consciences were of course to be respected toll in the transition from metaphorical to actual psychosis. (unless they were too fellow-travelling or too noisy) but In the West, "Mr. Forrestal became obsessed with the idea who couldn't be taken seriously. that the Russians were invading the United States, and when a fire siren blew he jumped out of bed and had to be The Holy Alliance restrained. Later the siren blew a second time and Mr. If NATO clinched militarising tendencies which had been Forrestal then ran out of the house in his pyjamas, at work in the preceding years, it performed a similar screaming about the Red Army, and it was with some political function. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 had made difficulty that he was caught and brought back into the it clear that the United States was prepared to shore up house ... It is hoped that important decisions made when right-wing European regimes (in this case those of Greece he was possibly not in his right mind will be reviewed". and Turkey) that were in danger of collapse through (Extracts from a broadcast by Drew Pearson on April 10, internal difficulties. In 1948 Admiral Carney, acting on his 1949). Later in that year Forrestal was to jump out of the own initiative (which was later to be praised by Forrestal) window of the naval hospital where he was confined during made ready to provide arms for the Christian Democratic his "occupational overstrain" and finished up with a state reaction of Italy in the event of its defeat at the polls. In funeral. The victim in the Communist camp was more an interview with I'Europe in 1952, Carney reminisced: exalted. "He had completely lost consciousness of reality," "In 1948, when it seemed that the Italian elections might a friend of the patient has stated in an obituary memoir, end in civil war or at least in attempted revolution ... I whose pathological details are otherwise mercifully vague. loaded a transport ship with light arms and ammunition (Krushchev's Secret Speech, Manchester Guardian edition and ordered it to the Mediterranean. The captain had 1956, p. 25). orders to cruise the coast for 200 miles awaiting orders. . . . It returned to the U.S. with its cargo intact, because Nuclear Power-Politics fortunately it was not necessary to put down any Nowadays, these brainstorms are mentioned on both revolution." Further instances of official American sides if at all, with a certain delicacy, as part of a past preparedness for military intervention in France and Italy which is best forgotten. We are sure that the Soviet Union are documented in the early post-war sections of the has never actually wanted war. The Central Committee Forrestal Diaries. has taken the necessary steps to safeguard Soviet legality. Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty runs: "The parties Only from time to time there has been the odd relapse will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of or two, a fit of State Department brinkmanship, say, or the them, the territorial integrity, political independence or murder of a few revisionists. security of any of the parties is threatened." Lester Pearson, The early frenzies of the Two Camps are almost wholly in a press conference at the time of the Treaty ceremony, absorbed in the cooler lunacy of mutual deterrence. Yet gave a revealing gloss to this somewhat ambiguous sentence. while the military rage lasted, damage was done to He said: "The 'internal aggression' clause was included in Socialism, as an idea and as a movement, whose repair in the Atlantic Military Pact at the request of France, Italy Britain is only now beginning. The calculations of nuclear and other European countries. They want to know how power politics obliterated internationalism. Reliance upon many troops we can get to their countries in 24 hours if the strategy of American capitalism was preferred to the need be." Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State at the building up of a militant and independent working-class time, confirmed this interpretation at his press conference: movement. "Socialism vis-a-vis American capitalism had, "revolutionary activity in a member country inspired and in matters of foreign policy, become irrelevant under the assisted from outside as in Greece would be considered pressing demands of national security. The sources of as an armed attack". It would be difficult to find an policy were not Labour manifestos but Churchillian texts instance of revolutionary activity anywhere in the world and Foreign Office knowledge" (Epstein, op. cit. p. 133). which was not seen by the State Department, the F.O. or Once again: neither diplomatic bipartisanship with the Quai d'Orsay as "inspired and assisted from outside". Toryism nor the wholesale assumption of bourgeois NATO was quite clearly intended by its founders to be a military ideals began when the Labour Government twentieth-century edition of the Holy Alliance, dedicated entered NATO. The support of the Greek monarchy and to the preservation of the capitalist status quo in Europe. Right against the Communist Resistance and the war With the decline of the Communist Parties of France against the Malayan guerrillas preceded NATO. In 1948, and Italy, the threat of a NATO-sponsored intervention the alacrity with which the Labour Cabinet accepted the against "revolutionary activity in a member country" must American proposal for B.29 bases in Britain astounded now seem remote. The resuscitation of dead dangers is a even the State Department. Later in the same year Sir risky ploy in political evangelism, "a retrospective radical- Stafford Cripps told Forrestal that "Britain must be ism". Nonetheless, such a review at ten years' distance has

8 its point. Radicals ought to retrospect every now and then, hardly less comforting to the Right than its later direct if only to note their own failures of response. And the Holy benefits were for the European Establishment. Any party Alliance is still with us; no longer the solid front against of Labour, no matter how lofty the preambles to its con- the single foe of Communism, but an unstable compound stitution, must have at its heart a sharpness and separateness of reactionary elements whose enemies, to a large extent, of outlook, some kind of sense of class, if it is not to differ. To translate strategic terms into political equivalents, putresce and become only one more Establishment. A NATO functions in Europe no longer primarily as the movement may be as reformist as the Labour Representa- Sword of intervention, but as the Shield affording diverse tion Committee, as divided as early German Social- forms of protection to the Right in each member state. The Democracy, as millenarian as Spanish syndicalism, and still chief enemy of German Christian Democracy is Socialist possess cohesion and momentum, so long as it is gifted with neutralism, that of Italian Christian Democracy is a mainly this essential partisanship: Labour as against Capital, men Communist Left. France and Britain need power behind as against masters, the low ones as against the great ones, them when they negotiate from strength (where negotiation Us as against Them. And nothing can be more calculated rather than repression is the order of the day) with Afro- to dilute this elixir of rank class-sense than a Holy Alliance Arab-Asian nationalism. Upon all these interests of the between Labour's representatives in office and an assort- Right, NATO confers prestige and legitimacy (as well as ment of bourgeois-imperial or bourgeois-Scandinavian, the tangible asset of a streamline and dollar-oiled military bourgeois-fascistic or bourgeois-democratic, bourgeois- machine). Adenauer, de Gaulle, and Macmillan are 'the feudal or bourgeois-managerial, but always bourgeois West'; Ollenhauer, Nenni, and Bourdet are not. Within governments. NATO, national capitalisms bask in one another's reflected It is no doubt possible to cite impressive precedents in power and glory—stunted Greece in the German Miracle, which even very militant Socialist governments were willing Salazar's Portugal in Danish parliamentarism, and all the to ally themselves with capitalist states for the sake of European Right in the American ascendancy. some important advantage. Lenin waiting vainly in 1918 Where these interests diverge or compete, NATO is for the Allies to accept his offer of a joint attack against powerless. The rival parties may be confronted (as in Germany. Tito accepting American military and economic the Cyprus issue), but a solution depends on their aid while Cominform tanks were massing across the border. gradual agreement. Where nothing else can be done, a But in these instances what was done was done unavoidably, discreet silence or a face-saving formula has to serve. When and several governments in both Europe and the rest the requirements of Cold War strategy and of French of the world have managed to avoid being drawn into the Colonialism conflicted in the withdrawal of NATO-assigned various regional divisions of the Holy Alliance. And in divisions for the Algerian war, the North Atlantic Council any case, Lenin and Tito were acting in accordance with ambiguously expressed "the hope of an early and lasting the classic advice of Bacon: while never missing the chance settlement", and "noted the determination of the French of a bribe, never to let it influence one's conduct in the Government to restore, as soon as possible, its full con- slightest. (A principle incidentally brilliantly exemplified tribution towards the common defence of Europe" (NATO by the Bolsheviks' acceptance of German government funds Letter, April 1st, 1956). A clearing house does not issue in the lean years before the revolution). cheques of its own. The original military purposes of NATO of course Hook, Line and Sinker remain. Equipment is standardised, the military infra- structure co-ordinated, missile preparedness enhanced. But Labour's participation in NATO was (by contrast) whole- increasingly, rockets, troops and bases are manipulated sale, hook, line and sinker. It is an interesting feature of within the alliance, not as means of military retaliation the speeches made at the signing of the Treaty that, if you against Moscow, but as sources of political bargaining remove the names of their orators, shuffle them and deal power against Washington and other NATO members. De them out in a row, it is impossible without prior knowledge Gaulle, in pursuit of La Gloire and American backing for to distinguish who said what. The individual backgrounds the Algerian war, ushers SAC bases from France. Fortified of the speakers—Italian aristocracy, American Ivy League, by his front-line indispensability, Adenauer obstructs Portuguese Fascism, Transport and General Workers' Western approaches to the Summit. The recent agreement Union—all seem to have been absorbed in one great eupep- on the separation of nuclear warheads from the Thor tic anti-Communist mush. Nor will it do to blame this sad missiles in Britain serves the Macmillan government's desire state of affairs on a handful of right-wing Labour bureau- to keep the deterrent in partial cold storage until the crats tricking or steamrolling the masses of militant shop- development of Blue Streak completes Britain's nuclear stewards and Constituency workers. Konni Zilliacus con- independence. Franco's renewed attempts to enter NATO cludes regretfully in his Penguin Special of 1949:" . . . the are prompted by his calculation of the extra boost that record of successive Annual Conferences on foreign affairs admission would give to his failing dictatorship. shows how unfair it is to blame Labour's leaders for practising to deceive, when the great majority of the rank and file care so little about what happens to their fellow NATO and the Labour Party workers in other countries and understand so badly that It is idle to speculate whether Attlee and Bevin would our own lives and fortunes are bound up with theirs, that have given such an enthusiastic welcome to the Alliance if they will vote for anything endorsed by Mr. Bevin." (/ its political consequences in a later decade could have been Choose Peace, p. 373). In those days the Municipal and reliably forecast to them. We are not entitled to ask of General didn't need to recall its Conference to make sure Labour Foreign Ministers that they be successful crystal- that its block vote would go the right way, and T. & G. gazers. We may, however, reasonably demand that they were the middle initials, not of Frank Cousins, but of have enough sense of political reality to hesitate before Arthur Deakin. bequeathing legacies whose final beneficiaries can only be the Tory International. So far, only the broad and intangible effects of NATO NATO's effects within the Labour Party itself were have been considered: the most general presuppositions 9 and commitments assumed at the conclusion of the Treaty. necessity for the Alliance, to their ultimate conclusions. Within a short space, however, the beginnings of specific It is in fact now difficult to see how, having accepted policies emerged. It is not too much to say that all the issues NATO, a future Labour Minister could boggle at any of foreign policy which have so deeply divided the move- further inflation of the arms budget. The costs of supersonic ment over the last eight years have been NATO issues. aircraft and ballistic missiles are so colossal that it would Strangely enough, the Right has been far more ready than appear niggardly to quibble over a few hundred million the Left to recognise the relationship between the general pounds which might make all the difference to success or obligations of NATO and the contentious policies to which failure in the programme. It is all very well for Labour those obligations have successively given rise. "Our military experts to list the costly failures of the present commitments to our allies" was the slogan brandished by Government's record in aircraft and missile development. Attlee, Morrison and Shinwell to confute Bevan in But scientific research is such that one cannot decide in opposition, and by Bevan in Establishment to confute his advance what is going to be an expensive failure, and skip own opponents of the Left. The Bevanites of the early it. We would of course be able to save quite a lot by Fifties, to the extent that they shared the Right-wing's following the Liberal policy of not developing nuclear support for the Alliance, were forced into the unenviable warheads of our own, but (as Mr. Strachey has pointed position of not objecting to NATO so long as NATO was out) not more than about 10-20% of the present total conducted inefficiently. The Campaign for Nuclear Dis- arms bill. The only alternatives to the present scale of armament and, in recent months, Tribune (see Michael armament are either to allow the Americans to foot the Foot, "The Labour Party and NATO; A Question for Mr. bill for everything, whatever figure we thought reasonable, Gaitskell," in the issue of July 17th this year) have taken or to follow King-Hall's advice and rely on a Citizen army. a far more consistent and tenable stand in their willingness (The further possibility of a Great-Power agreement on to return a straight "Yes" to the official platform's favourite disarmament can, on the record so far, be relegated to a question: "Are you willing to jettison our commitments?" cloud-cuckoo future). Both these alternatives would cause A brief review of the record will serve to confirm this so much trouble in NATO that we might as well be analysis. straightforward and say that we don't intend to be counted on as allies within the Treaty. NATO and the Labour Rebels Much the same approach holds good for the trouble over German rearmament. Hardly anybody in the Labour Party It would be foolish to argue that the astronomic sums (and far less the Bevanites) questioned the decision to main- budgeted for armament by NATO governments in the post- tain large ground-forces in Europe in addition to the over- Korea years were consciously envisaged at the time of the all deterrent of Strategic Air Command. This is not Treaty. Lavish rearmament was intended, to be supported surprising since, in the absence of such a ground force, the in part by major contributions under the United States only means of defending Central Europe against the Red military aid programme. But it took the outbreak of the Army would have been to blast the whole area to radio- Korean War to jack up American military expenditure from active smithereens from the air. The combined contingents the $18,000 million of 1949 to the $65,000 million of three of the NATO countries, without the addition of Germany, years later. It was over the later stages of the British simply did not add up to enough power to resist the rearmament drive that the Bevanite controversy was Russians. Successive NATO Supreme Commanders in precipitated. Europe have made it quite clear that, without the requisite "On 12th September, 1950, the Prime Minister announced twelve German divisions, Europe could offer only "token an expansion of our armaments programme to a figure of resistance". (Estimates of this order are gathered in Chapter £3,600 millions over three years. 'This great expenditure', Three of M. Margaret Ball's recent NATO and The he said, 'represents the maximum that we can do .... European Union Movement.) Anybody, therefore, who without resorting to the drastic expedients of a war opposed German rearmament without opposing NATO at economy'! A bare twenty weeks later, on 29th January, the same time, was therefore committed to saying either 1951, he raised the programme to £4,700 millions and (a) that NATO was all right so long as it never had the proposed to carry it out without resorting to the drastic means to fulfil precisely those purposes for which it was expedients of a war economy and without explaining how intended or (b) that it was very unlikely that the Russians the impossible had suddenly become possible" (One Way would now attack. In practice, the latter argument (b) Only, by Bevan, Wilson and Freeman, July 1951). The was the most popular one. However, if a Russian attack timing of the Bevanite resignations from the Cabinet is was considered unlikely in 1952-54 (when German interesting. NATO, as we have already seen, was accept- rearmament was the main issue on the Left), it is strange able to the Labour Left. So was the creation under NATO, that it was considered sufficiently likely in 1948-49, when in late 1950, of an integrated force under centralised Russia was much weaker, to justify the construction of command, and the appointment of the first Supreme NATO in the first place. In these inconsistent terms the Commander in Europe. So was the principle of large-scale struggle within the Labour Party was indeed waged, rearmament; the 1950 "maximum" of £3,600 millions culminating in the 1954 Annual Conference where the sparked no resignations. Only a particular extension of Left's opposition to German rearmament was only defeated rearmament formed the ground for objections. Later in by gerrymandering and switching of votes on a scale sur- the controversy, Michael Young wrote: "The Bevanites passing even this year's manoeuvres on the nuclear issue. have not committed themselves to any detailed declaration in conflict with the N.E.C. . . . On the face of it there is only a small difference of degree over rearmament, over CND Against the Pacts the American alliance, over nationalisation, and surely so The debate on the Bomb appears to have torn the scales much heat cannot be generated over a little more or a from the eyes of many on the Left. The challenge of little less". It was unfair of the Left to accuse Bevan of "our NATO commitments" has been thrown back in the being a turncoat in 1957; all he had done was to carry long- faces of the Labour leadership for whom this argu- held assumptions, of the efficacy of deterrence and the ment had been the ultimate deterrent in the cold war 10 of inner-party dissension. It is both curious and as the outcome of policies initiated by these irresponsible moving that the moment of truth should have broken minorities, as the final unforeseen link in a causal chain within the movement so suddenly, after the years of forged at each stage by the previous choice of some ruling grudging acquiescence. The clause in the CND's objec- class. World War Three could burst out as "something that tives stating that Britain must renounce nuclear weapons no one willed"; the resultant of competing configurations "and refuse to allow their use by others in her defence" of social forces, rather than the random catastrophe of an was adopted in March last year with a remarkable individual will turned lunatic at a crucial point in the absence of fuss, considering that a few months previously chain of command—SAC radar-screen, say, or Politbureau the core of the organisation had confined itself to the office. (The latter kind of outbreak might well happen, demand for the abolition of nuclear testing. The directness but as Mervyn Jones has pointed out, its total unpredic- of the original Municipal Workers' resolution opposing the tability removes it from the range of any possible political use of the Bomb "by or from" Britain is momentous in its counter-attack.) At each foreign crisis when we have implications for NATO, as its sponsors quite well knew; trembled in our shoes for mankind's danger — Suez, yet those simple three words which I have quoted were Quemoy, Lebanon—we have surely all sensed this paradox: not based on any elaborate analysis of the Alliance and its a process at work whose components were obviously a role in international affairs, but on the straight conviction matter of conscious policy, and which yet in the outcome, that compromise of the Liberal Party type, the sancti- taken as a whole, seemed frighteningly aimless. If Man monious luxury of abandoning the British deterrent while is ever obliterated from the earth by means of his own continuing to bask in the "protection" of the SAC, was a armaments, there will be no simple answer to the question: fraud and a hypocrisy. NATO as an organisation is not Did he fall, or was he pushed? specifically denounced; yet, to this powerful and growing minority entrenched in every bastion of Labour Party conformity, NATO is, at the very least, expendable. A Ruling-Circle Conspiracy Thus, what the Communist Party and the British Peace By contrast, the theory of ruling-circle conspiracy is Committee could never manage in years of direct assault over-simple, a bogey-tale for the credulous. It is rather on NATO has now largely been achieved almost as a by- like a hysterical version of the old Union of Democratic product of campaigning on a different although closely Control story about the fatal ambition of statesmen and related issue. Part of the failure of the Stalinists is, as I the wickedness of generals, unrelated to any wider context have already mentioned, the fault of the totalitarian of social or economic power-relations. Indeed, in the example in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Budapest 1956 nature of things, capitalism could never be analysed in the provides no similar set-back for the CND (apart from the documents of Peace Congresses, for was this not a "broad still too numerous hecklers who insist on telling the Alder- movement", aimed not merely at socialists but at all men maston marchers to go back to Moscow). The Campaign and women of good will? The vocabulary of class is not can consider Budapest as the worst result that the abandon- for such "wide sections" as Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians ment of the Bomb could cause us to face, and set it against or Rajagopalachari of the Indian Right. (Obviously the Hiroshima—and then, ask us which one of these ultimate CND does not use Marxist language either, but its possibilities we should choose. For the British Peace assumptions are at least compatible with a rational socialist Committee, the choice Budapest-Hiroshima (which must be approach.) faced by any honest thinker) cannot be put, since Budapest The second failure of principle inherent in the Peace cannot be acknowledged too strongly as a horror; it was Movement's propaganda lay (and still lies) in its theory of horrible, undeniably, but too great a concentration on its national sovereignty in the advanced capitalist countries. horrific (negative) aspect might cause the audience to The ruling circles of the United States—we were told— neglect the positive adornment of a blow against counter- were not only planning aggressive war; they were also revolution. undermining the national independence of Britain, France and all the NATO countries. The Quisling Tories and Labour leaders were assisting in the process. The banner Failure of the Peace Movement of national independence had been cast down by the Apart even from this influential factor, the very language bourgeoisie, said Stalin at the 19th Congress—the Com- of the Peace Movement was suspect to wide circles of the munist Parties must pick it up from the dust. The British potential Left. In the first place, a Conspiracy theory Communist Party took this advice so literally that in every of history was implicit in all analysis produced from within demonstration on a foreign policy issue, whether organised the Stalinist orbit. "The ruling circles of the United States" directly by the Party or by the Peace Committee, there were were "bending all their efforts to prepare a new war", the comrades waving the Union Jack. I can remember "fresh plans of aggression" being constantly prepared by one Communist being very indignant with the way in which these very circles. A criminal foresight was thus ascribed the British working class stampeded out of cinemas during to the enemy, in a manner both implausible and alien to the playing of God Save the Queen; the tune was slush Marxist categories. What Wright Mills calls "the drift and of course, but the best National Anthem we had, and we the thrust towards World War Three" is indeed to be ought to defend it against American and cosmopolitan ascribed to the existence of oligarchic and military ruling influence. (The Communist concerned was, incidentally, classes (whose distribution over the continents of the globe myself.) Quite apart from the symbols, though, the is, incidentally, somewhat more widespread than the National Independence theory had the effect of turning Partisans of Peace ever hinted). But the danger of war the fire from the only target Socialists can aim at effectively arises, not from conscious planning on the part of these —the home government—to the United States or, to use elites (despite the intermittent presence among them of the correct proletarian-internationalist phrase, "The Yanks". addicts to "preventive war"); if this were so, we all could The practice of attacking American policy was often sleep safely, for the "ruling circles" would hardly be likely right. All the same, when it is possible to discover whether to plot their own annihilation, inevitable in the case of a the CP or the CND is organising an anti-nuclear march by World War fought with modern weapons. War is possible finding out whether it is directed towards an American or 11 a British base, something is very seriously wrong. And as It is this preoccupation with power-relationships for National Independence, we have our bellyful of it these that I believe to be the unique contribution of the Socialists days. Suez, Algeria, our Bomb, the French Bomb, the in the fight for peace. "Who rules whom?" is today as Adenauer-de Gaulle axis, the lot. A nationally independent good a question for getting to grips with the causes of a capitalism is as dangerous as a capitalism lined up with political issue, as it was when Lenin first put it. Neglect Wall Street, and very probably more so. NATO is not or mis-reading of power structures can be crucial to the America's chosen instrument for the domination of Europe, stand one takes, or does not take, in this or that contingency. it is the cockpit of imperialist rivalries. And it is no good Leon D. Epstein notes in Britain—Uneasy Ally that the attacking it by appealing to the crudest working-class Left's acceptance of the Truman administration as being jingoism, as the Daily Worker does with its headlines about some kind of American equivalent of a Labour government, G.I. roadhogs and rapists. That current will drown you made it very hard for them to oppose the foreign policy if you try to swim with it. of that administration — including NATO. The con- Very well then. After all the years of inflated idols and sequences in policy of illusions about the "Socialist" tub-thumping hysteria, blind alleys and guilty silence, here character of the Soviet bureaucracy are well known. If we are now, with our Campaign lollipops stowed ready Socialists do not constantly strive to place the great issues under the stairs, our resolutions lined up for the next of the day in their power-context, it is not likely that any- committee, and our calloused feet. Priestley, MacNamee, body else will. Russell, Arrowsmith, Cousins, Healy, Logue, A.J.P., Thompson, old uncle Canon Collins and all—and each The Means of History-Making name is important not as a "front" for a donations appeal or a "good draw" for a meeting, but as representing a layer Yet the general absence of any such consideration is of society or an ideological trend that either wasn't one of the major weaknesses of the Left in foreign policy. politically there or wasn't noticed a few years ago. For The Cold War is continually treated as an autonomous the first time since God knows when, there is a substantial process, accountable for in no other terms but those of foreign policy pressure-group in the land with no ties to military and diplomatic ploy and counterploy. Certain Moscow and no hint of bipartisanship with the official policies have been wrongly devised by statesmen; therefore credo. let us, as statesmen in our own right, devise further and better policies on this or that issue—irrespective of whether What, if anything, has a militant Socialist got to say the organisation of power in the regions under discussion within this movement, that nobody else can say? Some is compatible with the practice of our policies. Konni Socialists would regard this question as an impertinence. Zilliacus i" the best exponent of this approach, as befits What right have we, they ask, to waste the time and disrupt an old League of Nations enthusiast; and within its limits, the programme of the Campaign with our pet sectional he is brilliant. There is no more diligent and retentive theories and raucous slogans? I can only think that this scavenger of diplomatic and military absurdities than Zilli. kind of Socialist regards his Socialism as a private Edward Thompson, in a somewhat different way, is also possession, to be enjoyed each Friday when the New pursuing the quarry of Cold War as thing-in-itself. Seek Statesman arrives. We have the same right to witness ye first (he seems to say) the abolition of the Cold War, our Socialism in the Campaign as the Christians have to and various things will be added unto you: the release display their crosses and Biblical allusions. If we take of human energy from the arms race, the decline and fall Socialism seriously, we must accept the responsibility of of the Soviet bureaucracy, the unfreezing of Socialist move- winning Socialists; and where better should we win them ments from the political Ice Age. but in a movement of men and women who have broken with the strategic illusions of our social order? The Cold War is presented as almost the principal cause of present troubles. Yet it is surely more than this: Stalinism was not created by Western brinkmanship (although Brink- Are Nuclear Weapons Neutral? manship had a brutalising effect on Stalinism). The Cold Other Socialists would put the objection differently. The War is also the consequence of particular power-structures, Socialist case on foreign policy (they would say) is com- a direct assault on which must be the ultimate aim of the pletely irrelevant to the nuclear issue. "The danger arises Socialist. If the end of the Cold War is a prerequisite . . . because of a technical factor, quite neutral politically, for the rebirth of Socialism, in East and West, the Stalinist namely the destructive power of nuclear weapons ... A and bourgeois elites can ensure their own survival simply policy for opposition to nuclear arms and their use must be by piling on the tension at opportune moments. The future separated from the political ideologies of the Left and of of Socialism will then depend on the kind co-operation the Right" ("Is Neutrality Necessary?" by Roddy Barry, of Krushchev and Eisenhower, or at least of the various New Reasoner No. 5). The destructive power of nuclear anti-Socialist forces that Thompson assumes as possible weapons is indeed a technical fact; and as such, as some- successors to the present militarists. The struggle cannot thing explicable in terms of isotopes and critical mass and be a two-stage process: first the cold-war breakthrough, so on, it will always exist, even if all the present stockpiles then the Revolution. The direct attack on the strongholds were to be destroyed. But the present use of that destructive of irresponsible power and the fight against the fore'gn power in a manner dangerous to humanity is social fact, policies emanating from these citadels, stand or fall explicable only in terms of the history of particular con- together. In Wright Mills' words once again: "The cor- figurations of social power. This social factor in the porate economy, the military ascendancy, and the political nuclear danger is the concern of the Socialist; for he vacuum go together and support one another. One of the believes that, given the replacement of the bourgeois major reasons for their development, I believe, is the thrust nation-state by an international co-operative common- towards war, which they in turn further. Accordingly an wealth, and the liquidation of irresponsible military and attack on war-making is also an attack on the U.S. power economic elites, any potentially lethal "technical factor" elite. An attack on this power elite is also a fight for the uncovered by Science will find no use on the scale of democratic means of history-making. A fight for such twentieth-century war. means is necessary to any serious fight for peace; it is part 12 of that fight. Military forces and economic facilities are as Even trade unionists who have been involved in bitter much a means of history-making as is the apparatus of industrial warfare cannot be relied on to reject jingoism, the state. In so far as men want peace, they must see to it although there is no doubt that in every big dispute the that these means are used to bring it about, that they are consciousness of many workers is heightened to an extra- not made irrelevant to the drift and thrust toward war. If ordinary degree. But the gap between even the most broader publics are to make history, they must gain control militant of trade-union consciousness and internationalism of these means of history-making." (The Causes of World is quite considerable. And it is just this gap which will War Three, p. 124.) have to be closed, in the minds of millions, if the Campaign The second unique contribution which I believe the is to succeed. It would be a bitter paradox if the Campaign Socialist can make in the movement is a persistent concern were to gain the party, only to lose the class. with the growth of consciousness among the working class. What can be done? Every attempt should be made to Now that the trade unions have begun to move in on the contact workers on the job, both on the lines of the Direct anti-nuclear campaign, it is easy to believe that one of its Action Committee's picketing of rocket-sites, and in a more chief deficiencies—its failure to appeal to any large general way, by means of propaganda conducted by the working-class audience—is beginning to be remedied. This activist minority among their workmates. Yet the limita- is in fact so to a certain extent; but the Labour Movement tions of this approach are obvious. Even if enough activists and the working class are not the same thing. The Labour could be found to be available for work all over the Movement—that is, the activists who attend and vote in country, it is impossible to change the basic attitudes of trade union organisations and bear the brunt of millions of people simply by lecturing at them. The Constituency work—is largely internationalist and hostile assumptions of the approach are excessively rationalist; to the Bomb. The working class, except for this minority men's minds are formed primarily not by the words they of activists, is overwhelmingly jingoist, and acclaims the listen to and read, but by their life-experience, by what Bomb. Fifteen per cent seems to be the proportion which Marx called "sensuous practice". Gallup polls and observation would suggest could be What could have the effect of changing the minds of counted as an "international" working-class minority. The millions by changing the terms of their life-experience? beginning has been made; but the progress of anti-nuclear There is no possible answer to this, except in one word; sentiment in the huge general unions should not deceive crisis. The form of crisis—political or economic—is us. The very ease with which the CND has been able, in secondary; so (as Rosa Luxemburg argued in Reform or less than two years, to advance from a handful of Revolution) is its degree of resemblance to the classic enthusiasts to Transport House's most feared rival, is largely catastrophes of the capitalist market. But without some a symptom of the small total of actual voters behind the great social shock, or sequence of shocks, which polarises millions written on the block-vote cards. This is not a the nation into a weakened, tottering Them and a million- matter of gerrymandering; if trade unionists will not attend headed, rebellious Us, there is no hope of serious change. branch meetings, ,the delegates to conference and 'the The conditions for a decisive transformation of foreign mandate they are given (if any) will be decided by the policy are the same as the conditions for a socialist minority actually present. revolution. This remains true whether you imagine the problem from- the top—in relation to the ruling elites who mould that policy—or from the bottom, through an analysis Joint pamphlets published by ULR and the New Reasoner of the dynamics of mass conviction. Certain members of the Left have spent so much energy proving that such a crisis is not inevitable that they have A SOCIALIST WAGES PLAN almost persuaded themselves that it is absolutely impossible. by John Hughes and Ken Alexander I cannot share this complacency. The record of capitalism The problem of constructive policy for over this century, coupled with its present lengthy list of wages is one of the major issues for the explosive areas, makes it more reasonable to believe that Labour Movement and the next Labour the system still has large and hideous potentialities of Government. So far the discussion has crisis, in which the alternatives set forth by Marx of "the been limited to the field of wages alone. revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or the In this 64-page pamphlet, the authors mutual ruin of the contending classes" will be as starkly establish the relationship between wages, defined as they ever were. We do not have to choose prices and investment, and make some between "Socialism through the belly" and "Socialism bold proposals for a joint Trade Union- through the humanist influence of the New Left". The only Labour Government policy within the chance of Socialism lies in the conjunction of conditions in framework of a period of planned which economic necessity and political conviction coincide, economic expansion. This is an import- in which the division between activists and class is in ant contribution to socialist policy. essentials obliterated. And meantime? The immediate jobs still have to be Price: 2/- Bulk terms on request Postage 3d. done: the victimising boss to be resisted, the colonial expedition to be checked, the pressure-groups of the sane WHO ARE THE TORIES? to be strengthened and enlarged. And immediate successes, wherever they are possible, are important. A working by Michael Barratt Brown class demoralised by strike fiascos, a CND which has made An inside picture of the personal and no impression on official Labour policy, the unhindered business connections of members of the generation of another long colonial war, will do no pood to Conservative Party. the present and augur none for the future. Only to Price: 1/- Bulk terms on request remember: it is all about Power. If the history of NATO Postage 3d. has anything to tell us, it is that Socialists who forget this Orders to: The Business Manager, Janet Hase become very peculiar indeed. Universities & Left Review 7 Carlisle Street London, W.I 13