vickers.cov 15/9/03 3:15 pm Page 1 HIS is the first book in a two-volume set The that traces the evolution of the Labour TheLABOUR PARTY TParty’s foreign policy throughout the LABOUR PARTY twentieth century and into the early years and theWORLD of the new millennium. and theWORLD Volume1 This is the first comprehensive study of the political ideology and history of the The EVOLUTION of Labour Party’s world-view and foreign policy. It argues that the development of LABOUR’SFOREIGN Labour’s foreign policy perspective should POLICY be seen not as the development of a socialist foreign policy, but as an Volume1 1900–51 The EVOLUTION LABOUR’S of application of the ideas of liberal 1900–51 POLICY FOREIGN internationalism. Rhiannon Vickers The first volume outlines and assesses the early development and evolution of Labour’s world-view. It then follows the course of the Labour party’s foreign policy during a tumultuous period on the international stage, including the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the build up to and violent reality of the Second World War, and the start of the Cold War. This highly readable book provides an excellent analysis of Labour’s foreign policy during the period in which Labour experienced power for the first time. It is essential reading for students of British Vickers political history in the twentieth century, international relations and British foreign policy. Rhiannon Vickers is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield COVER PHOTOGRAPH—New Yorkers cheer progress down Broadway in an open car, of British Foriegn Secretary, Ernest Bevin, 9 November 1946 Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page i The Labour Party and the world VOLUME 1 Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page ii For Ceridwen Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page iii The Labour Party and the world VOLUME 1 The evolution of Labour’s foreign policy, 1900–51 Rhiannon Vickers Manchester University Press Manchester and New York published exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page iv Copyright © Rhiannon Vickers 2003 The right of Rhiannon Vickers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6744 8 hardback 0 7190 6745 6 paperback First published 2003 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset by Helen Skelton, Brighton, UK Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page v Contents List of tables page vi Acknowledgements vii List of abbreviations viii Introduction 1 1 Context: the emergence of the British Labour Party 16 2 The main political influences on the development of the Labour Party’s attitudes towards international affairs 32 3 Labour and the First World War 54 4 The Labour minority governments 80 5 The Labour Party, pacifism and the Spanish Civil War 107 6 Hitler, Munich and the Second World War 133 7 The Attlee governments 159 8 Conclusion 192 Bibliography 211 Index 225 Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page vi List of tables 1.1 Relative shares of total world manufacturing output page 18 6.1 Defence expenditure totals and as a percentage of national income, 1937 134 7.1 Countries where British forces were stationed in 1945 163 Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page vii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following institutions for permission to quote from the documents of which they hold the copyright: the British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics, for the use of the following papers (Hugh Dalton, Arthur Lansbury, E. D. Morel); Churchill College, Cambridge (Ernest Bevin papers); the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick (TUC, Keep Left and miscellaneous papers); the National Labour History Archive, Manchester (Labour Party papers); the Public Record Office (Foreign Office, Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Office, Ramsay MacDonald papers, Ernest Bevin papers); the US National Archive, College Park, Maryland (State Department papers). In particular the archivists at the National Labour History Archive, Manchester, and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick were, as ever, of great assistance, and my Honorary Fellowship at the Modern Records Centre was much appreciated. I am also grateful to the British Academy for providing research grant number SG 8982, which enabled me to carry out my archival work. I would like to thank friends and colleagues for reading draft chap- ters, and in some cases the whole manuscript, and for providing advice and support in the writing of this volume, in particular Robin Brown, Andrew Gamble, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Mike Kenny and Andrew Taylor. My thanks also go to Kevin Theakston for suggesting this project in the first place; to the reviewers for their comments and suggestions; and in particular to everyone at Manchester University Press involved in the publication of this book. Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page viii List of abbreviations AFL American Federation of Labor CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain EAM National Liberation Front (Greece) ELAS National Popular Liberation Army (Greece) IFTU International Federation of Trade Unions ILP Independent Labour Party ITSs International Trade Secretariats LRC Labour Representation Committee LSI Labour and Socialist International MP Member of Parliament MRC Modern Records Centre NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NEC National Executive Committee (Labour Party) PLP Parliamentary Labour Party PRO Public Record Office RILU Red International of Labour Unions (also known as the Profintern) SDF Social Democratic Federation TUC Trades Union Congress UDC Union of Democratic Control UN United Nations WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page 1 Introduction Labour’s election victory in May 1997 was closely followed by the new Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, launching his department’s mission statement in which he made a commitment to an ‘ethical dimension’ to British foreign policy. Cook declared that he was going to imple- ment a new kind of foreign policy, which ‘recognises that the national interest cannot be defined only by narrow realpolitik’. The aim was ‘to make Britain once again a force for good in the world.’1 This sparked a debate on the nature of Labour’s foreign policy, which has seen a return to some of the arguments within the Labour Party from much earlier in the twentieth century, such as whether a Labour government should conduct foreign policy in the national interest or the interna- tional interest. Indeed, according to Blair, ‘We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not.’ This is because ‘Interdependence is the core reality of the modern world. It is revolutionising our idea of national interest. It is forcing us to locate that interest in the wider international community.’2 These ideas of a moral dimension to foreign policy, of membership of an international community and of the need to think of the international interest, are not new. Rather, they reflect a particular world-view that has been prevalent throughout the Labour Party’s history and which is the focus of this study. Foreign policy under ‘New Labour’ has stimulated a renewed interest in the nature of Labour’s approach to the world.3 Not since a proliferation of studies of foreign policy under the Attlee governments has so much been said and written about Labour and international affairs.4 However, foreign policy is in general an under-researched area of Labour Party policy and history. While there have been many studies of British foreign policy in the twentieth century,5 remarkably little has been said about the development, formulation and nature of the Vic00 10/23/03 3:53 PM Page 2 2 THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE WORLD Labour Party’s foreign policy. Studies of the Labour Party tend to focus on domestic policy, in particular social and economic policy, both in terms of policy-making and in terms of ideology.6 This is partly because many academics who study the Labour Party come from a domestic British politics or economics background, rather than from an International Relations background, whereas International Relations scholars tend to focus on the state as a unitary actor, rather than unpacking it into constitutive parts. Undoubtedly, it is difficult to identify the extent to which parties can have an impact on foreign policy. States have to operate within the opportunities and constraints provided by the international system and so governments do not necessarily have much power to take a different policy stance, and opposition parties have even less. There are also the constraints provided by domestic state institutions, political culture, geographical location and economic resources. In the case of Britain, foreign policy is rarely made by bills passed through Parliament, and this tends to isolate it from the kind of scrutiny and legislative control that other policy areas are subject to. There is also a particular oblique British style of conducting foreign policy, which mitigates against a radical redrawing of foreign policy, that Kenneth Waltz described as: To proceed by a sidling movement rather than to move directly toward an object, to underplay one’s hand, to dampen conflicts and depreciate dangers, to balance parties against each other, to compromise rather than to fight, to postpone decisions, to obscure issues rather than confront them, to move as it were by elision from one position of policy to another: such habits, anciently engendered and long crystallized, form the style of British foreign policy.7 In addition, foreign policy tends to be made in reaction to external events rather than as a result of internal policy development.