LEWIS DAVIES was secretary of Middlesborough Trades Council until his tragic death in a climbing accident in 1982. As well as being active in his union, NALGO, and the local C.ND, Lewis was a supporter of the Socialist Challenge newspaper and an activist in the Labour Party.
A topical lecture is organised each year in his memory by his friends and colleagues.
The 1983 lecture was presented in Middlesborough on 27 October. Socialist Action is pleased to reproduce an edited version of Bob Cryer's speech in remembrance of Lewis.
IT IS ABSOLUTELY posite, as it happens, to talk about US foreign policy and the Labour Party. We say missiles come here but that we're friends with the people, and so forth.
But the realities of the past few days have intruded very harshly, demonstrated what mv view has been all along. That the Labour Party in the whole of the post-war period, has been far too subservient to United States foreign policy. It has been equalled in that position by the Conservative Party indeed excelled in that position by the Conservative Party position reached today by the governof total subservience American foreign policy.
Now I just want spend minutes setting out where I see the postwar policy failures taking place in relation to the United States, and why we as a Labour Party have got to re-assert our non-aligned view of foreign policy free from entanglement and domination of the United States of America.
Nothing less will do.
There are major Labour Party policy, such as the rejection of cruise and the closure of US tually with a Labour power.
member Committee of the Words CrOWIl who have which Attlee replied teel 1 must deal at military SeCreLs Executive.' other words, apgovernment, the shouldn't high quality decisions' American rors to be made.
The bombs Nagasaki were, Minh. The 1945 policy - so that the Wing. Therefore it switch sides a few components of Socialist Action 11 November 1983 basic pillars of opposition to United States domination and which must be get the next Labour government. Now, in 1945 we had a massive victory by the Labour So when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki it was acgovernment in Now we don't know whether the decision was communicated by the American government to Attlee, but there was a very revealing moment and that moment signified much of subsequent government policy. Harold Laski,then a suggested that before Clem Allee ac tually went to Potsdam, since there was a meeting of the National executive would be prudent if he actually waited for a discussion so that he knew what the views of the Labour Party were.
And Churchill took this up and said: 'It seems that we must refer to an obscure committee which will give orders to the so-called responsible ministers of the delivered orations upon which they have been instructed from those dim complaints below'. To immediately: once with the disgraceful suggestion that cabinet and will be divulged by Labour ministers to the Labour Party once they got a National Executive Committee of the Labour Party should keep its position, which was quiet and remote and let them get on with making Because ther weren't going to get any information at all, and it was this lack of information which allowed a number of serious erHiroshima for example, the first stages in the cold war. In 1941 the opponents of Japan in Indochina were the communists led by a man called Ho Chi welcomed their support and actually financed them and armed them. But by Roosevelt callecu was dead, and Harry S Truman had been elected and the cold war was developwas necessary to Ho Chi Minh was no longer the ally, he was the opponent, because he was one of the dreaded species of communists that was emerging in the postwar period. On 15 August, a few days after the nuclear bombs had been dropped on Japan, President Truman signed an order aushorising the Japanese to support the allied forces in the suppres- of sion of the communist forces -allies, up to that time, in Indochina.
That's when Mountbatten arrived in Indochina, he was somewhat staggered to find the guard of honour which greeted his arrival was composed fully-armed uniformed He had assumed, somewhat sapalicsc. naively that they were our opponents.
And after Dien Bien Phu in 1954, when of course there was a Conservative government assiduously following the same cold war policy, America took total control of the war in Vietnam and carried out a war of the most cruel suppression seen atallisi tiny agrarian country that the world has producing horrors the like of which haven't been seen since the con. centration camps of the Nazi regime in Germany. The subordination of the Labour government in 1945 had laid a path which was followed assiduously
y both parties.
This had its repercussions in other affairs as well. Because unbeknown to he citizens who were only paying for it, ind who it turned out were actually gong to die for it, the Labour government ander Clem Attlee were developing an itomic bomb. One of our own. A sort of heroic gesture, if you like, to show hat we too were important. We wanted o emphasise our technological parity vith the rest of the world. So we emon the development of the tomic bomb.
It was not announced until 23 Ocober 1952, when Churchill proclaimed This most momentous of occasions as not made the subject of a special atement in parliament, it was simply a sply to an oral question. Churchill nid: 'All those concerned in the prouction of the first British atomic omb are to be warmly congratulated the successful outcome of estoric episode. And I should no doubt av my compliments to the leader of opposition and the Party opposite, or initiating it.' So there was Churchill ing Clem Attlee a pat on the back id saying 'well done' American people were opposed to the president, the president was able to rely on a Labour prime mınıster and hıs foreign secretary for succour and sup. port in persuing that vicious, nasty and cruel war.
So what about the more modern position which I'll come to swiftly now. Ine torelgn poncy postuon centres or. cruise, against which so many people marched last Saturday and provided the biggest demonstration that this country has ever gathered together as a tocus ot miltant obiection or the people of this nation. Well cruise again, it is claimed by the government, is subject to an agreement in which there is a right of veto. I'm afraid that I have to tell you now that when Michael Heseltine and Mrs Thatcher and Francis Pym make that claim they are not telling the truth. Technically it's known as lying, and you can get away with it in the House of Commons where else so long as it's not about sex. If you lie about sex you're in for trouble and vour political career will come to a fairly rapid end. termination on a scale never before known.
cannot possibly accept the terms of the agreement which Thatcher so blandly LL vul. tober 1951 between Truman and Attlee was a snort statement. and it savs there should be a joint decision-making on the use of UK bases by US forces. It then uses these words: 'In the light of cir. cumstances prevailing at the time'.
Does it mean that the United States can decide the light of circumstances and can take uniateral action? Or does if mean that we can do that? know. Shouldn't we really know this, since these weapons are on our sorl governed by technology, governed decision making? Quite clearly there is no right of UK veto in that agreement. Now why was it October 1951? Well, our parliamentary system, which as you or mgee• any- know has been imitated by no other country in the world parlaments, the democracy — does have its advantages.
ask questions. beyond doubt, the reached in October because there was a general election taking place. ment wasn't actually grand old democrat Clem Attlee, who we look back on with great fondness and affection for the fighting socialist which people claim he was, reached the agreement at a time when this country's knowledge of it. By the end of the elecSo even those who support cruise The agreement reached in OcNow what on earth does that mean?
We don't American computer by American the mother of apothesis You can raise the issues, you can But to put the matter agreement was Parliasitting. So that America. actually people could have no one of the most important elements in cruise, and that's why we are getting That's other countries are getting cruise. 'If you lie about sex you're in for trouble and your political career will come to a fairly rapid end. But if you lie about the 'unimportant' matters: cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, mass extermination -well the establishment will bless you, and say that you're statesmen.' I'll make a further assertion. That's the basis of the existence ot the Com. mon Market. That's why the Common Market exists, as part of the cold wal strategy of the US, in order to ensure that capitalism remains supreme in a significant proportion of Europe.
We have in our country over 100 bases which are under the control of a foreign power, the United States of Don't forget that Duncan Campbell (who has exposed American "securitv' operations in the UK) and Aubrey and Berry were prosecuted by a Labour Attorney General, Sam Silkin. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Ii we're going to have a Labour goverr.ment that's really going to carry ou! radical policies, we can't have prim.. ministers saying we can't wet people appetite tor more intormation. we ro got to be wetting people's appetites. It's the only way a Labour government car. succeed A Labour government only has the •strength of the people. In spite of the massive outpouring of invective from. the daily press, the Labour Party has undertaken mandatory reselection Members of Parlament are now more sensitive to the rank and file of the Labour Party than ever before. You'd be amazed how many MPs discovered that thet Wercsole sporles unilateral nuclear disarmament after
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'As long as they have a reactionary lick-spittle government prepared to support exploitation and private enterprise, that government can rely on backing from the United