presented a paper for Miscussion by Labour's National Executive arguing that Britain should withdraw from NATO. It was widely reported in the press.
Socialist Action asked Tony Benn why he had laken this initiative and to explain his views on the press reports. We will be running other responses, and views, on NATO membership in coming issues.
IT HAS been reported in the press that you have opened up a discussion for the NEC on the question of withdrawal from that against membership.
Yes, because at the heart of the argument about the future of our society, in a very real sense, lies the foreign policy we pursue. What the right in Britain has succeeded in doing very cleverly is using the experience of socialism in Russia to frighten our people. It is also using the allegation of the threat of a Soviet Invasion create a big military establishment in Britain, which is then able to imply that any critic of the government is a traitor.
This lies at the whole heart of the NATO argument. You get big military establishments which, because they deal with nuclear aeapons. secret, therefore anyone who is critical of them — as we saw through the Massiter revelations can be classed as a subversive.
Another argument is presented. which is wholly fraudulent, that the United Siates, all over the world, is for freedom and civil liberties and so or. Whereas actually the United S:ates is at a period of its imperial growth. It is using its military power, like any imperial power in the past, to consolidate and prote:: its interests.
Superpowers have to have a new perception of what it's all about. I trink that if you have a different perception of superFoirers I won't say they are identical to each other - but they a:: SUC DUWCIS with great economic and military capacities, who are going to see that around their own territories are cordons sanitaires.
In the case of America, you inraje Grenada. try to neutralise Cuba, and indeed, go as far as they cid in Vietnam. In the case of the Seriet Union, because of their experience, Eastern Europe is part protective A ghanistan is brought into the croit again - in much the same that invaded A ghanistan four times when we were an empire.
If you see it that way it's different from the way it's presented ir. the media. Then the question arises 'is our role as a client state •: America?' One where our intelligence is integrated with theirs, where they have a mass of nuclear weapons based in Britain, where really subordinate to Tony Benn at 1982 demonstration demanding withdrawal of the British fleet from the South Atlantic Washington in their system. Is that the best way that Britain can bring its influence to bear for peace? And the answer is that it isn't.
I gave a lecture at Chatham House 18 months ago that raised these questions in a tentative form. I put that same paper into the national executive a year ago.
Last July we had a seminar about it. We are going to have a foreign policy conference • at the end of the year organised by the Labour Discussion Our discussion paper, whether Britain should remain in NATO, which ended up with a request for a paper to be presented by the international department for discussion, was defeated. But my own opinion is that the question will continue to come back. And I think it's very important that we should discuss it. And a whole range of other subjects such as what we do when we withdraw the Common Market, we deal with the banks and financial institutions, with the ownership of land what I would call socialist items going back on the agenda.
Forum All this must be done without personal hostility and really to allow the labour movement to pertorm its other function which is to be the grand forum. of the nation. Discussing Labour can best contribute to a solution of world problems as well as domestic problems.
Does that mean that you are now against British membership of NATO? Or do you merely think the matter should be discussed?
I think the matter should be discussed. But in the paper I put in with Eric Heffer we were arguing the case for withdrawal.
The French are not in NATO of course. They are in what they call the Alliance but not actually members of NATO. I think the removal of American bases is very important.
I think in the light of what Reagan is doing to New Zealand, after New Zealand said she didn't want American ships with nuclear weapons entering her ports, gives indication of what the Americans would do if we were elected with our present policy. All these questions need to be on discussed. If they were discussed it would be a very important part of the political argument.
I don't believe the British actually public will ever accept a nonsame time they're not asked to re-examine the question of whether there is a military threat from the I do not believe there's a military threat. just don't believe it. I believe it's been built up for other reasons in the way that before the war the Axis powers (Hitler's Germany Mussolini's Italy - ed.) built it up.
Defence You've got to turn your mind - to that question. If you turn your mind to that, and you win that argument — and I believe there's a very good reason for believing you would then the defence aspects of it fall into place. If you don't turn your mind to that argument then people will go on saying: 'Well the Russian's have got the SS20, so we've got to have the American cruise' and you'll never make any progress at all.
So I think its also a very important part of the process of winning public support for Labour's existing defence policy.
Could you explain when you say that you don't think there is a similarity between what you called the superpowers?
I'm not talking about parity of responsibility. I think if you were to analyse the way we regard, or are invited to regard, the Soviet as a country which is dedicated by its Marxist analysis to the conquest of the world by military means, to create a Marxist world - then that is a false analysis, quite false.
If you're asked to regard the Americans as the upholders of parliamentary democracy, civil liberties unionism, that's a false analysis.
What you have to differentiate between is what I would call the 'inherent interests of superpowers', and the conduct of their own affairs on their own borders, and the real question - which is why can't we in Britain develop socialism in our own form, in our own way. If you try and achieve that the Americans say the Russians are trying to take over. Western Alliance to er They'll use the of the to crush it. I don't want to see that happen.
Constructive And of course the socialism I want to see develop here elsewhere is not a Stalinist form + Russian history and special circumstances were totally different. British socialism would be a home grown, relevant socialism, that we would develop ourselves. And in doing so I think we'd find able to work with a whole range of people including the progressive movement in the United States, the peace move ment, trade union movement, the third world, and a lot of the peo ple in Europe who are part of th peace movement. I think we car play a very constructive part So I'm not applying the simple theory of equality of responsibility. I don't think that's true. That is a simplistic analysis. But Bri tain must free itself from NATO military of the West.
Socialist Action 29 March 1985