|
CONTROVERSIAL NYE BEVAN
Weapons for Squalid and Trivial Ends
Go here for more about
Aneurin Bevan.
Go here for more about
Bevan's Weapons for Squalid and
Trivial Ends.
It follows a transcript excerpt of
Aneurin Bevan's Weapons for Squalid and Trivial Ends speech, delivered at
London, UK - December 5, 1956.
 |
The speech to
which we have just listened is the last of a
long succession that the right honorable
gentleman, the secretary of state for foreign
affairs, has made to the House in the last few
months and, if I may be allowed to say so, I
congratulate him upon having survived so far. |
He appears to be
in possession of vigorous health, which is
obviously not enjoyed by all his colleagues, and
he appears also to be exempted from those
Freudian lapses which have distinguished the
speeches of the Lord Privy Seal, and therefore
he has survived so far with complete vigor.
However, I am bound to say that the speech by
the right honorable gentleman today carries the
least conviction of all.
I have been
looking through the various objectives and
reasons that the government have given to the
House of Commons for making war on Egypt, and it
really is desirable that when a nation makes war
upon another nation it should be quite clear why
it does so. It should not keep changing the
reasons as time goes on. There is, in fact, no
correspondence whatsoever between the reasons
given today and the reasons set out by the prime
minister at the beginning. The reasons have
changed all the time. I have got a list of them
here, and for the sake of the record I propose
to read it. I admit that I found some difficulty
in organizing a speech with any coherence
because of the incoherence of the reasons. They
are very varied.
On October 30, the prime minister said that the
purpose was, first, "to seek to separate the
combatants"; second, "to remove the risk to free
passage through the canal". The speech we have
heard today is the first speech in which that
subject has been dropped. We have heard from the
right honorable and learned gentleman today a
statement which I am quite certain all the world
will read with astonishment. He has said that
when we landed in Port Said there was already
every reason to believe that both Egypt and
Israel had agreed to cease fire. The minister
shakes his head. If he will recollect what his
right honorable and learned friend said, it was
that there was still a doubt about the Israeli
reply. Are we really now telling this country
and the world that all these calamitous
consequences have been brought down upon us
merely because of a doubt? That is what he said.
In the history of nations, there is no example
of such frivolity. When I have looked at this
chronicle of events during the last few days,
with every desire in the world to understand it,
I just have not been able to understand the
mentality of the government. We are telling the
nation and the world that, having decided upon
the course, we went on with it despite the fact
that the objective we had set ourselves had
already been achieved, namely, the separation of
the combatants. As to the objective of removing
the risk to free passage through the canal, I
must confess that I have been astonished at this
also. We sent an ultimatum to Egypt by which we
told her that unless she agreed to our landing
Ismailia, Suez and Port Said, we should make war
upon her. We knew very well, did we not, that
Nasser could not possibly comply? Did we really
believe that Nasser was going to give in at
once? Is our information from Egypt so bad that
we did not know that an ultimatum of that sort
was bound to consolidate his position in Egypt
and in the whole Arab world? Did we really
believe that Nasser was going to wait for us to
arrive? He did what anybody would have thought
he would do, and if the government did not think
he would do it, on that account alone they ought
to resign. He sank ships in the canal, the
wicked man. The result is that the first
objective realized was the opposite of the one
we set out to achieve; the canal was blocked,
and it is still blocked.
On October 31, the prime minister said that our
object was to secure a lasting settlement and to
protect our nationals. What do we think of that?
In the meantime, our nationals were living in
Egypt while we were murdering Egyptians at Port
Said. We left our nationals in Egypt at the
mercy of what might have been riots throughout
the country. We were still voyaging through the
Mediterranean, after having exposed them to risk
by our own behavior. What does the House believe
that the country will think when it really comes
to understand all this? On November 1, we were
told the reason was "to stop hostilities" and
"prevent a resumption of them". But hostilities
had already been practically stopped. On
November 3, our objectives became much more
ambitious - "to deal with all the outstanding
problems in the Middle East".
In the famous book Madame Bovary there is a
story of a woman who goes from one sin to
another, a long story of moral decline. In this
case, our ambitions soar the farther away we are
from realizing them. Our objective was, "to deal
with all the outstanding problems in the Middle
East." After having insulted the United States,
after having affronted all our friends in the
Commonwealth, after having driven the whole of
the Arab world into one solid phalanx behind
Nasser, we were then going to deal with all the
outstanding problems in the Middle East.
The next objective of which we were told was to
ensure that the Israeli forces withdrew from
Egyptian territory. That, I understand, is what
we were there for. We went into Egyptian
territory in order to establish our moral right
to make the Israelis clear out. That is a
remarkable war aim, is it not? To establish our
case before the eyes of the world, Israel being
the wicked invader, we being the nice friend of
Egypt, went to protect her from the Israelis,
but, unfortunately, we had to bomb the Egyptians
first.
On November 6, the prime minister said: "The
action we took has been an essential condition
for a United Nations force to come into the
Canal Zone itself." That is one of the most
remarkable claims of all. It is, of course,
exactly the same claim which might have been
made, if they had thought about it in time, by
Mussolini and Hitler, that they made war on the
world in order to call the United Nations into
being. If it were possible for bacteria to argue
with each other, they would be able to say that
of course their chief justification was the
advancement of medical science.
Why did we start this operation? We started this
operation in order to give Nasser a black eye -
if we could, to overthrow him - but, in any
case, to secure control of the canal.
The right honorable and learned gentleman is
sufficiently aware of the seriousness of it to
start his speech today with collusion. If
collusion can be established, the whole fabric
of the government's case falls to the ground. It
is believed in the United States and it is
believed by large numbers of people in Great
Britain that we were well aware that Israel was
going to make the attack on Egypt. In fact, very
few of the activities at the beginning of
October are credible except upon the assumption
that the French and British governments knew
that something was going to happen in Egypt.
Indeed, the right honorable and learned
gentleman has not been frank with the House. We
have asked him over and over again. He has said,
"Ah, we did not conspire with France and
Israel." We never said that the government might
have conspired. What we said was that they might
have known about it.
The right honorable and learned gentleman gave
the House the impression that at no time had he
ever warned Israel against attack on Egypt. If
we apprehend trouble of these dimensions - we
are not dealing with small matters - if we
apprehend that the opening phases of a third
world war might start or turn upon an attack by
Israel on anyone, why did we not make it quite
clear to Israel?
The fact is, that all these long telephone
conversations and conferences between M Guy
Mollet, M Pineau [respectively, France's prime
minister and foreign minister] and the prime
minister are intelligible only on the assumption
that something was being cooked up. All the time
there was this coming and going between
ourselves and the French government. Did the
French know? It is believed in France that the
French knew about the Israeli intention. If the
French knew, did they tell the British
government? Every circumstantial fact that we
know points to that conclusion. What happened?
Did Marianne take John Bull to an unknown
rendezvous? Did Marianne say to John Bull that
there was a forest fire going to start, and did
John Bull then say, "We ought to put it out,"
but Marianne said, "No, let us warm our hands by
it. It is a nice fire"? Did Marianne deceive
John Bull or seduce him?
Now I would conclude by saying this. I do not
believe that any of us yet have realized the
complete change that has taken place in the
relationship between nations and between
governments and peoples. These were objectives,
I do beg honorable members to reflect, that were
not realizable by the means that we adopted.
These civil, social and political objectives in
modern society are not attainable by armed
force. Even if we had occupied Egypt by armed
force we could not have secured the freedom of
passage through the canal. It is clear that
there is such xenophobia, that there is such
passion, that there is such bitter feeling
against western imperialism - rightly or
wrongly: I am not arguing the merits at the
moment - among millions of people that they are
not prepared to keep the arteries of European
commerce alive and intact if they themselves
want to cut them. We could not keep ships going
through the canal. The canal is too easily
sabotaged, if Egypt wants to sabotage it. Why on
earth did we imagine that the objectives could
be realized in that way in the middle of the
20th century?
The social furniture of modern society is so
complicated and fragile that it cannot support
the jackboot. We cannot run the processes of
modern society by attempting to impose our will
upon nations by armed force. If we have not
learned that, we have learned nothing.
Therefore, from our point of view here, whatever
may have been the morality of the government's
action, there is no doubt about its imbecility.
There is not the slightest shadow of doubt that
we have attempted to use methods which were
bound to destroy the objectives we had, and, of
course, this is what we have discovered. I
commend to honorable members, if they have not
seen it, a very fine cartoon in Punch by
Illingworth and called Desert Victory. There we
see a black, ominous, sinister background and a
pipeline broken, pouring oil into the desert
sands. How on earth do honorable members
opposite imagine that hundreds of miles of
pipeline can be kept open if the Arabs do not
want it to be kept open? It is not enough to say
that there are large numbers of Arabs who want
the pipeline to be kept open because they live
by it. It has been proved over and over again
now in the modern world that men and women are
often prepared to put up with material losses
for things that they really think worthwhile. It
has been shown in Budapest, and it could be
shown in the Middle East. That is why I beg
honorable members to turn their backs on this
most ugly chapter and realize that if we are to
live in the world and are to be regarded as a
decent nation, decent citizens in the world, we
have to act up to different standards than the
one that we have been following in the last few
weeks.
I resent most bitterly this unconcern for the
lives of innocent men and women. It may be that
the dead in Port Said are 100, 200 or 300. If it
is only one, we had no business to take it. Do
honorable members begin to realize how this is
going to revolt the world when it passes into
the imagination of men and women everywhere that
we - with eight million here in London, the
biggest single civilian target in the world,
with our crowded island exposed, as no nation in
the world is exposed, to the barbarism of modern
weapons - we ourselves set the example. We
ourselves conscript our boys and put guns and
aero planes in their hands and say, "Bomb
there." Really, this is so appalling that human
language can hardly describe it. And for what?
The government resorted to epic weapons for
squalid and trivial ends, and that is why, all
through this unhappy period, ministers, all of
them, have spoken and argued and debated well
below their proper form - because they have been
synthetic villains. They are not really
villains. They have only set off on a villainous
course, and they cannot even use the language of
villainy.
Therefore, in conclusion, I say that it is no
use honorable members consoling themselves that
they have more support in the country than many
of them feared they might have. Of course they
have support in the country. They have support
among many of the unthinking and unreflective
who still react to traditional values, who still
think that we can solve all these problems in
the old ways. Of course they have. Not all the
human race has grown to adult state yet. But do
not let them take comfort in that thought. The
right honorable member for Woodford (Sir Winston
Churchill) has warned them before. In the first
volume of his Second World War, he writes about
the situation before the war and he says this:
"Thus an administration more disastrous than any
in our history saw all its errors and
shortcomings acclaimed by the nation. There was,
however, a bill to be paid, and it took the new
House of Commons nearly 10 years to pay it."
It will take us very many years to live down
what we have done. It will take us many years to
pay the price. I know that tomorrow evening
honorable and right honorable members will
probably, as they have done before, give the
government a vote of confidence, but they know
in their heart of hearts that it is a vote which
the government do not deserve.
More History
|
|
