ANEURIN BEVAN’S VIEWS ON ASIAN LEADERSHIP

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27369, 7 June 1954, Page 9

ANEURIN BEVAN’S VIEWS ON ASIAN LEADERSHIP

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, June 5. The leadership to enable the awakening peoples of Asia to live peaceably with the rest of the world—and thus to prevent a third world war—could come only from Britain, Mr Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Left-wing leader, told a meeting of miners in Somerset today.

“That leadership will not come from the United States,’’ he gaid. Mr Bevan was telling miners why he thought the British Labour Party had decided to accept the invitation to visit New China later this year. “We believe that only people who can talk the same language as the peasants and workers of China are the representatives of the peasants and workers of Britain. They have been bottom dogs a long time and we were bottom dogs for a long time,”

Mr Bevan said that Indonesia, Pakistan and now the Middle East were beginning to throw off the yokes imposed on them over countless centuries. Mr Bevan said he did not think China was conspiring with Russia to unleash a third world war on the West. Claiming that Britain alone could provide leadership out of the present West-East impasse, Mr Bevan said: “I have been telling the people of this country for some years that the leader-

ship given to the people of the United States was wrong.” United States leadership was misguided and ill-timed because the United States had come to the conclusion that it was part of her destiny to fight the spread of communism—and fight it by military action. “I do not believe you can prevent the spread of communism by military action. I believe you can prevent it by giving people reasonable conditions in which to live,” he said.