LABOUR AND THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 35, 10 February 1940, Page 10

LABOUR AND THE WAR

The attitude of British Labour to the war, expressed in the declaration of policy issued by the executive of the Labour Party, has a significance which extends far beyond the domestic circle of British party politics. Here is a party which is the archtype of Labour parties in the different Dominions of the Empire, to which its policy on various questions has over a long period given a lead. It reveals, as all political parties do, shades of opinion, but in its general policy it is, as the declaration, published yesterday, reaffirms, "loyal to the socialist and democratic faith." It has been consistently opposed to Conservative Governments and strongly critical of their foreign policy over the Abyssinian affair, the civil war in Spain, Japanese action in China, and the Munich settlement, to mention the main items in recent years. Today it still declares "continued opposition to Mr. Chamberlain's Government," but—and here is the point—it "calls on the British people to contribute their utmost effort to overthrow the Hitler system in Germany," the party, though loathing war, regarding it as "a less evil than the destruction of .parliamentary democracy and # civil freedom, the only alternative to resistance of Nazi aggression." Then the declaration adds: The Allies' war purpose must be to defeat Hitlerism and undo the wrongs resulting from Nazi aggression, without creating new wrongs. It must be shown beyond all doubt that we will not allow aggression to succeed. In these passages the Labour declaration differs hardly at all from the declaration of Britain's war aims by Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Mr. Churchill, and other members of the Government. Nor does Labour differ from the Government in renouncing the idea of a punitive peace. Labour also re-

minds Germany that the Hitler system prepared and started the war, and that Hitler would not continue it "if you ceased to support him." Till the accursed Nazi regime is overthrown there is no hope of peace between us. But if you establish &i Government which is sincerely willing i that Germany shall be a good neighbour and a good European, there shall be no humiliation or revenge. Then of Soviet Russia, the partner of Nazi Germany in aggression, the declaration says: We hoped the Soviet would join the democracies for the collective organisation of peace and resistance to aggression. We should regard extinction of the free Finnish democracy as an intolerable disaster to civilisation. British Labour has not been content with mere lip-service; it has implemented its words to the full. National military service has been accepted even- under a name, "conscription," traditionally obnoxious to Labour, at least in British countries. It has met the Government, half-way in revolutionary adjustments of trade union conditions to help the war effort in speeding up production of ail essentials to the conduct of the war. Contrast this truly British attitude with what has taken and is taking place in New Zealand. The Government declines to introduce compulsory national military service and meetings are held openly with the avowed intention, in the words of one of the leaders, "to work for peace through the withdrawal of New Zealand from a war the real aims of which get more obscured month by month." The British Labour Party, far closer to the scene of events than anybody in this country, finds no such growing obscurity. Nor do we think there can be any obscurity to anybody with an open mind. The truth seems to be that the little, but loud, group of trouble-makers in New Zealand are obstinately clinging to ideas outdated by the course of events in Europe during the past ten years. While the British Labour Party has seen the true nature and danger of Hitlerism to all that makes a Labour movement possible, | and acted accordingly, the extremists j here are sabotaging the movement by their intransigent attitude. They seem to be of that order of intelligence which only experience can teach. ' ' j