WAR AIMS BEGIN AT HOME

Grey River Argus, 5 December 1940, Page 10

WAR AIMS BEGIN AT HOME

By

Aneurin Bevan ,

M.P.

(The Tribune, London, October 4)

WAR AIMS ARE IN THE .AIR. 1 hear the National Council of Labour is preparing a statement, the Trades Union Congress will be discussing it when it meets at Southport this month and how the rumour reaches me on good authority that the Government itself is moving. lam delighted that at last the need to state our intentions to the world is being recognised by those who are responsible for the leadership of opinion and the government of the country.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the statement about to be made. If it' is conceived boldly and inspired by social and political penetration, it will do more than all the armies and the air and water navies to bring victory to the Allies and hope to the world. Since the beginning of the war the TRIBUNE, along with other enlightened journals, like the New Statesman and Nation, has urged upon the Government, and particularly upon the Labour members in it, the paramount necessity of giving us the blue prints of the kind of world the Allies intend to build if victory goes to Allied arms. Indeed, we have insisted that the right war aims will be the most powerful kind of armament we can employ against the enemy, for if the aims are intelligently, thought out they can be expected to start a ferment among the oppressed populations under Nazi power which will increasingly embarrass the Nazi rule. A Crucial Test Nevertheless, pleased though I am that war aims are being prepared, I confess to a sense of foreboding when I think of the kind of people who are preparing them. I should feel happier if the Labour Members of the Government had shown a more robust appreciation of the unique position they occupy in the Government. They are now facing the first real crucial test of their membership of Mr. Churchill’s Government.

There is much to fear as well as to thank in that colourful and dominating personality. »He has all the weaknesses of his strength. The very qualities of mind which give such a range and sweep to his speeches tend to obscure from him those pedestrian facts which make the pattern of everyday life for the millions. His ear is so sensitively attuned to the bugle note of history that he is often

deaf to the more raucous clamour of contemporary life, a defect which his Conservative upbringing and background tends to reinforce. The sevenleague boots tempo of bis imagination hastens him on to “sunny uplands” of the future, but he is apt to forget th-t the slow steps of humanity must travel every inch of the weary road that leads there. And that road must be surveyed and built. Vivid imagery and romantic allusion are no subsetitute for sound social engineering, and a pointing finger may show the goal, but it is no way of reaching it.

We must therefore expect the Government’s declaration of War Aims to lack nothing in the way of literature, but it is to its content we must look for the body of the hope for mankind.

The King’s Horses Countless books have been written about the reorganisation of Europe which must follow the war and students of the question will await with keen anticipation the plans the Government proposes to set against unification under Nazi rule, and in accordance with Nazi totalitarian principles. We all fervently hope the British proposals will not take much account of the claims of the various 'govei'nments-without-portfolio whose national anthems form such a long prelude to the news on Sunday nights. Not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can set those empty kingdoms up again. I hope a way will be found to reconcile the claims of cultural independence with the needs of cross-frontier economic planning. The old’ sovereignties have melted away in the flames of war, and we are not fighting to remould the old malleable metal in the old shapes. I suspect that too tender consideration for the feelings of ramshackle government was responsible for the blunder of Dakar. When we give hospitality to defeated governments it is to wave a flag of inspiration to their peoples, and not to cumber our own feet. One thought the authors of i

our War Aims must constantly have in mind during their labours is this—now can they impress upon those who come to read them of the sincerity cf their intentions? Whilst this is true of other countries it is much more true of Great Britain. Short though the public memory is, it is not short enough to have forgotten the promises which were made so lavishly during the last war, and which were afterwards so shamefully betrayed. If the declarations of the Government merely set cut what we propose to do when the war is over, they will fall upon ears made cynical by the knowledge of past declarations equally fulsome, and which were conveniently forgotten when the need was over.

'There is one way of convincing the most cynical that the old story ’s not going to be repeated, and that is to carry out immediatey those of our aims which are capable of fulfilment here and now. By this I do not mean only those intentions which refer to India and the other Colonial peoples under the British flag. A Charter of Liberty for the oppressed people of the British Empire, put into effect at once, w)uld be real evidence of sincerty. But more is needed even than that. I pointed out last week how blind the Government would be if ignored the part War Aims can play in shoring up the morale of the working population of this island. I further pointed out how mistaken it would be to put the realisation of our war aims, no matter how attractive they may sound, in the never-never-land of the future. The operation of certain reforms here and now would have the double effect of sustaining the morale of the people to bear the burdens of war, and at the same time inform with sincerity the wider aims which necessarily must wait for fulfilment when the war is won. Paying the Price If the Labour Members of the Government insist upon this they will be told they are attempting to exploit the war for Party purposes. There are two answers to that, both overwhelming. In the first place the difference between the life endured by millions of British workers before the war and the life offered by the Nazis, was not wide enough to cause them to suffer the privations of war and the risk of death for them and their families in order to preserve it. Our rulers must pay the price of their past misdeeds. They did not give to millions of workers a sufficient stake in the life of pre-war | Britain to inspire them to die for its sake. The stake must therefore be substantially increased here and how.

The second answer flows from the first. It must necessarily appear that Labour demands concessions to its own policies because these are the expressions of the unsatisfied millions. Only those who suffer in a society want to change it. If the domestic war alms demanded by Labour look like extracts from the Party’s programme, it is because the programme represents the sort of world men are prepared to fight for.

My. experience of working class life teaches me that the first thing to be dene is to abolish the household Means Test and increase allowances to the dependents of men in the Services. The extension of the household Means Test to supplementary Old Age Pensions has caused great bitterness, and is at the same time adding to the difficulties of dispersing the populations of the great cities . . .

Scandal of the Banks

The next urgent need is for the Government to take over the banking system of the country. No time could be better than the present. Most of the production of the country is now on Government contract in one form or another. It is a scandal' that the banks should be allowed to make profits on activities which have their origin in public expenditure. The peace-time argument that people will not trust their savings to Governments which are dominated by political considerations loses its force in war time when all savings find their way to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The next step is to nationalise those industries which are overripe for public ownership. These include coal, steel, railways, electricity, ship-building and the land. I am convinced that there is general support for these proposals, even in cjrlcles which would have been appalled by the suggestion before the war. Bringing these services directly under Government direction now would not only serve the immediate purposes I have outlined. They would in addition provide the instruments of economic planning which we must have if economic chaos is not to follow the war.

Only a. great programme of social reform in Britain now will be an earnest of what we intend for the rest of Europe when we are victorious. These are the conditions for an industrial democracy which should form the structure of the new world. They are the norm around which the wider war aims should be shaped. The world looks to see them in the declarations the Government is about to make.