Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1945 BEVIN THE FORTHRIGHT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 28 November 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1945 BEVIN THE FORTHRIGHT

THE other d&y President Truman paid Britain a sincere compliment bycrediting her with “plways, having a foreign policy.” He was pointing to the broad and fairly constant principles which govern Britain's foreign relations irrespective of the political party in power and, by implication, contrasted such continuity with the variations which can take place in America according to whether a Democrat or Republican is in residence at the White House. With the recession of isolationism the gap between these two parties in their world outlook is narrower than it has been for a long time and Dewey’s declarations before the last Presidential election were emphatic on behalf of full participation on the international stage, the frowns of certain backbench diehards notwithstanding. Though it is to be found there, President Truman had no need to look very far back over the record of British foreign policy to substantiate his thesis of continuity. Springing from the nation as a whole, that has proved capable of rising above party cleavages and when British foreign policy has suffered discreditable lapses, as it did in the thirties, these were often reflections of a sluggishly indifferent public opinion. When the July election ousted the Conservatives and brought in Labour, Ernest Bevin, who had served the whole of his political apprenticeship as a Minister in the Churchill National administration, took up most of the threads at the Foreign Office from where they had been laid down by Mr Eden. Changes of emphasis and a reshuffle of certain priorities have been made, but in broad and important essentials Labour’s foreign policy is probably not markedly different from the line Churchill and Eden would have followed once the war was over. Perhaps the greatest service Mr Bevin has rendered is his clearing of the air by blunt outspokenness and a clarion call for frankness among the former major allies. While persistently offering to extend th e full hand of friendly cooperation to Russia he is also standing up to her. Not a trained diplomatist, he possesses that rugged manner of expression which does not wrap up facts—either palatable or unpleasant—in obscure verbiage. His cards-on-the-table appeal and his candid admission of suspicion “if a great Power wants to come right across the throat of the British Commonwealth” put into so many words what the average Briton has been thinking for some time past and the man in the street appreciates international intricacies being brought down to ground level. It is this course of action and demeanour that has, in general, won commendation from the Opposition, from whom there has so far been little strong criticism of Labour’s handling of foreign relations. The British Communist Party, on the other hand, has very good reasons of its own for seek-

ing to have Mr Bevin removed from the Foreign Office. Certain elements in the Labour Party, too (with which the Communists have no affiliation) have not waxed enthusiastic over his forthrightness, particularly towards Russia. Political snipers of the Left Wing, some of whom did not bank on Mr Bevin’g becoming Foreign Secretary, are somewhat suspicious of the Conservative cheers which have greeted his resounding declarations in th e Commons. There are even assertions that he is “In the pocket of the Tories.” Influenced by th e constant and potent stream of Soviet literature they receive, many Labour members in Britain still find it hard to water down their traditional sympathy with everything Russian. Mr Bevin’s purging medicine, designed to clear out the international system so that a healthier tone may prevail, is not easy for them to swallow.