Why Britain Worries

...And the people who lose their heads in this fashion are now in sole control of the H-bomb and would not even give Churchill information about the next test explosion, so that he had to tell questioners in Parliament that there was no use "courting a rebuff...

...Let us start with the comparatively calm and orderly exchange between Sir Winston Churchill and leaders of the Opposition in the House of Commons on April 13-eight days after the storm which blew through the House during the Prime Minister's first, highly controversial statement on his wartime agreement with Roosevelt...

...leadership By G. L. Arnold London This has been a stirring fortnight...

...Opposition cries of 'Oh!') "Mr...

...Attlee showed that he understood (and approved) what had happened by the way he took the announcement: He merely indicated in a roundabout way that he wanted India to play a prominent part in the proposed association...

...partly in response to American requests in 1947-18 (mentioned in the Vandenberg papers) which amounted to telling the British that they would otherwise get no Marshall aid...

...This is, therefore, a good time for taking an unemotional look at the stresses in the Atlantic alliance...

...To cap this whole squalid story, the man chiefly responsible for the Los Alamos development, J. Robert Oppenheimer, is now publicly denounced as a security risk and arraigned for having had Communist acquaintances...

...and (3) Bevan, having apparently done some very rapid thinking while Attlee was on his feet, moved across the Front Bench to denounce the Government and, by implication, brushed Attlee aside and filed his own claim to leadership of the Opposition...

...It took only a few minutes, but involved some split-second calculation not only of public and Parliamentary reaction to the new Far East policy but of New Delhi's probable attitude toward the Anglo-American policy on Indo-China...

...Churchill reluctantly conceded this in exchange for an informal undertaking from Roosevelt that Britain would be consulted on the military use of atomic energy...

...If there was not, why does he not tell the House...

...Probably interpreting Nehru's feelings more accurately than Attlee, he rose from his seat, hurried to the dispatch box to face Eden-he practically had to step on Attlee's toes to get there- and launched into a violent diatribe against the Dulles policy and the British Government's alleged "surrender to American pressure...

...The rest of the article was a plea for recognition of "revolutionary China," so phrased as to win favor in New Delhi as well as in Britain...

...A reference to the Quebec Agreement of 1943.] What about the Deputy Prime Minister...

...If India refuses to join, the Far Eastern pact will be still-born-at any rate in the eyes of most Labor supporters...

...Last, but by no means least, the Oppenheimer sensation...

...Bevan's resignation from the Labor party's Parliamentary steering committee, and his publication in the weekly Tribune of a programmatic article, have dramatized an issue which his colleagues would prefer to dehydrate...

...Opposition cries of 'Oh!') I am not suggesting that it was an improper action...

...It would be a gamble, but Churchill is not the man to shrink from big risks, and a "snap" election has suddenly become a distinct possibility...

...On the National Executive, which is elected by the annual party conference, he has at least 5 close supporters out of a total 27, and some of the trade-union leaders have lately shown a tendency to move in his direction...

...If the party is not too badly shaken by this row, it will inevitably emerge with a clearer view of its international responsibilities...

...By expertly stone-walling American policies in the Far East (with the help of Nehru), the Foreign Office has now forced Washington to climb down and let Britain in as an equal partner...

...Morrison...

...This was privately regarded as a great diplomatic triumph in Downing St., because it nullified last year's American usurpation of Britain's traditional role in the Pacific-a maneuver neatly accomplished by Washington's ANZUS pact with Australia and New Zealand, from which Britain was excluded...

...Attlee] "Sir Winston Churchill: My telegram was addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and the War Cabinet, but it may well be that, owing to the great respect with which the words 'Tube Alloys' [a code term for the atom bomb] were treated, it slipped out at some point or other...

...But there are none where a distinguished scientist is going to be publicly hounded because he was at some time politically naive...

...They are, of course, aware that Bevan's main strength is outside the Parliamentary party, where he was isolated on the steering committee, although the number of his MP supporters may now be double the 50 or so he mustered last year...

...There are others, like Britain, Western Germany and Scandinavia, where the party is too unimportant to warrant this kind of agitation...

...There is nothing mean or parochial about the Attlee-Bevan cleavage: It involves huge stakes distributed over two continents, and, though the contestants treat each other with grave courtesy, they are pulling no punches...

...There are countries like France and Italy where Communism is too serious a problem to be treated simply as a "conspiracy...

...Then, the storm over John Foster Dulles's declaration on Southeast Asia and the subsequent Anglo-American statement foreshadowing establishment of a Far Eastern counterpart of NATO...

...By comparison, Bevan's article in Tribune the next day, though he filled an entire page with denunciation of British weakness vis-a-vis America since 1945, was anti-climactic...

...India was the great foreign-policy triumph of the Labor Government, and almost any proposal can be made to look respectable by the claim that it will win Indian support and, therefore, Asian sympathy in general...

...Consequently, the Prime Minister's Labor colleagues (but not his bosom friend, Lord Cherwell, or his Conservative associates, Eden and Anderson) were left in the dark about the terms Churchill made with Roosevelt regarding industrial and military use of atomic energy...

...Here are some extracts from the Parliamentary report in the Times the following morning: "Mr...

...This is the kind of thing which lends a delightful air of drama to British politics: The lightning can strike at any moment...

...For Bevan, like Attlee, is always conscious of the fact that India's moral support may be a winning card in the struggle for the succession within the British Labor party...

...In this context, it is perhaps worth mentioning that few things have shocked the British more than the discovery that Roosevelt in 1943 used their predicament to extract a promise from Churchill that Britain would undertake no independent postwar atomic development for industrial purposes...

...Since the two parties are very evenly matched, even a slight swing could put Labor back...

...Nothing would suit him better than a major row at the party conference in October...

...Perhaps it should be explained that this alone would be enough to make him popular in a country which has very little hope of being able to survive an atomic contest and no faith in the standard incantation: "This weapon is so terrible that it will surely never be used...

...It struck no less than three times during the few minutes when (1) Eden sprang the "Pacific pact" announcement on an unsuspecting House of Commons...

...I ask the Prime Minister: Has he made inquiries from the Cabinet Office about whether there was Cabinet discussion and confirmation...

...Whatever substance there may be in this-and since the matter is now sub judice, it would be improper to start guessing-the British have this week had most of their ancient and cherished prejudices about America confirmed: (1) The Americans tried to take advantage of the hard-pressed British during the war, and that hero of liberalism, FDR, was the chief offender...

...From the Tory viewpoint, such a strategy would be risky, for there are unmistakable signs that the H-bomb has improved Labor's chances with the floating voter: Two by-elections in the past week have shown a sudden reversal of the pro-Government trend...

...How Labor sentiment develops on the proposed pact will now depend on India's reaction, for India is to the Labor party what China (or Formosa) is to the Republican right-wingers: the main touchstone of orthodoxy in foreign relations...

...This was the issue on which the stormy debate of April 5 had turned, since Churchill tried to prove that he had given away less under American pressure than the Attlee Government-in itself a significant attitude...

...Into this storm-laden atmosphere a catalyst was introduced by Secretary of State Dulles and his demand for a joint declaration on Indo-China-a proposal which to a great many people here (including the Times) sounded suspiciously like a hydrogen ultimatum...

...Not so Aneurin Bevan...

...In the main, he repeated the old neutralist argument, this time with greater emphasis on the Labor Government's responsibility for encouraging Washington to take British support for granted...

...The two facets of the subject are linked by the allegation-true or false-that Oppenheimer opposed making the H-bomb...

...This promise in turn was abrogated, partly under the McMahon Act...

...Net result: a sharpening of the rift within the Labor party, with the majority clearly behind Attlee, who gained popularity from Churchill's savage onslaught on him the week before and from his own eloquent appeal to face the new scientific perils to civilization...

...Reaction: loud cheers from the Labor left-wingers, silence or uneasiness among the bulk of the Opposition, and truculent counter-cheers from the massed ranks of Toryism, now for once able to applaud a successful stroke of British foreign policy reinstating Britain as Number 2 factor in the Far Eastern picture...

...Of such is the stuff of practical politics made...

...Opposition cheers...

...First, the hydrogen-bomb tests in the Pacific and the slightly more muffled explosion in the House of Commons following Churchill's unsuccessful attempt to saddle the 1945-51 Attlee Government with the major responsibility for Britain's decline in atomic status...

...In a very real sense, the contest between Attlee and Bevan depends on Nehru...

...In other words, Churchill's cabled report from Quebec to the War Cabinet (including Attlee and Morrison) in August 1943 was censored by a Secret Service official, who thought the Prime Minister was being indiscreet and inked out the reference to the atom bomb...

...Those who still believe in it had better ask themselves what can be done to stop the rot before it has gone too far...

...It is just as well to have no illusions on this point...

...Unless the Oppenheimer affair proves to be a turning-point, the future of "Atlanticism" looks grim...

...They are sharper than some Americans think...

...Thomas: Is the Prime Minister saying that he selected his personal confidants, who were very near to him, but that the War Cabinet did not know what tremendous promises he had made on behalf of the country...

...As if all this were not enough, the Oppenheimer bombshell had to explode during the same week...

...Thus, several more rounds have gone to the neutralists and those who, though still supporters of the Atlantic cause, feel that America cannot be relied upon for leadership...

...As against this, there is the presumable effect of the internal split...

...Since he is not accused of anything worse than lack of enthusiasm for certain official policies, the general reaction-public and private-was overwhelmingly in his favor...

...It is easy to show that there is no intrinsic connection between these various issues, but, in an illogical way, the charges against Oppenheimer have hit the intellectuals just as hard as the news about the H-bomb hit the ordinary citizen...

...2) Attlee promptly seconded him, only reserving Labor's attitude on the party's sacred cow, India...

...Ultimately, something more modest emerged: an Anglo-American initiative for the founding of a Pacific NATO...

...The only new thought was a suggestion that if Indo-China "elects" a Communist government-a curious way of putting it-it must be allowed to do so in the sacred name of national self-determination...

...Sir Winston Churchill: All that the Cabinet record shows is that the words 'Tube Alloys' were cut out in red ink, and that it was done by an official...

...2) FDR' s successors are now busy, presumably for party purposes, smearing the record of scientists who held key positions during the war...

...The only factor working against such a showdown is the likelihood that it would encourage Churchill to spring a sudden election on the country in the hope of catching the Opposition between wind and water...

...But this could not be proclaimed in public, and Eden's statement to the House of Commons on April 13 was duly diplomatic in tone and substance...

...3) the uproar about somebody's Communist fiancee in 1936 shows that Americans are crazy-which, of course, is something the average Briton is privately convinced of anyhow...

...At present, one can only say that the two factions are more evenly matched than they were in the past-thanks in part to blunders committed in Washington...

...For nothing is more certain than that no European country can or will adopt such an attitude...

...In exchange, Britain recovered the right to undertake industrial development -but received no technical aid or information from the United States and had to spend five years re-discovering what had already been discovered at Los Alamos...

...Meanwhile, here are some topical reflections: If it is going to be official American doctrine that everyone who at any time had Communist associations or sympathies is permanently suspect (unless he becomes a professional ex-Communist), life will become very difficult for people on this side of the ocean who want closer Atlantic association...