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The Labour Party and the Spanish Civil War, Part I - Page 3

© Joseph Sramek

Two months later he attacked the entire basis on which the National Government's foriegn policy had been based:

You have states [i.e. Germany and Italy] which entirely disregard obligations. They tear up treaties that are made, and they carry on making a new treaty while breaking another. We [the Labour Party] feel that it is very little use to have signatures unless signatures are to be honoured. [17]

He also criticized the Foreign Secretary [Anthony Eden], saying:

There was a remarkable cartoon the other day of the right hon. Gentleman as an autograph hunter going with a book before these dictators and getting signatures. It was a bitter cartoon and contained a good deal of truth. [18]

By March 1937, there were 110,000 "foreign volunteers" inside Spain, mainly Italian and German. [19] Mussolini openly boasted about his "volunteers," yet the British Government attempted to maintain the fiction of non-intervention. Again they did not want to contemplate decisive action for fear of war.

To this Attlee replied that he did not believe in "throwing sops to Dictators." [20] He ended his speech with a stark warning, saying: "We [the Labour Party] believe in democracy, but if democracy is to survive it must be prepared to stand up to the dictators." [21]

Footnotes:

[1] Kenneth Millen-Penn, "From Liberal to Socialist Internationalism: Konni Zilliacus and the League of Nations, 1894-1939, Ph.D. Dissertation, (Binghamton, NY: Binghamton University, 1993), p. 545.

[2] John F. Naylor, Labour's International Policy: Labour in the 1930s, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 138.

[3] Kenneth Harris, Attlee, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 127.

[4] Naylor, p. 143.

[5] Ibid., p. 144, quoting Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1936, p. 29.

[6] Ibid., p. 162.

[7] At Labour Party Conferences, delegates from affiliated organizations [Trade Unions, constituency parties, auxiliary groups,e tc.] cast votes equal to their total national memberships.

[8] At this time, there was an Embargo on the sale of arms to either side of the conflict. Franco and his Nationalists still got their arms, albeit covertly from Italy and Germany. The Loyalists did not receive as much arms, and thus, were at a distinct disadvantage.

[9] Naylor, pp. 163-64, quoting Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1936, p. 213.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., quoting Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1936, p. 215.

[12] Ibid., pp. 164-65.

[13] House of Commons Debates, vol. 316, [316 H. C. Debs.], 29 October 1936, col. 136.

[14] Ibid., col. 140.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] 319 H.C. Debs., 19 January 1937, col. 109.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918-1940, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), p. 573.

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