He criticized the National Government's Appeasement policy and asked whether it would "see now that there can be no trust in the word of dictators?" [13] He concluded his speech, saying:
- We [the Labour Party] are deeply moved on these benches by the fate of the Spanish Republic and of the people of Spain. I do not deny that in this matter I am a partisan. I am on the side of the Spanish Republic, and I am not the least ashamed of it... You have here [the Spanish Civil War] a breach of international law. You have here an attack on British interests.... The cause of the Spanish Republic is the cause of this country. To betray the Spanish Republic is to betray France, and to betray France is to betray Britain. [emphasis mine] [14]
Unfortunately for Attlee and other opponents of Franco and fascism, the National Government maintained its non-intervention policy. This policy had proved to be a farce since the beginning; it had enabled Hitler and Mussolini to aid Franco covertly, test new weapons, and develop new fighting tactics while preventing aid from reaching the Loyalists. This was in large part due to the National Government's unwillingness to risk even the slightest confrontation with Hitler or Mussolini.
Footnotes:
[1] David Clay Large, Between Two Fires:Europe's Path in the 1930s, (NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), 2nd ed., p. 243, quoting Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty, (NY: 1975), p. 192.
[2] Ibid., p. 223.
[3] House of Commons Debates, vol. 310 [310 H.C. Debs.], 30 March 1936, col. 1845.
[4] 332 H.C. Debs., 21 February 1938, cols., 67-68.
[5] Ibid., col. 72.
[6] Ibid., 7 March 1938, col. 1661.
[7] Stanley Baldwin had himself created Earl of Bewdley in1 937, when he retired as Prime Minister.
[8] Neville Chamberlain was from Manchester, the heart of the Midlands region of England. Attlee was referring to the parochial nature of Chamberlain's politics and outlook. Churchill referred to Chamberlain once as "a very good Lord Mayor in a lean year."
[9] Kenneth Harris, Attlee, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 138.
[10] 330 H.C. Debs., 13 December 1937, cols. 821-24.
[11] Harris, pp. 138-39.
[12] 333 H.C. Debs., 16 March 1938, cols. 486-87.
[13] Ibid., cols. 490-91.
[14] Ibid., col. 491.
