Thus, from 1931 until 1937, the Labour Party opposed the National Government's Service Estimates. These Estimates were opposed because Labour disagreed with the National Government's foreign and military policies. Instead of the Government's policy, [1] of lack thereof, it advocated collective security. It maintained that the rearmament race prior to World War I was a leading cause of that war and that national armaments would have to be abolished if war were to be avoided in the future. Instead of national secuirty, it looked to security through the League of Nations. It should be recalled that in 1933, Clement Attlee said that "you have to put loyalty to the League of Nations above loyalty to your country." [2] The Party even went so far to demand, in its electoral platform, For Socialism and Peace (1934), that the eventual goal of disarmament be "the abolition of national armed forces and their replacement by an international police force." [3] Collective security, like "pacifism," became an idealistic passion for many within the Party.
However, like "pacifism," the reality of the world situation shook faith in collective security. As war came to Manchuria, Abyssinia [Ethiopia], and Spain during the 1930s, many began to lose faith in the efficacy of the League and collective security to maintain peace. At first the National Government was the "culprit;" it was encouraging "anarchy." [4] But when other nations refused to help Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War, or help the Chinese against the Japanese "Rape of Nanking," (1937) the notion of collective security became rather hollow. With many on the left [who were formally "pacifists"] arguing for "Arms for Spain," it became only natural to ask, what about arms for Britain?
It should be pointed out that the policy of collective security through the League [and thus without national armaments] as called for in Socialism and Peace was not supported by everyone within the Party. As I mentioned in a previous series, Sir Stafford Cripps and his Socialist League opposed the policy. Another person who was opposed to it as well was Ernest Bevin, but for entirely different reasons. He was one of the first to see the Hitlerian menace as a military menace, and thus, argued from almost the very beginning for national rearmament. Looking back on the period, he remarked years later:
