Which Horse is Bevin Backing?
From ‘Freedom, Anarchist Fortnightly’, January 22nd, 1949, London, UK
Ernest Bevin has faced many storms as Foreign Secretary; but seldom has any act of his met with such widespread disapproval as his recent strong line on Israel. Astonishment is the keynote of these protests — but this very astonishment only helps to make the basis of international relations clearer.
Freedom has stated a clear position on the Palestine issue. We regard the situation as quite insoluble along the present nationalist lines, reject the setting up of a Jewish State as inimical to the Jews, and refuse to adopt a partisan line involving the closing of one’s eyes to sufferings in which innocent people are involved through nationalist rivalries. It is outrageous that the British should add to the sufferings of Jewish refugee immigrants; and it is outrageous that Arab families should be rendered homeless by the partitioning of disputed territories.
All this does not blind us, however, to the fact that the issues in Palestine are not limited to Zionist or Arab League ambitions. The Near East is also a field for imperialist struggle and intrigue. And this is the aspect which Bevin’s liberal critics choose to ignore. The Observer hints at a “suspicion that he (Bevin) does not want a settlement until Israel has been given a knock…” while the Economist asks, “What is Bevin up to?” and finds the latest British moves “incomprehensible”. Yet the Observer finds no difficulty in seeing that Russian Middle Eastern policy “has only one interest: the continuance of conflict”.
British Imperialist interests demand that Britain should control the oil of the Middle East and its pipelines, and the strategic communications of British naval power. This control is not yet decisively retained in British hands, and one may be confident that no “solution” of the Palestine issue will be acceptable to the Foreign Office which does not secure a favourable decision on this question. Need one add that American policy is determined by a like concern for American interests, Russian policy by the expanding interests of Russian imperialism?
Bevin and his “Left” Critics
Bevin’s foreign policy has been attacked by the lefties before; by Crossmanites because it is not “socialist”, by fellow travellers because it doesn’t suit the Kremlin. But Bevin doesn’t care. He knows that when a so-called socialist government administers the British Empire its policy must further the interests of British Imperialism, and since the labour party socialists are thoroughgoing patriots they eventually come to Bevin’s imperialist heel.
Of course, it is impossible to know yet what are the factual bases for Bevin’s recent toughness with Israel, but past experience makes one fairly confident of the general motives which underlie it. The liberal press, and now the conservative and labour press as well, are anxious to make out that foreign policy is founded on “justice”, “what is right”, “genuine desire for peace” and what have you; but when Bevin turns on his critics at Labour Party Congresses he justifies his behaviour in Greece, in Spain, in Palestine, to the defensive needs of the British Empire. And for the patriot lefties that is more important than the rights and sufferings of small nations and their constituent individuals.
Solutions?
What it also shows, however, is that the right course, the need to safeguard justice and peace, and all the other catch phrases of political journalism are quite out of place in the world of international relations. It is simply idle to imagine that either Bevin or his indignant critics can do the right thing in the existing circumstances of power politics. Administrators may have a genuine personal concern for these ideals; but their business is to administer the machine over which they nominally exercise control. While that machine is Imperialism — British, American or Russian — justice and freedom and human rights are of mere academic importance.
And while the Jews and the Arabs repose their faith and main control of their destinies in the hands of a political state which is itself swayed by the interests of the great powers, there is just no hope of social justice for them either.
Also:
Anarchists & fellow travellers on Palestine (2023)
Against the Destruction of Gaza, For the Liberation of Palestine (2023)
Palestine, platitudes and silence, by Tommy Lawson (2023)
Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, by Fredy Perlman (1983)
Palestine, by Albert Meltzer (1948)
Zionism, from War Commentary (1944)
Ten Years a Soldier, from War Commentary (1944)
The “Advantages” of British Imperialism, by Reginald Reynolds (1939)
Anarchist Tactic for Palestine, by Albert Meltzer (1939)
National Atavism, from Mother Earth (1906)
Anarchism & Indigenous Peoples
Resource links:
About Face: Veterans Against The War
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