On February 9th 1933 The Oxford Union held one of its weekly debates. It was destined to become the most famous one ever held. The result sent a strong political message around the world which was an influence on the international politics of a generation.
The debate’s motion was “This House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Countryâ€. The motion was merely provocative, in best student traditions. The result was sensational. 275 voted for it, and only 153 voted against it.
The 1930s were dark years, the years of evil dictators, years of aggression by Italy,Germany and Japan. They were years of the vicious struggle between the two appalling creeds which disfigured so much of the twentieth century – communism and fascism.
In 1931 Japan showed how impotent the League of Nations was by invading Manchuria. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia. In 1936 Germany remilitarised the Rhineland, and Germany and Italy intervened in the Spanish civil war. In 1938 Germany took Austria and began pressing for the Sudetenland. The West took no action to stop these flagrant violations of international law and peace.
Early in the decade the attitude of Oxford students sent a strong message to these dictators that pacifism was rife in the west, and that the young of the UK would do all they could to appease the strong nations that were prepared to fight. The message from the Union was backed up at the ballot box. In October 1933 in the Fulham by election the Conservative candidate lost a safe seat to Labour because he stood on a platform of rearmament. A 14,521 majority for the Conservatives became a 4,840 Labour majority. The Conservative leader Baldwin got the messages from these events and won the 1935 General Election on a platform of resisting Churchill and the other advocates of rearmament.
It is important to understand why both Oxford students and the wider public were in such a mood in the early 1930s. The Great War of 1914-18 cast an understandably long shadow. Whilst we all admire and respect the heroism and suffering of so many of our grandparents and great grand parents in the trenches of that conflict, we can understand the anger so many felt at the huge loss of life, the years of slaughter, and the feeling that they were lions led by donkeys. The young junior officers had shown great bravery and leadership, suffering with their troops, but the senior officers and the politicians, led by the Liberal government, had seemed unfeeling towards the slaughter. At best they had proved unable to find a way of bringing the war to a successful conclusion without so many battles where the death rate was obscene. It was difficult for many to see why the UK had to plunge itself in to these continental wars at all when the UK’s interests lay elsewhere in India, in Asia and in the Americas.There is no wonder that the public yearned for a long period of peace. They wanted to believe that the Great war had indeed been the war to end wars.
The politicians who picked up this mood worked on the proposition that if they treated the dictators as reasonable people, understanding their grievances from the Versailles settlement and elsewhere, they could keep the country from war. They could also stay elected. The appeasers were right in their judgement on domestic politics, but like the students at the Union they were bad judges of the dictators.
The sad truth turned out to be that the dictators were not reasonable people with a justified grievance, but international thugs and war criminals crazed by power. The resolution by the Oxford Union was not taken as student protest, or ignored as most Union debates are by the adult world. It was taken as an important indicator that the west in general, and the UK in particular, was decadent and lacking in resolve. The dictators decided to grab territory whilst conditions were so favourable. The appeasers in the UK were politicians desperate to deliver peace to their voters, but as we now know their judgement was sadly awry. Our fathers and grandfathers paid a heavy price when they had to go to war in 1939, to deal with dictators who had been permitted to get away with too much and had been allowed to get into a far stronger position than they enjoyed in 1933.
The final irony was that most of the 275 who vowed they would not fight for King and country in 1933 were conscripted into the services seven years later, to fight in the biggest war of all.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College, and has a DPhil from All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has been a director of NM Rothschild merchant bank and chairman of a quoted industrial PLC.
8 Comments
No doubt the Archbishop of Canterbury would fail to recognise any parallels with his recent utterings. Fortunately, on this occasion, the public mood has been clearly shown to be in opposition to his appeasement.
I have seen this argument used before. My reading is different. The motion does not say that they will not fight but merely that it will not be for "king & country" & indeed when war broke out it wasn't – it was, at least in the view of ordinary people, to stop Hitler destroying other countries & peoples.
The same argument was used about the Peace Pledge but again the majority of signatories were willing to fight, under a League of Nations mandate.
I grant the Labour opposition to rearmament was dubious.
However the Tories were no better. It was them who refused to impose oil sanctions on Mussolini over Etheopia & by produced the Hoare-Laval offer which was essentially Britain & France pulling out from the collective security of the League. This destroyed the League as a useful defence. Later it was the Tories who, on idealogical grounds, ensured the USSR was excluded from Munich & then tuirned down their offer of alliance against Hitler.
The end result was that by spurning all alliances, not considered in the primary interest of "king & country", to stop aggression we ended up facing it almost alone.
This is often known as realpolitick & is an example of why having an ethical dimension to your activities is often more realistic.
I have just had the pleasure of reading Richard J Evans' "The Coming of the Third Reich". In it, to my surprise, he details the anti Semitism, the sheer love of Empire, the victory aims and the lack of political accountability of Wilhelmine Germany.
When they beat the Russians, they took, at Brest Litovsk, the Ukraine, the Baltic and all states in between – just like Hitler.
They were appallingly anti Semitic in a way that other nations weren't. On the other hand, as Niall Ferguson has shown, Jews were an integral part of German Society at the time too.
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The First World was not in vain.
But my father was quite surprised when the school sergeant told him that for nearly all the time he had enjoyed the First World war and that it had, for the most part been "Fun".
Thank you for making me think!
I think it is sad that Neville Chamberlain is portrayed so negatively in history as an appeaser. I agree that appeasement does not work when dealing with an ideologically driven foe, but the art of diplomacy can still reap dividends as the talks with Mikhail Gorbachev shows. The detente that followed was a factor in the end of communism as the Soviets let down their guard and opened up to western ideas of democratic reform. In retrospect Chamberlain may seem naive, but we have the luxury of viewing history with hindsight, at the time Chamberlain was trying to avert a confrontation that Britain was ill prepared for and one that he knew would cost many lives and would eventually lead to an even greater theatre of war. I believe Chamberlain did what he could to avoid war, his efforts failed, but were not a sign of failure as such.
Reply:Chamberlain was buying time – the appeasement had taken place earlier when less force applied for less time would have stopped the dictators.
We know from bitter experience that appeasment does not work, yet we still continue to appease the European Union. Paying it
The Oxford Union continues these fine traditions today. It remains entirely and obdurately unrepresentative of the majority – hardly surprising, really. In the 1930s the members of the OU must have been but a tiny proportion of those who were ultimately conscripted. And the backbone of the Armed Forces is not – never has been – those who have had a relatively privileged upbringing, quite the contrary.
Indeed the same could certainly be said of those who went to The Great War and all subsequent actions – including Afghanistan and Iraq today.
If one examines the academic background of those who are in action right now I doubt that there are more than a handful of members of OU. Whether this by choice or by chance is open to conjecture. Equally, it is debatable as to whether the composition of the Armed Forces is representative of society as a whole.
As to our enemies' (in)abilities to assess our intentions prior to the start of conflicts, well that is a given. From recent examples we can recall the lead up to Kosovo, The Falklands, Iraq, etc etc. Sadly far too many in recent years.
If you want to look at a country with a fine tradition of self defence, might I recommend "Target Switzerland" available from Amazon, which details Swiss armed neutrality in WW2, this is not the story I thought it was at all.
Truly admirable people.
The War On Democracy by John Pilger
This is well worth a look as it is an excellent primer on US destabilisation and anti-democracy measures in Latin America.
Basically a film showing that America will stop at nothing to protect her interests and in reality does not believe in democracy.
Appeasement certainly does not work.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-37395005…