A peace of my mind
In keeping with the 25 year theme of this newsletter, longtime BPEC
volunteer Len Goldman offers us:A peace of my mind.
At the age of 14, I had already become a Leftie, a regular attendee at the Sunday afternoon Speakers’ Corner on Brighton Level and gravitated towards the platforms where national and international affairs were chewed over. My favourite was the Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM) who told of mass hunger marches to Parliament demanding work - or decent unemployment pay (the dole).
There were 3 million unemployed in Britain due to the world slump which followed from the Wall Street crash in America. The misery caused to those families most affected was described by Wal Hannington (NUWM leader) in his book on the Distressed Areas, published by The Left Book Club, of which I later became a member.
The Thirties was also the period of the rise of fascism, which promised, among other things, to deal with this economic misery and, in Germany, to counter the degrading conditions imposed on that country by the victorious Allies after the First World War (1914-18).
On the other hand, the Russian Revolution (1917) had become a beacon of light for those who longed for a different, more just, form of society, where poverty and inequality would be banished - and caused panic to the property-owning classes.
What’s this got to do with peace? Everything. Fascism was gaining ground all over the world and, in 1933, had triumphed in Germany. Its
international significance was not immediately grasped by those who should have known but we, on the Left, were the first to coin the warning slogan: “Fascism means war!”
I joined the League of Nations Union and began to take part in mass demonstrations demanding that our government should unite with others and act against Hitler’s aggression. Our demands were ignored
and Hitler was allowed to seize neighbouring countries and - in the case of Czechoslovakia - actively helped to do so. A blind eye was
turned to Mussolini’s attack on Abyssinia. An influential body of Establishment opinion was sympathetic to the Nazis. One peer of the
realm even suggested that we should cede parts of our empire to them and this was all part of a policy of appeasement pursued by Prime Minister Chamberlain.
If the world community had stood up against Germany, showing purpose and unity in face of Nazi threats, it could have prevented German rearmament. The Nazis could have been starved of the necessary resources and outside pressure could have stimulated and helped the anti-Nazi resistance inside Germany, which was still considerable.
The Soviet Union proposed such a united front of all democratic countries (including itself) to halt Hitler’s plans to take over most of
Europe. For reasons already suggested (and because many hoped Nazi Germany would destroy the S.U.) this was eventually rejected by Britain, France - and Poland. The peace movement had failed to prevent this and a terribly bloody war was the result. Why did we fail? Partly, at least, through disunity.
The pacifists refused to countenance any violence, even in self- defence, whilst Left sectarians refused to consider the slightest
compromise of their ‘principles’. But compromise was essential if a united anti-fascist movement was to have the slightest hope of
success. Millions of lives were at stake.
Is there a lesson in all this for us in today’s peace movement?