The British Labour Left and U. S. Foreign Policy

Perhaps it is the absence of a substantial communist opposition in Great Britain that has caused Americans to be less concerned about the reactions of our British allies than of the continental nations to the recent foreign policy of the United States. However, if Americans assumed an almost universal British acceptance of the foreign policy adopted by the United States and formally adhered to by the British Government, the Bevanite revolt of early 1951 administered a sharp jolt. First, in April there were the resignations from the Government of Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Labour, former Minister of Health, and one of Labour's strongest and most popular leaders, Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade and one of the Government's young intellectuals, and John Freeman, a lesser figure but in the significant position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply. Their resignation speeches made it clear that, while the immediate cause of their departure was a new budgetary provision requiring a health service charge for dentures and spectacles, the root of their dissatisfaction lay in the burden of rearmament expenditures accepted by the Government in accordance with the main lines of U. S. policy.