Konni Zilliacus, was born on 13th September 1894. His father, Konni
Zilliacus Senior, had been involved in the struggle to obtain the
independence of Finland from Russia,
and was at the time living in exile in Japan.
His mother, Lilian Grafe, was from the United States.
Zilliacus
attended schools in Sweden, Finland
and the United States. In January 1909 the family
moved to England and Konni and his brother
Laurin were sent to Beadles School near Petersfield. While at school
Zilliacus became friends with the sons of Josiah
Wedgwood. He spent several vacations at the Wedgwood home and
it was here that he first developed an interest in politics.
In
1912 Zilliacus entered Yale University where
he studied science, social science and history. As soon as he graduated
in 1915 he returned to England in order to take part in the First
World War. He tried to join the Royal Flying
Corps but
was rejected because he was a Finnish citizen. He therefore enlisted
as a medical orderly and served in a military hospital in France.
After a year he was taken ill with diphtheria and was forced to return
home.
Shocked
by what he had seen on the Western Front,
Zilliacus joined the Union of Democratic Control.
He also worked as an aide to Noel
Buxton before
becoming private secretary to Norman Angell.
Zilliacus also wrote articles on foreign affairs for The
Nation.
In
January 1918, Robert Cecil sent Josiah
Wedgwood
to gather intelligence concerning Bolshevik
power
and influence in Siberia. Wedgwood took
Zilliacus with him as he could speak French, German, Italian, Swedish
and Russian. When General Alfred
Knox arrived
in Vladivostok he appointed Zilliacus as his intelligence officer.
Zilliacus disapproved of British intervention in the Russian
Revolution and when Winston Churchill
lied in the House of Commons about what
was going on in Siberia, he leaked information to C.
P. Scott at the Manchester Guardian
and Leonard
Woolf of
the Daily Herald.
On
his return to London in December 1918,
Zilliacus joined the Labour Party "because
it was fighting intervention in Russia and stood for a sane peace
settlement and a strong League of Nations." The following year
he joined the League of Nations as a member
of the Information Section of the League Secretariat.
The
League had no armed forces and had to rely on boycotts (sanctions)
to control the behaviour of member states. In January 1923 France
occupied the Ruhr. Six months later Italy
bombed the Greek island of Corfu. When the League of Nations discussed
these events, the governments of France and Italy threatened to withdraw
from the organization. As a result, the League of Nations decided
not to take any action. Zilliacus wrote to his friend Norman
Angell: "I feel depressed and fed up. Who could have imagined
things would turn out as badly as this?"
In
1924 the League of Nations was given a
boost when James Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur
Henderson and
Edouard
Herriot,
leading politicians in Britain and France, visited Geneva in 1924.
Hugh Dalton, wrote enthusiastically, "The
League seemed to have come to life again, and to have gained a new
significance."
The
League of Nations also had success in adverting wars in the border
disputes between Bulgaria-Greece (1925), Iraq-Turkey (1925-26) and
Poland-Lithuania (1927). It also had noticable success in the areas
of drugs control, refugee work and famine relief.
In
1931 Philip Snowden, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, suggested that the Labour government should introduce
new measures to balance the budget. This included a reduction in unemployment
pay. Several ministers, including Arthur
Henderson, George Lansbury and Joseph
Clynes, refused to accept the cuts in benefits and resigned from
office.
Ramsay MacDonald was angry that his
Cabinet had voted against him and decided to resign. When he saw George
V that night, he was persuaded to head a new coalition government
that would include Conservative and
Liberal leaders as well as Labour
ministers. Most of the Labour Cabinet totally rejected the idea and
only three, Jimmy Thomas, Philip
Snowden and John Sankey agreed to
join the new government.
In October, Ramsay MacDonald called
an election. The 1931 General Election was
a disaster for the Labour Party with only
46 members winning their seats. Zilliacus was completely opposed to
the National Government. He was especially opposed to its foreign
policy and argued "that they are not only making the next war
inevitable, but losing it before it has begun."
The
League of Nations faced a fresh crisis in September 1931 when the
Japanese Army occupied large areas of
Manchuria, a province of China. The
Chinese government appealed to the League of Nations under Article
11 of the Covenant. China also appealed to the United
States as a signatory of the Kellogg Pact.
Eventually it was agreed that the League of Nations would establish
a commission of inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Lytton.
The
Lytton Report was published in October 1932. The report acknowledged
that Japan had legitimate grievances against
the Chinese Government. However, the report condemned the Japanese
invasion of Manchuria and refused to recognise Manchukao as an independent
state. When the League adopted the report Japan resigned from the
organization.
Zilliacus
continued to campaign in the Labour Party
for the League of Nations. He became a close advisor to Arthur
Henderson and
helped to influence the views of Clement Attlee,
Hugh Dalton and Walter
Citrine. Zilliacus, along with Philip
Noel-Baker, also helped Henderson write the book Labour's
Way to Peace (1934) and the foreign policy section of Labour's
1935 election manifesto For Socialism and
Peace.
Zilliacus
believed that Germany and Italy
posed the greatest threat to world peace. He argued for the creation
of an "inner ring" of states within the League
of Nations,
led by Britain, France
and the Soviet Union. He also proposed the
election by proportional representation of a new international debating
chamber of the League. His views influenced some leading British politicians
such as Arthur Henderson,
Clement Attlee, Herbert
Morrison and
Hugh Dalton,
but the idea was rejected by the government led by Stanley
Baldwin.
In October
1935 Benito
Mussolini sent
in General Pietro
Badoglio
and the Italian Army into
Ethiopia. The League of Nations condemned
Italy's aggression and in November imposed sanctions. This included
an attempt to ban countries from selling arms, rubber and some metals
to Italy. Some political leaders in France
and Britain opposed sanctions arguing that
it might persuade Mussolini to form an alliance with Adolf
Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Over 400,000
Italian troops fought in Ethiopia. The
poorly armed Ethiopians were no match for Italy's modern tanks and
aeroplanes. The Italians even used mustard
gas on
the home forces and were able to capture Addis Ababa, the capital
of the country, in May 1936, forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee
to England.
Zilliacus
was devastated by the League's failure to prevent Italy conquering
Ethiopia. He was also angry about the League's failure to influence
events during the Spanish
Civil War. Zilliacus personally supported the right of
the Republican Government to purchase
arms in defence of the open intervention of Germany
and Italy in the conflict, arguing that
the struggle was "a further development of the international
fascist offensive against socialism and democracy."
In the
1930s Zilliacus wrote a series of books and pamphlets about foreign
affairs. As he was an official of the League
of Nations he wrote under the pen-name Vigilantes. This
included The Dying Peace (1933),
Abyssinia (1935), Inquest
on Peace (1935) and The
Road to War (1937). The last
two books were published by Victor
Gollancz and his Left Book Club.
In September
1938, Neville Chamberlain, the British
prime minister, met Adolf Hitler at his
home in Berchtesgaden. Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia
unless
Britain supported Germany's plans to takeover the Sudetenland.
After discussing the issue with the Edouard
Daladier (France) and Eduard Benes
(Czechoslovakia), Chamberlain informed Hitler that his proposals were
unacceptable.
Benito
Mussolini suggested to Adolf Hitler
that one way of solving this issue was to hold a four-power conference
of Germany, Britain, France and Italy. This would exclude both Czechoslovakia
and the Soviet Union, and therefore increasing
the possibility of reaching an agreement and undermine the solidarity
that was developing against Germany.
The meeting
took place in Munich on 29th September, 1938. Desperate to avoid war,
and anxious to avoid an alliance with Joseph
Stalin and the Soviet Union, Neville
Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier
agreed that Germany could have the Sudetenland. In return, Hitler
promised not to make any further territorial demands in Europe. Adolf
Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Edouard
Daladier and Benito Mussolini now
signed the Munich Agreement which transferred
the Sudetenland to Germany.
The League
of Nations remained silent on the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Zilliacus now resigned from the Secretariat in protest against the
way the matter had been dealt withby the League. He wrote at the time
that "the League was dead and the fight was now at home. I knew
there was no hope any longer, that no power on earth could avert war."
Over the next few months Zilliacus wrote two pamphlets about the crisis
in Europe, Why the League Has Failed
(1938) and Why We Are Losing the Peace
(1938). He also attacked Neville Chamberlain
and his foreign policy in Appeasement and
Armageddon (1939).
During
the Second World War Zilliacus worked in the
censorship division of the Ministry of Information. His main responsibility
was to censor the reports written by Swedish journalists based in
Britain. After the Soviet Union entered the
war on the side of the Allies he also worked for the Ministry of Information's
Soviet Relations Department. Zilliacus was also a member of the Home
Guard in London and a regular
contributor to Tribune.
Zilliacus
was also a member of the 1941
Committee. One of its members, Tom
Hopkinson, later claimed that the motive force behind the
organization was the belief that if the Second World
War was to be won "a much more coordinated effort would be
needed, with stricter planning of the economy and greater use of scientific
know-how, particularly in the field of war production." Other
members of the group included J.
B. Priestley,
Edward
G. Hulton,
Kingsley Martin,
Richard
Acland,
Michael Foot, Peter
Thorneycroft, Thomas Balogh, Richie
Calder, Tom
Winteringham, Vernon
Bartlett, Violet Bonham Carter,
Victor Gollancz, Storm
Jameson and David Low.
Zilliacus
stood as the Labour Party candidate in Gateshead
in the 1945 General Election. He won 36,736
votes and had a majority of 17,719 majority over Thomas Magnay (National
Liberal). In the House of Commons Zilliacus
was a great supporter of the United Nations
and urged it to get involved in settling the political disputes in
Cyprus, India, Indonesia, and Iran.
In
the House of Commons Zilliacus associated
with a group of left-wing members that included John
Platts-Mills, Ian
Mikardo, Lester Hutchinson,
Leslie Solley, Sydney
Silverman, Geoffrey Bing, Emrys
Hughes, D. N. Pritt, William
Warbey, William Gallacher
and
Phil Piratin. Zilliacus
continued to write articles on foreign affairs for a variety of radical
newspapers and magazines including Reynold's
News, Daily Herald, Daily
Worker,
Tribune, and New
Statesman.
Zilliacus
was highly critical Ernest Bevin, Britain's
foreign minister: In a speech in March 1946 he criticized the decision
to spend one third of the national budget on defence. He then went
on to point out: "Since
the general election there has been no sign of any realistic insight
into what is happening in the world, no sober appraisal of our own
position or the limitations of our power ... We have sunk into ancient
ruts, running back to the nineteenth century, and punctuated by two
world wars. We are trying to make the ghost of Palmerston walk again."
The following
year Zilliacus joined Richard Crossman,
Michael Foot and Ian
Mikardo to produce Keep Left.
In the pamphlet the authors criticized the cold
war policies of the United States and urged
a closer relationship with Europe in order to create a "Third
Force" in politics. This included the idea of nuclear disarmament
and the formation of a European Security Pact.
Zilliacus
travelled widely in Europe and in 1949 met Joseph
Stalin and Josip Tito.
He disliked the Soviet leader and told his wife: "There is not
a scrap of humanity in Stalin." He got on well with Tito and
gave him his full support in his struggle to obtain the independence
of Yugoslavia from the Soviet
Union.
In April
1948 John
Platts-Mills organized
a petition in support of Pietro Nenni and
the Italian Socialist Party in its general election campaign. He gained
support from 27 other MPs including Zilliacus. This went against government
policy and Platts-Mills was expelled from the party and Zilliacus
was warned about his future conduct. He
was sent a letter by the Labour Party's National Executive Council
listing examples of how his speeches and writings had included "attacks
on the Labour Government's foreign policy." Zilliacus replied
that it was his "prime duty as a Member of Parliament to stick
to the foreign policy statements and pledges on which I fought the
general election."
Ernest
Bevin signed
the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington
on 4th April 1949. Zilliacus completely opposed the treaty arguing
that it went against the charter of the United
Nations, would accelerate the arms race and make it more difficult
to achieve a united Europe. On 12th May, 1949, Zilliacus was only
one of only six Labour MPs to vote against the signing of the NATO
treaty. Four days later Zilliacus, along with Leslie
Solley,
were expelled from the Labour Party.
At the
Labour Party Annual Conference held in Blackpool the following month,
delegates appealed for the National Executive Council to reverse its
decision on expelling Zilliacus and Solley. Geoffrey
Bing argued that MPs must be allowed to have the freedom
to express their true opinions on political issues. Sydney
Silverman added that if the Labour Party expelled Zilliacus
and Solley for "exercising the right of dissent, we shall be
doing damage to the cause of social democracy."
Zilliacus
and the other four expelled Labour MPs, John
Platts-Mills, Leslie
Solley, D. N. Pritt
and Lester Hutchinson
formed the Labour Independent Group. However, Zilliacus broke with
this group in 1949 when they supported Joseph
Stalin in his criticisms of Josip
Tito and his government in Yugoslavia.
In October
1949 Zilliacus published I Choose Peace.
In the book he traced the history of the Cold
War, starting with the Allied invasion of Russia
in 1918. To bring an end to the division in Europe he advocated withdrawal
from NATO, direct negotiations with the
Soviet Union, and closer links with other
governments in Eastern Europe.
In the
1950 General Election Zilliacus stood as
a Labour Independent candidate in Gateshead. Although people such
as George Bernard Shaw
and J. B. Priestley
campaigned for him, he won only 5,001 votes compared to the 15,249
achieved by Arthur Moody, the official Labour
Party candidate.
When the
Labour government was defeated in 1951 General
Election, left-wing critics of Britain's foreign policy were no
longer seen as dangerous political figures. Zilliacus was readmitted
to the Labour Party in February 1952 and soon afterwards he was adopted
as the prospective candidate for Gorton, an industrial suburb of Manchester.
In the 1955 General Election Zillacus won
the seat by 269 votes.
On
2nd November, 1957, the New Statesman
published an article by J. B. Priestley
entitled Russia, the Atom and the West.
In the article Priestley attacked the decision by Aneurin
Bevan to abandon his policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
The article resulted in a large number of people writing letters to
the journal supporting Priestley's views.
Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New
Statesman, organized a meeting of people inspired by Priestley
and as result they formed the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND). Early members of this group included Zilliacus,
J. B. Priestley, Bertrand
Russell, Fenner Brockway, Frank
Cousins, Frank Allaun, Donald
Soper, Vera Brittain, Sydney
Silverman, James Cameron, Jennie
Lee, Victor Gollancz, Konni
Zilliacus, Richard Acland, A.
J. P. Taylor, Canon John Collins and
Michael Foot.
In
February 1958 Zilliacus joined Stephen Swingler,
Jo Richardson, Harold
Davies, Ian
Mikardo, Walter Monslow
and Sydney Silverman, to form Victory
for Socialism (VFS). Soon afterwards Zilliacus wrote the VFS its first
pamphlet, Policy for Summit Talks.
In the pamphlet Zilliacus argued in favour of Britain ceasing to be
a nuclear power and using its influence to replace NATO
and the Warsaw Pact by an all-European
security treaty.
Zilliacus
continued to upset the Labour Party with
his political opinions. In February 1961 was suspended for writing
an article for a magazine based in communist controlled Czechoslovakia.
An attempt was made to get Zilliacus reinstated. This was led by Tom
Driberg, a member of the National Executive Committee, however,
his suspension was not lifted until September 1961.
Zilliacus,
like others on the left, was against Britain joining the European
Economic Community (EEC). He argued that this the EEC would divide
rather than unite Europe and that it was "part of the cold war
policy that had produced NATO."
In
1965 Zilliacus joined Michael Foot, John
Mendelson, William Warbey, Russell
Kerr, Anne Kerr, Norman
Atkinson, Stan Newens, and Sydney
Silverman in protesting against American intervention in Vietnam.
However, Zilliacus and his friends were unable to persuade the Labour
prime minister, Harold
Wilson,
to condemn US policy on Vietnam.
Konni Zilliacus died of leukemia at St Bartholomew's Hospital on 6th
July 1967.
(1)
Konni Zilliacus was interviewed by J.H. Bradley for his book Bedales:
A Pioneer School (1923)
I emerged from this childhood background with two ideas and a
piece of unconscious knowledge lodged firmly in my mind: first, that
some day there was going to be a revolution in Russia, and this would
be something great and good to which all liberal and civilized people
looked forward. Second, that the Russians were a backward, barbarous
and semi-Asiatic people, from whom the rest of the world had nothing
to learn politically, although the Revolution should free the Finns
and Poles and enable the Russians to start catching up with the West.
(2)
Konni
Zilliacus, letter to C. P. Scott
(2nd July, 1920)
I have occasionally been called a
Bolshevik because I always predicted the failure of intervention,
because I sometimes find it difficult to speak with moderation of
the moral aspects and practical results of the Allies' Russian policy,
and because I belong to the Labour Party. I am not however a communist,
or even a Socialist except in a very vague and unorthodox way, and
I am not a believer in direct action, let alone the 'dictatorship
of the proletariat' or a bloody revolution. In general, I do not think
Russian political experience can afford any but very indirect lessons
to England. The war was the death struggle of our civilization. Just
as the final result of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars
was the rise of the middle class, the Russian Revolution will be the
rise of Labour and internationalism.
(3)
Konni Zilliacus, Mirror to the Present (1947)
As for
being a Marxist, I am at best an empirical pragmatic self-made semi-Marxist,
for such reading I have done has been to eke out experience and first-hand
impressions, and to help arrive at an understanding of intimately
apprehended events.
(4)
Konni Zilliacus, Why the League
Failed (1938)
The Liberal Government of 1906-14 helped to make the World
War inevitable by its power politics and Imperialism. But it did play
power politics well enough to ensure that when war came we had a united
nation, a united Europe, half the world on our side, and a cause that
at least looked good. Whereas the 'National' Government are playing
power politics with such crass incompetence that they are not only
making the next war inevitable, but losing it before it has begun.
They are rapidly producing a situation where we shall find ourselves
at war almost single-handed against all three Fascist dictatorships.
(5)
Konni Zilliacus, letter to W. P. Crozier, editor of the Manchester
Guardian, on the Spanish
Civil War (11th August, 1936)
Can't you Liberals really see that the Communists are trying -
by violent, wasteful and if you like mistaken means - to bring about
social and economic changes that must come, and that Fascism is an
attempt by violence to hold back the forces of social change? We Socialists
care as much as you Liberals for democracy and freedom, but we realize
that today, in the face of terrible danger of Fascist aggression,
the Communists are allies and not enemies, as is being shown in Spain.
(6)
Konni Zilliacus wrote about the Spanish
Civil War and the League
of Nations in his unpublished autobiography, Challenge
to Fear.
In September 1936 del Vayo had appealed to the League under Article
10 of the Covenant to provide the Spanish Government with the arms
it needed to defend its territorial integrity and political independence
against Hitler's and Mussolini's aggression. I can still remember
that black day in the Assembly, listening to Eden droning away from
the rostrum, explaining why it was contrary to the Covenant of the
League to interfere in an ideological conflict. What cunning bastards
they are, the damned hypocrites, thought I, standing there with death
in my heart, light-headed from the stench of catastrophe, feeling
a little sick with the "steely taste of defeat" in my mouth.
(7)
Konni Zilliacus, Tribune
(September, 1940)
The realistic conclusion is that the Soviet Union is not an earthly
paradise and the Bolshevik Party are not the infallible and inspired
leaders of the world proletariat, a model to be slavishly copied.
We must stand on our own feet and think things out for ourselves.
But neither is the Russian Revolution a dead loss, a total failure.
The revolution has not yet said its last word. When the power and
prestige of Fascism are broken in this war and a wave of revolution
spreads across Europe the current in Russia will once more set towards
democracy and international cooperation - but when it does it will
have to break down some pretty hard obstacles. Meanwhile, Western
Socialists while repudiating Russia as the Socialist fatherland and
Stalin as their leader should learn to regard the USSR as a great
power which is a first-class factor in world affairs and with which
it is of literally vital importance to come to terms on the broadest
possible basis - a commercial treaty, a non-aggression pact, a free
hand for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and an agreement on The
foreign policy to be pursued in the Far East and with regard to the
anti-Fascist involvement in Europe and the peace settlement.
(8)
Konni Zilliacus, Election Address (June, 1945)
Only a British Government friendly to Socialism can join effectively
in making peace in Europe.
Throughout
Europe the overthrow of Fascism has meant the downfall of capitalism,
because the political parties of the Right and the leaders of trade
and industry, with a few exceptions, have been associated with the
Fascist and Quisling dictatorships and Hitler's economic system.
Throughout
Europe, the resistance movements derive their main strength from the
workers and their allies, and are largely under Socialist and Communist
leadership. Their reconstruction programmes are based on sweeping
advances towards Socialism.
Europe
can be reconstructed, pacified and united, and democracy can be revived,
only on the basis of a new social order.
To that
policy the Soviet Union are already committed, and the French people
have given their allegiance in the recent elections.
On that
basis a Labour Government can work together with the Soviet Union
and with the popular and democratic forces in Europe that would be
irresistibly encouraged by Labour's coming into power.
That combination
of states, bound together by such purposes and policies, would be
so strong and so successful as to attract the friendship and cooperation
of the American and Chinese peoples.
On these
lines Labour would put granite foundations under the flimsy scaffolding
erected at the San Francisco Conference, and take the lead in building
a world organisation capable of guaranteeing peace and promoting the
common interests of nations.
(9)
Konni
Zilliacus wrote about Ernest
Bevin and Hugh Dalton
in his unpublished autobiography, Challenge to Fear.
He (Bevin) was a great working class leader with a fine record. But
he was tragically miscast as Labour's Foreign Secretary in 1945. For
he did not have a due to the problems facing him. He was too old and
set in his ways to learn. Or rather, to unlearn and then learn afresh:
that is, to do the kind of painful thinking that goes down to one's
own prejudices and assumptions, tests them in the light of reason
and facts, and then works out a policy that is genuinely 'realistic'
because it is rooted in reality and not to an out-of-date conception
of the world in which we are living, and harnessed to Labour's view
of the national interest and not to that of the defenders of the old
order.
Hugh Dalton
would have been far better, first of all because he really did know
a lot about foreign affairs; secondly because he knew how to manage
the Foreign Office officials, instead of being run by them; thirdly,
because he was capable of learning from experience and correcting
his mistakes; fourthly because he would listen to the views of back
bench colleagues instead of treating any criticism or comments as
an insult and relying on blind trade union loyalties and the power
of the block vote to impose on the Labour Party the Churchillian policies
that the Foreign Office had induced him to adopt.
(10)
George Bernard Shaw,
letter to the New Statesman
(16th November, 1946)
Mr. Zilliacus is not a man to be ignored. I knew him in Geneva during
his long connection with the League of Nations. He is the only internationally-minded
member of any note in the House of Common. His queer name and extraordinarily
composite nationality, backed by his supernational outlook and unique
experience, to say nothing of his friendly and democratic private
character, made him a marked figure in Geneva. He is a man who must
be attended to and his question answered if another fiasco like that
of Versailles and its sequel in 1939-45 is to be averted.
(11)
Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of
Commons (4th March, 1946)
One third of Britain's budget is on defence. I suggest that the price
is too high ... I think that we can render better service to peace
by scaling down our armaments to the point where we are solvent and
can get on with our Socialist reconstruction, rather than by lowering
the standard of living of our people and staggering into national
bankruptcy under the burden of huge armaments.
Since
the general election there has been no sign of any realistic insight
into what is happening in the world, no sober appraisal of our own
position or the limitations of our power ... We have sunk into ancient
ruts, running back to the nineteenth century, and punctuated by two
world wars. We are trying to make the ghost of Palmerston walk again.
(12)
Konni Zilliacus, letter defending his decision to vote against
the Labour government's foreign policies (January, 1949)
I hold it is my prime duty as a Member of Parliament to stick to the
foreign policy statements and pledges on which I fought the general
election and to do all I can to secure compliance with those pledges.
I know
I must appear an awkward and self-righteous sort of beggar. But I
don't do it for fun. As I see it, this is the fight for peace that
I have been waging for most of my life and that has long become inseparable
from Socialism and world government. I don't want to fight our side
- apart from sentiment, after thirty years in the Labour Party, which
is more than a party, I don't believe there is any other political
instrument that can do the job. I want to fight the Tories. But in
foreign affairs as things are, it is almost impossible to go for the
Tories without having a slam at our leaders. But I hope that in the
light of this memorandum and after the meeting the Committee may feel
reassured and able to report accordingly to the NEC.
(13)
Konni Zilliacus, interviewed in Paris (29th January, 1949)
It is obvious that the conception of civil liberties in Russia is
not at all the same as ours. If there are still people among those
present who show any surprise on hearing this, or ignore this fact,
I am certainly not one of them. Frankly I believe that it will need
at least another thirty years before countries where there has been
a social revolution, including Soviet Russia, can accept a conception
of individual liberty and rights of political minorities, such as
exists in our countries. This can only take place if a policy of friendship
towards such countries is pursued ... If one talks of war, of intervention,
it is evident that such regimes will react and mobilise. And as a
result the misdeeds of the police state will increase.
(14)
Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of
Commons (12th May, 1949)
The more we arm the more we increase fear and suspicion. The more
we increase armaments, the less strong we feel ourselves and the more
we feel the other fellow strength. In order to sustain the burden
and sacrifice of the arms race one has to foment and sustain a psychological
condition in the people who are bearing he strain, that unfits them
for peacemaking ... So much for the Atlantic Pact: it scraps the Charter
and returns to the balance of power. It commits us to a new arms race
I beg the Government to find some way before it is too late to come
back to the Charter of the United Nations ... to be conciliatory and
moderate in their attitude, not to be rushed or stampeded into recrimination,
not to put their faith in armaments, but in a wise and conciliatory
policy.
(15)
Tom Driberg,
wrote a defence of Konni Zilliacus that was presented to the Labour
Party National Executive Council (February, 1961)
It seems to me that this point illustrates what I believe to be the
truth about Zilly - that he is not in the least a Soviet stooge or
a fellow traveller (though there are, of course, some points of Soviet
policy which he approves and which coincide pretty closely with our
own Labour Party policy). He is primarily, and passionately, a United
Nations man.
I am also,
personally, convinced that, whatever his errors of judgement or indiscretions
in the past, he will now make a genuine effort to be amenable to reasonable
discipline - that he will, as I think he said, "count a hundred
before speaking" (and will not think it necessary to speak at
inordinate length and in a way offensive to his colleagues).
(16)
Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House
of Commons (17th December, 1964)
Unless
we do make radical changes in our international policies, which means
foreign policy first and defence policy as a consequence of that,
we are going to be on the rocks financially and economically, because
this country cannot support anything like the present defence budget
and at the same time supply the resources, not only in money but in
technicians, and in manpower, and machinery, and the rest, which are
needed to modernize our economy, to increase our productivity, to
expand out exports, and to fulfil the noble and ambitious social programme
to which the Labour Party has set its hand.
(16)
Konni Zilliacus, Britain and the European Economic
Community (1967)
Not only
was the EEC launched as part of the cold war policy that had produced
NATO. Its constitution, the Rome Treaty, was framed under the influence
of the great cartels, combines, monopolies and holding companies which
have dominated the life of the Six since the war. The Rome Treaty
allows planning and even rationalization for greater economic efficiency,
provided there is no interference with free competition, but rules
out planning and public ownership geared to social purposes. In short,
that in the EEC it is 'yes' to State capitalism and 'no' to Socialism.
(17)
Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of
Commons (8th March, 1966)
This whole defence debate and the Defence White Paper are shot through
with nostalgic illusions and nuclear and world military power hankerings
and posturings ... The most depressing thing about the debate is the
assumptions on both sides that we can go on indefinitely for years
and years with the greatest, costliest and deadliest arms race in
history. It will not work out like that and we must put our energy,
will, purpose and policies into transferring the mutual relations
of the great powers from the balance of power, as expressed in the
rival military alliances, to their obligations, purposes and principles
of the UN Charter ... We are no longer a first-class military power.
But we could be a first-class political power and a first-class force
for peace.
(17)
The Times (7th July, 1967)
It was impossible to fit Zilliacus easily into any known political
category whether as extreme left winger, fellow traveller or crypto
communist. In the eyes of some he appeared to be, at times, one or
all of these things, but somehow he managed to elude precise definition
as any of them. His immense fecundity of ideas overflowed all over
the place, carrying him into excesses of unorthodoxy which he could
defend with elaborate logic as being in strictest accord with the
true Socialist canon. He was always convinced it was the others that
were out of step.
(19)
Ian Mikardo, statement issued after the
death of Konni Zilliacus (27th July, 1967)
Zilly was in many ways the greatest international Socialist of my
time. It is for that reason, and only for that reason, he earned the
distinction of being refused a visa to the United States, and being
refused a visa to the Soviet Union, and of being expelled from the
Labour Party all within the same year. He never gave up fighting for
the principles of the United Nations, based on the all-inclusive covenants
of the Charter, no matter who opposed him, whether it was Ernest Bevin
or Wall Street or Stalin. He was completely devoted in the best sense
to the socialist causes which are the basis of peace.
In a way
Zilly was a non-politician. Most people who didn't know him personally
but knew him only from reading what he wrote and reading about him,
would think of him pre-eminently as a politician, but he really wasn't.
He was a man of political ideas, but he wasn't very good at politics.
The tactics, the ritual dances of parliamentary procedure and the
order paper, were in a language that wasn't contained within the eleven
he spoke. They were all foreign to him and when it really came to
the tough stuff and the in-fighting I sometimes thought of Zilly as
a child walking around a jungle of man-eating animals. That's why
he was more than once such an easy victim for the hatchet men. Zilly
was preeminently an analyst, perhaps unparalleled as a political analyst,
and perhaps even more than that a teacher, a great teacher, and not
only those like myself of his own generation learned at his feet,
but the next generation of people in our movement derived a great
deal from him and many of the new, younger men we have had in the
House of Commons in the last three years know a great deal of what
they know because of what they learned from Zilly.
(20)
James Cameron, speech
at Conway Hall on Konni Zilliacus (27th July, 1967)
It always seemed to me that Zilly's conflict with the world was not
political opposition or moral indignation but the detailed exasperation
of a gifted and experienced man who saw the fallacies of history and
who saw all the libraries of human experience unexploited and unused,
with power always in the hands of the clumsy people. I often used
to wish I had an intelligence like his so much greater would have
been my understanding, and then I sometimes was glad I had not, so
much deeper would have been my disenchantment. I am grateful, nonetheless,
that in that busy, good life he had a little time to include me.
(21)
Michael Foot, speech at Conway Hall on Konni
Zilliacus (27th July, 1967)
There was nobody to compare with him. Inquest on Peace was
in my opinion the best book of the whole of that time. It was written
from his deep knowledge, but it was written by a man who wished to
prevent a world war. Long before the Churchills or Edens ever lisped
the words collective security, Zilly understood it and was campaigning
for it, and if Zilly's advice had been taken there would have been
no Second World War, no Auschwitz, no Buchenwald, no Hiroshima or
any of the other agonies that we have subsequently endured.
He also
had, we should not forget, a marvellous gift of burning invective
which he would unleash on the heads of all deserving candidates, and
there were many available. Sometimes when I heard him in the House
of Commons pouring out his anger, I almost thought there was a streak
of aesthetic delight in the way he did it. He wanted the job to be
done as well as possible and it was right that it should be so.
I will
say no more because reference has already been made to some of the
incidents in his conflict with the Labour Party, some incidents which
were inevitable but some incidents which are so deplorable that some
of us will never forgive them and never forget them. After the world
war he had striven to prevent, he became a major exponent of the ideas
and mainsprings of policy accepted by the Soviet Union. Sometimes
charges were made against him on that account, that he was a spokesman
for their policies. This was never the case. Zilly was an independent
man the whole of his life, everyone who knew him knew that, but he
knew more of Soviet policy than the rest of us. He was the most skilled
and experienced interpreter of what made Russian policy and what actuated
Russian policy. He set about, in 1945, to stop the third world war.
He devoted all his energies to that purpose. Almost the last speech
I heard him make was the one he made at a meeting of the foreign affairs
group of the PLP about Vietnam and he raised the whole issue to a
different plane than the other speakers could do.
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