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‘Only by a firm adherence to righteous principles sustained by all the necessary instrumentalities…can the dangers which close in so steadily upon us and upon the peace of Europe be warded off and overcome. That they can be overcome must be our hope and our faith.’
Churchill in House of Commons, November 5 1936, Hansard (317) cols. 312–13‘It is a very melancholy thing to find that one is a true prophet. The Labour movement has warned the country ever since 1932 that yielding to aggression in one part of the world meant an increase of aggression in another. We are now paying in anxiety for a wrong foreign policy assumed since Labour was thrown out of office. I pray heaven that we may not have to pay in blood.’
Attlee at Limehouse Town Hall, September 18 1938, The Times, September 19‘Our proposal is the building up of a League not only of peace and security, but on the principle of social justice. You cannot preach the brotherhood of man abroad and practise the Means Test at home.’
Attlee at Old Kent Road Baths, March 7 1938, Daily Herald, March 8Between 1936 and 1939 the Labour movement found that the positions it had reached doctrinally in the previous three years acquired practical point. This happened as foreign policy moved from being a matter of report to being a matter of threat, and hostility to dictators on ideological grounds was supplemented by hostility on behalf of the British Empire.
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- The Impact of HitlerBritish Politics and British Policy 1933-1940, pp. 209 - 222Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1975