The following is text of a letter from Mr. Sydney Silverman M.P. to John Silkin, "I did not hear the Prime Minister's recent speech to the party meeting but it has, as you know, been much publicized (apparently deliberately) and in the absence of any repudiation, I must assume that the reports are accurate, I think it is the most dangerous attack on social democracy ever made in this country in m y time, "I am afraid it is no use writing to the Prime Minister. He is teosure he is right, too contemptuous of other people's opinions, too neglectful of Cromwell's advice to the protesting divines - " I pray you gentlemen think it possible you may be mistaken." But I have always been grateful for your own accessibility, your readiness to listen and your willingness to understand. I have, of course, had more than “one bite". I have differed from majority of my parliamentary colleagues on a@ number of occasions. Perhaps I may list a few of them. "Before the War I opposed the Party's support for non-intervention in Spain. I bitterly resisted the cold-shouldering of the Soviet Union which alone defeated the genuine collective security which could have stopped Hitler in time and saved the world from the tragedies of the Second World War, During that War I have opposed the mass obliteration of the civilian populations of open German states and the substitution of unconditional surrender for the formulation and attempted agreement of constructive war aims so that we should not once again, having won a costly war, lose the peace for which we fought, I may have been wrong on some or all of these causes, But I fought them in. good company and I think most people in our party would today concede that most of them were right. I do not know what Harold Wilson thought of them then. Perhaps he was too young to know or care, But I suspect that with all the wisdom of hindsight he would accept them now. "After the War I fought the first Labour Government on a number of issues, I thought they were wreng about Palestine. That the adoption of the Fulton policy was a disaster and I wanted a firmer and warmer policy of reconciliation with the Soviet Union. So, I suspect did he. I wanted to develop East-West trade both on economic and political grounds. So did he. I thought German rearmament a mistake. So did he. I thought the colossal rearmament programme following the outbreak of the Korean war was unjustifiabdle, unrealizable and calculated to produce nothing but a runaway inflation which would sacrifice all the achievements of postwar economic reconstruction and, as an incidental consequence, the loss of power for half a generation. So did Harold Wilson. And we were right. "In Gaitskell's day I thought the elaborate endeavour to shelve or abandon the economic basis of the Socialist criticism of capitalist society and the basis of social reconstruction short-sighted, misconceived and fundamentally unsound. So did he, I thought the pretence that this country could be an independent nuclear power was dishonest and should be abandoned, So did he. I cannot say that I succeeded in many of these causes, at least not at the time nor can I remember that I ever derived any advantage from their advocacy. "But it is some comfort to know that these rebellious minority views are now accepted in the party in virtual unanimity and if Harold Wilson is now
Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister with undisputed and unchallengeable authority, that is largely because he advocated them too. So, if today I disagree fundamentally with some major policies to which the establishment seems inexorably committed, I can say two things in defence of my right to do so. One - as a greater man once claimed that I have not always been wrong, and two, that by his own example, it is the duty of a loyal member of a party, if he thinks that his leaders are wrong, both to say so and to act accordingly. Whoever may have the right to deny the truth of either proposition, HaroJd Wilson is not one of them, "Now a short word about each of the four issues to which the speech referred. 1. Vietnam, I do not believe that Mr, Wilson really thinks that U.S. policy is right. He may think that it does not help to denounce it. But it certainly does not help to endorse it. Several months ago he disassociated this country from the policy the U.S. has now resumed. Is it wrong for British socialists to continue to condemn it? He recently defended that resumption, accepting the United States assertion that North Vietnam had broken the truce. They did not break the truce, and therefore the continued asseveration that it is all North Vietnam's fault is a lie of almost Hitlerian quality and scope, 2. The Common Market I continue to defend the position which he and Hugh Gaitskell before him adopted and which he has not yet formally abandoned. If I needed his licence to do that, when did I lose it?
3. The Wages Policy Nobody is against the wages policy. What we oppose is the endeavour to get one by imposing the sanctions of the criminal law, That is not merely foolish and unworkable, it is the abandonment of a clear socialist principle in favour of something very like a Fascist principle. 4. Armaments The present expenditure is as wrong now as was the expenditure which in 1950 he resigned from a Socialist Cabinet rather than defend. It is additionally wrong today, when it renders the achievement of any other
socialist objective, including peace itself, virtually impossible. These are all matters to which the Government and the Prime Minister is pledged to Parliament and people alike. Of course, it is the duty of a.Government to govern. Of course it is the duty of its supporters to sustain it in Parliament in doing so. But it is the duty of. the Government to govern as it promised the people it would govern, It is the duty of those elected to support it to see that it does and to withdraw their support when it does not. That is what I have done and will continue to do, Finally I would remind the Prime Minister that there have been many socialist tragedies in Burope in our time, This may be our last chance to avoid another and the greatest.
- "In tragic life, God wot,
-,No villain need be} Passions spin
the plots: We are betrayed by what is false within."