Political Discipline in a Free Society by H J Blackham

Author:H J Blackham [Blackham, H J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135026103
Google: hjyxQ3JhVTkC
Goodreads: 17844533
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

1 S Maccoby, English Radicalism, 1786-1832, p. 132. See also A. Aspinall, The Early English Trade Unions (1949), chap. ii.

2 Central Administration in Britain, by W. J. M. MacKenzie and J. W. Grove, P. 355.

3 Lewis Mumford: Introduction to The Culture of Cities.

Chapter V

Perpetual Peace

Argument

ANY CONFIDENCE restored by reflection upon an analysis of social process at home cannot be stretched by any ingenuity to cover what is going on in the field of international relations. Other things being equal, it is the micro-climate of the field which affects most closely the health of the crop, but when the weather threatens one of the major natural disasters, other things are not equal.

In modern times in Europe, the ‘balance of power’ has been the maxim of prudent foreign policy for the preservation, or restoration, of peace. This works as a voluntary system of collective security, if it does work, and it has worked at best very imperfectly, and during the last seventy years has been totally inadequate to cope with the arms race which has made the world increasingly and at present insanely insecure. The idea voiced today impressively by American liberals that the nuclear deterrent, the ‘balance of terror’, can keep the world safe for power diplomacy, which high-minded Western statesmanship will use to build up an international system for the free nations, is tragically deceived. Even if the arms race is not a mill-race swelling in volume and accelerating in velocity and drawing in ever more of the nation’s brains, energies, and resources, it is a distraction or a preoccupation likely to end in unprecedented destruction unless it is ended soon by a deliberate decision of the Powers. Until there is an effective decision to halt what is going on and has been going on and to institute an altogether different system of defence, a world-wide system of collective security, danger increases and the decision becomes more difficult. Verbal declarations in the highest quarters that this is ultimately necessary cover drift on in the old policies and active cultivation of disastrous alternatives. At the same time, serious objections to a collective system and the old motives against it diminish. Time is against hope, and the agonizing reappraisal has not yet taken place.

1. Indefensible Defence

Suppose the basic conditions for creative social control have been established in Britain, that there is a working party system, a preponderant volume of public interest, and in the making a sound educational system and a managed economy, and suppose that the principles, rules, and techniques of a planning democracy are thoroughly understood and accepted, the confidence that might spring up and the hopes one might nurse are blasted by the prospect abroad. If historically on the domestic front things were never in so good a form for organic development, incipient enthusiasm turns to anguish unless some way can be found to disperse the gathering gloom. Nobody can take much interest in a tender plant that is doomed to a climate it cannot survive. A generation that

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