17 DECEMBER 1965, Page 11

Spectator's Notebook

THE Prime- Minister, I hope, goes to the United States to explain and to listen, not to advise. He has left behind him a Foreign Office

Blue Book on the British involvement in the Indo-China conflict since 1945 and the Plowden report on the future of the British aircraft industry. The timing of both these documents is clearly deliberate.

The Blue Book appears when the pressure from the left over Vietnam is again rising. It is no doubt meant to reassure the critics of US policy of Britain's conscientious wish to adhere to the Geneva Agreements of 1954. In fact it will do nothing of the kind; it will merely persuade the critics, who do not believe in aggression from the North, to urge even harder that the Geneva agree- ments be adhered to unilaterally by the US and South Vietnam, who did not sign them.

Our confusion over Vietnam is largely due to our refusal to recognise the extent of the aggression from the North early enough, and a persistent belief that the Geneva Agreements still had some practical value. Some people cling to this belief still and if Mr. Wilson is among them, he should be enlightened in Washington. President Johnson will tell him no doubt of a renewed US offer of peace talks: if, as it most certainly will be, this is refused, the US war of compellance will be further stepped up, perhaps by the mining of the port of Haiphong. This is the kind of thing Mr. Wilson will have to explain to his party when he returns. If some of them refuse to recognise the character of the Vietnam war even then, he at least should not be among them. Whether he will bring himself to say so is another matter.