Why Resign ?

By SIR RICHARD ACLAND IN recent times the powers of organisations and of their controllers have increased and the stature of the individual member has diminished. Naturally the individual must often expect to bow to the majority decision of his fellows. It is a matter of give and take. But every now and then issues arise where the choice is presented between surrender of all one's principles for the sake of organisational solidarity—and resignation. It is arguable that in recent years too many have chosen surrender. I chose surrender myself at least once in the case of Seretse Khama: looking back on it, I believe now that I was wrong.

'Stay inside,' one is-tald. and argue your case from within.' Those who offer this advice do not notice that argument from within is often tolerated by the controllers of the organisation just so long as it will clearly fall short of being effective. When it goes further, the individual member is snuffed out. Apart . altogether, therefore, from the merits of the particular issue. 1 believe that organisations themselves might become more adaptable and resilient if it were shown that the individual dissident had a chance of taking an issue outside the organisa- tion by appealing to a wider jury.

Let no one suppose, however, that an organisation such as a political party consists only of the mighty men up at the top controlling a soulless machine. The organisation also compre- hends hundreds of ordinary men and women whose work at its grass roots has become an integral part of their social life. It is no easy thing to ask : 'Shall I, tomorrow, by my own act, impose upon these my friends all the agonies of decision and indecision which this challenge will bring?'

On the issue of the hydrogen bomb there were others whose feelings had also to be considered. All over the country there are men and women—many of them the very salt of the earth —who see Britain's decision to make the hydrogen bomb as the final turning down the road which points only to disaster. With the leadership of both political parties agreed upon its manufacture, these people suffered the agony of watching the life-arid-death issue passing by default.

I can only hope that on a balance of consequences I was not wrong in feeling that a challenge ought to be made.

Turning to the issues themselves, 1 believe in a policy which consists of two equal and interlocking parts. By inevitable processes, one only of these parts has been suddenly high- lighted in the glare of publicity while the other has passed almost unnoticed. saving the world simply by abandoning the manufacture of the H-bomb and leaving all else unchanged. Our role might be decisive if we simultaneously stopped making the bomb, and set our course towards spending, as soon as possible. through international agencies, at least two or three hundred millions per year in helping the peoples of under-developed countries towards the fulfilment of their aspirations.

These are twin aspects of a single policy, and neither is significant without the other. If we resolutely embarked upon the' constructive international effort, there is every reason to believe that others would follow on a proportionate or almost proportionate scale. But it is no use for individual great white powers to expend their treasure in vast bi-lateral offers to governments of poor countries through agencies which remain under the effective control of the great. It has to be a genuine international effort, or nothing. Christianity and scientific humanism for once unite in proclaiming the compulsive moral- ity of what I propose. But if a less worthy though possibly more urgent argument be needed, it is surely almost certain that the long-term strategy of the Kremlin depends far, less on H-bombs than on the social disintegration of countries where poverty mocks at the known potentialities of our age. If we do not care enough about the peoples of these countries to co- operate on at least the scale I have suggested, we shall not deserve to withstand the Communist challenge; and no armoury of H-bombs will equip us to survive it.

The thermo-nuclear weapon quickly teaches us to say with our lips that it has transformed all the fundamental assump- tions about warfare; but these same simple basic notions about fighting, which have been valid in all the millennia from the caveman to Hitler, are much slower to release their grip upon our emotions and upon the deep inner core of our being.

In all these millennia, for example, it has never occurred to any military leader or to any armchair strategist to doubt the truth of the axiom : 'I shall increase the strength of my ally if I range my power beside his.'

Quite suddenly, this axiom ceases to be true.

Two nations, and only two, each possess or soon will possess the physical power to bring total and instant destruction to each other. There is no destruction which is more total than total, nor any that is more instant than instant. The Americans, without our aid, can do it to the Russians; the Russians will soon be able to do it to the Americans. We hope that each will be so terrified of the other that neither will commit any of the many different drastic actions which might run the risk of launching the thermo-nuclear holocaust. This—which we call 'the deterrent'—is the short-term hope for mankind.

In the short run, it is quite a real hope; and, paradoxically, we ought to extend deep sympathy and understanding to the people and rulers of two great nations who live today hag- ridden by mutual fear and hate, in order that the rest of man- kind may cling to this short-term hope.

In the short run, we can add nothing to the hope. If the Russians are not deterred from some drastic action by the thought of what may be coming to them from the Americans, they will not turn back from it by reflecting on what might be added to the American counter-thrust by the relatively far smaller attack of the RAF. We add nothing to the deterrent power of their threat.

Meanwhile, what of the long run? Are we to depend for ever on this equipoise of mutual hate and fear? Is every generation of children from now until the end of time to grow up in a world wracked by the tension between two nations with powers of unlimited destruction?

If so, where is there any long-term hope at all? And, if not, what are we to do in the hope that the world outlook in 1995 may be a little different from the world outlook today?

Clearly there are no sure answers to this last question. Certainly there is no quick answer. I am strongly in favour of talks, now—between the leaders of as many countries as possible. But it is wishful thinking to suppose that any such talks could quickly lead the Americans and the Russians to abandon all the great armoury of weapons with which they can menace destruction. They hate and fear each other far too much for that.

I would go further. The tension exists between two poles of mutual hate and fear; nothing can ever be done from within either of those poles to relax the deadly tension. From within the two poles nothing can happen except the intensification of fear leading to the quest for more power, power creating more fear and hate, mutual distrust building an ever-growing tension.

It is not certain that anything can ever be done from outside to assuage the tension between the two giants. Perhaps all efforts are foredoomed to failure. We cannot tell in advance. But at least from outside there might be a chance.

If by refraining from the manufacture of the weapons of mass destruction we could stand outside the immediate arena of mutual fear and hate; if we could at the same time embark upon a significant international attack upon the poverty of the world; then there would be a chance that we and other peoples working with us might slowly find the way of creating an entirely new atmosphere in the world. If all the time we resolved to extend to both of the two great nations of the world the maximum possible of sympathy and understanding, as well as of constructive criticism and forgiveness, then there is just a chance that over the decades the two of them might in the end find the means of tolerating one another.

It is not a certainty. Indeed, it involves appalling risk. But along these lines the long-term prospect 'would be brightened by a slender ray of hope.

If, by contrast, we make the H-bomb and the A-bomb and the strategic bomber force and all the rest of the deadly para- phernalia, then we too enter into the arena of inescapable fear and hate. We disqualify ourselves from playing any effective part in enlarging the long-term hope of mankind.