Rhetoric, reality and dissent: The Vietnam policy of the British labour government, 1964–1970

Abstract

This article analyzes the interactions between Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary Labour party in the formulation of Britain's policy towards the Vietnam conflict. Two well-known theses about the structure and functioning of Britain's major political parties serve as the point of departure for this analysis. R.T. McKenzie ( British Political Parties) contends that the distribution of power within the Labour and Conservative parties is fundamentally similar. In contrast, Samuel Beer ( British Politics in the Collectivist Age) argues that there is greater intraparty democracy in the Labour party than in the Conservative party. The article concludes that by and large the Labour Government was a reluctant supporter of U.S. Vietnam policy. The Parliamentary Labour left consistently challenged the Government on this issue but stopped short of any attempt to oust the Government. Wilson took the opinions of the extra-parliamentary party into account but refused to be bound by them. Thus, while Labour's dissidents had a degree of influence over Britain's Vietnam policy from 1964–1970, they did not exercise veto power.