Page "Clement Attlee" Paragraph 26

Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, the Labour Party's official policy, supported by Attlee, was to oppose rearmament and support internationalism and collective security under the League of Nations.

At the Labour Party conference at Southport in 1934, Attlee declared that " We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty.

We are deliberately putting a world order before our loyalty to our own country.

We say we want to see put on the statute book something which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country ".

During a debate on defence a year later Attlee declared " We are told in the White Paper that there is danger against which we have to guard ourselves.

We do not think you can do it by national defence.

We think you can only do it by moving forward to a new world — a world of law, the abolition of national armaments with a world force and a world economic system.

I shall be told that that is quite impossible ".