Letter to Sunday Telegraph

Janet Daley’s reflections (27 July) on “Europe’s ignominious failure to rise to the most serious threat to world stability in a generation” (i.e. Russia’s actions against the Ukraine), bring to mind its uncanny resemblance to the attempts by the League of Nations in 1935 to impose sanctions on Italy for its conquest of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).
 
Then as now, Britain was the only major power to impose sanctions which actually cost its economy something.  Then as now, the other major powers continued to trade with Italy – the USA shipping oil, France refusing outright to impose sanctions, Germany as now continuing to sell its machinery and cars.
 
As with Putin today, Mussolini took no notice of sanctions.  After 9 months Britain recommended to the League of Nations the lifting of sanctions on an Italy which now saw Britain as its main opponent in the world- in the Mediterranean – a key British interest.  With two key British interests today – BP and City finance – under threat from the Russian response to sanctions, is history about to repeat itself?
 
Yours truly

A letter to the Editor of the Times which was published on 30th December 2011.

With economic forecasting having rather less predictive power than tips for the 3.30 at Newmarket, one must admire the confidence with which the Centre for Economics and Business Research makes its selections for the league table of major economies in 2020, eight years away (report, Dec. 26th).  Russia and India are advanced to 4th and 5th places in the world, which would require an average annual rate of growth of almost 12 per cent, a figure not achieved even by China during a period – now ending – when the West has displayed an almost inexhaustible appetite for its goods.

Brazil is shown as overtaking Britain for 2011 although the GDP figures for Britain are not in, and official figures for Brazil are usually two to three years in arrears, even if one could rely on their being collected on the same basis to three significant figures as displayed in the Centre’s league table.

Perhaps the CEBR should try horse racing.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th January 1993.

Your report that Britain is being pressed to give up its permanent seat and veto on the UN Security Council needs a more robust response than your editorial (Jan. 27th).

If the level of current financial contributions were to be the criterion for membership, then both Russia and China would have to give up their seats before Britain did; the former because it has no foreign exchange to pay its $230 million assessment, the latter because it pays less than Spain or the Netherlands.

It would, however, be sensible and prudent for Britain to increase its contribution by the relatively paltry sum of £30 million and to act more conspicuously on behalf of the Commonwealth, to which it owed a great deal at the UN during the Falklands crisis.

At the same time, President Clinton should be reminded that it is not just cash to support a bloated UN bureacracy that matters, but a record of long-term willingness and ability to act physically in support of UN objectives.  In this respect, Britain’s record, from Korea to Bosnia, is second only to that of the United States.  Germany and Japan need to work their passage before making claims.

France and China were not victors in the Second World War as you state: they were the two principal defeated Allied countries, whose liberation was due to the victories of the other three permanent members of the Security Council.  Stalin recognised this and opposed their membership of the Security Council for that very reason.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 16th November 1986.

Messrs Szakaly and Nadasy (Letters, November 9th) are wrong to propagate anew that old canard that Britain’s action at Suez in 1956 gave the Russians carte blanche to crush the Hungarian revolt.  In so far as two international actions can be, these two were entirely separate.  With or without Suez, there was never, nor has there ever been, a chance that the US and Britain would confront the Russians over Hungary, or over other Eastern European States for that matter.  The Russians know this and have known this at least since Churchill-Stalin discussions in October, 1944.

The reasons are that Hungary was conquered by Russians arms in 1944-45, having taken part in the invasion of Russia as an ally of Germany in 1941-43.  Between the wars Hungary was a military dictatorship within the German sphere of influence, while during the First World War she was, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of course again an ally of Germany against Russia and Britain.

While there was heartfelt sympathy for Hungary at the time of the abortive revolt in 1956, the fact is, so far as Britain is concerned, that no promises were made to Hungary and none were broken.