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.