Reader TTS

The poignant sight of the dwindling band of D-Day veterans gathered at Portsmouth yesterday to commemorate the invasion’s 75th anniversary forcibly reminds us that the Second World War is

rapidly moving beyond living memory. Of the many political leaders present, only the Queen was old enough to remember the greatest conflict in history. The passing of the wartime generation

ought to prompt an awkward but necessary question: would we have acquitted ourselves as well? Not so very long ago, this question sometimes took an even sharper form: “What did you do in the

war, Daddy?” In what had once been occupied Europe, for many years that was a question seldom asked, still less answered, without guilt, shame and evasion. Even the victors preferred not to

talk about a past too painful to bear. Our language reflects this reluctance to confront that trauma. We say “world leaders” when we really mean leaders of nation states, because anything

that smacks of nationalism is taboo. And broadcasters yesterday were careful only to speak of fighting “Nazis”, to spare the feelings of our friends and allies. Chancellor Merkel was rightly

made welcome, but this was in fact a war against Germany. Yet it is necessary to delve into these depths if we are to form a judgement about how our statesmen and women would handle perhaps

no less traumatic events in the future. We hope and pray that they will not be tested in war, but we cannot be sure that they won’t be. And so any clue as to their mettle is too valuable to

be overlooked. Most of our present leaders, perhaps wisely, are too reticent to answer hypothetical questions about what they would have done in the war. But there is one exception. Jeremy

Corbyn, who was born in 1949, just four years after it ended, has spent a lifetime advocating disarmament. During the Cold War, the West resisted such calls to make itself defenceless, but

ever since 1989 we have in practice been disarming ourselves, at least in relative terms. The new aircraft carrier HMS _Queen Elizabeth_, on which the Prime Minister yesterday saw off the

veterans as they sailed to Normandy, is regarded by some top brass as a white elephant. So the Labour leader’s views can no longer be ignored. Needless to say, he too was in Portsmouth,

praising the “unimaginable heroism” of those who died “in the fight against fascism”. Thanks to some excellent sleuthing by the online platform Guido Fawkes, however, we now know how Corbyn

actually answered the question of what he would have done in the war. In 2003, he advised the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to follow the “wonderful” example of George Lansbury, the

pre-war Labour leader, whose pacifism even after Britain declared war on Nazi Germany Corbyn enthusiastically endorsed: “As war broke out in 1939 [Lansbury] wrote: ‘I am also quite certain

that the first great nation that declares its willingness to share the world’s resources, territories and markets _and also disarms _will be the safest in the world.” [My italics.] So the

Leader of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition actually believes that Britain, rather than resisting and ultimately defeating Nazi Germany, should have given up its weapons in the hope that Hitler

would follow suit. By praising Lansbury as a role model, Corbyn goes far beyond the infamous pre-war policy of appeasement that we associate with Neville Chamberlain, although it was

supported on all sides apart from Winston Churchill and a few others. Though an appeaser, Chamberlain did at least pursue rearmament, without which the Battle of Britain could not have been

fought, let alone won. But Lansbury refused to see the danger posed by Hitler, whom he met and lauded as “one of the great men of our time”. It is Lansbury’s “wonderful” example, not the

robust patriotism and steely statesmanship of his successor Clement Attlee, that Corbyn intends to follow if he ever enters Number Ten. It is not irrelevant that for the first two years of

the war, Hitler and Stalin were effectively allies, who carved up Eastern Europe under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Communists and their fellow-travellers played down their

“anti-fascist” rhetoric during that period. All his life, Corbyn has directed such rhetoric against the United States, Israel and other Western allies, while ignoring the crimes of Russia

and China and praising dictators such as Castro and Chavez. For him, there are no enemies on the Left. Dangerous enough in a Leader of the Opposition, for a Prime Minister such an attitude

would be suicidal. American officials have already hinted that a Corbyn-led UK would be excluded from intelligence-sharing under the Five Eyes arrangement. That would be merely the beginning

of our isolation. As we commemorate D-Day, we should view with deep suspicion any professions of pride in the sacrifice of those who defeated Nazi Germany, when they come from a man who

would not have given his country the wherewithal to defend itself against Hitler.