(1) Konni Zilliacus was interviewed by J.H. Bradley for his book Bedales: A Pioneer School (1923)
I emerged from this childhood background with two ideas and a piece of unconscious knowledge lodged firmly in my mind: first, that some day there was going to be a revolution in Russia, and this would be something great and good to which all liberal and civilized people looked forward. Second, that the Russians were a backward, barbarous and semi-Asiatic people, from whom the rest of the world had nothing to learn politically, although the Revolution should free the Finns and Poles and enable the Russians to start catching up with the West.
(2) Konni Zilliacus, letter to C. P. Scott (2nd July, 1920)
I have occasionally been called a Bolshevik because I always predicted the failure of intervention, because I sometimes find it difficult to speak with moderation of the moral aspects and practical results of the Allies' Russian policy, and because I belong to the Labour Party. I am not however a communist, or even a Socialist except in a very vague and unorthodox way, and I am not a believer in direct action, let alone the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or a bloody revolution. In general, I do not think Russian political experience can afford any but very indirect lessons to England. The war was the death struggle of our civilization. Just as the final result of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars was the rise of the middle class, the Russian Revolution will be the rise of Labour and internationalism.
(3) Konni Zilliacus, Mirror to the Present (1947)
As for being a Marxist, I am at best an empirical pragmatic self-made semi-Marxist, for such reading I have done has been to eke out experience and first-hand impressions, and to help arrive at an understanding of intimately apprehended events.
(4) Konni Zilliacus, Why the League Failed (1938)
The Liberal Government of 1906-14 helped to make the World War inevitable by its power politics and Imperialism. But it did play power politics well enough to ensure that when war came we had a united nation, a united Europe, half the world on our side, and a cause that at least looked good. Whereas the 'National' Government are playing power politics with such crass incompetence that they are not only making the next war inevitable, but losing it before it has begun. They are rapidly producing a situation where we shall find ourselves at war almost single-handed against all three Fascist dictatorships.
(5) Konni Zilliacus, letter to W. P. Crozier, editor of the Manchester Guardian, on the Spanish Civil War (11th August, 1936)
Can't you Liberals really see that the Communists are trying - by violent, wasteful and if you like mistaken means - to bring about social and economic changes that must come, and that Fascism is an attempt by violence to hold back the forces of social change? We Socialists care as much as you Liberals for democracy and freedom, but we realize that today, in the face of terrible danger of Fascist aggression, the Communists are allies and not enemies, as is being shown in Spain.
(6) Konni Zilliacus wrote about the Spanish Civil War and the League of Nations in his unpublished autobiography, Challenge to Fear.
In September 1936 del Vayo had appealed to the League under Article 10 of the Covenant to provide the Spanish Government with the arms it needed to defend its territorial integrity and political independence against Hitler's and Mussolini's aggression. I can still remember that black day in the Assembly, listening to Eden droning away from the rostrum, explaining why it was contrary to the Covenant of the League to interfere in an ideological conflict. What cunning bastards they are, the damned hypocrites, thought I, standing there with death in my heart, light-headed from the stench of catastrophe, feeling a little sick with the "steely taste of defeat" in my mouth.
(7) Konni Zilliacus, Tribune (September, 1940)
The realistic conclusion is that the Soviet Union is not an earthly paradise and the Bolshevik Party are not the infallible and inspired leaders of the world proletariat, a model to be slavishly copied. We must stand on our own feet and think things out for ourselves. But neither is the Russian Revolution a dead loss, a total failure. The revolution has not yet said its last word. When the power and prestige of Fascism are broken in this war and a wave of revolution spreads across Europe the current in Russia will once more set towards democracy and international cooperation - but when it does it will have to break down some pretty hard obstacles. Meanwhile, Western Socialists while repudiating Russia as the Socialist fatherland and Stalin as their leader should learn to regard the USSR as a great power which is a first-class factor in world affairs and with which it is of literally vital importance to come to terms on the broadest possible basis - a commercial treaty, a non-aggression pact, a free hand for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and an agreement on The foreign policy to be pursued in the Far East and with regard to the anti-Fascist involvement in Europe and the peace settlement.
(8) Konni Zilliacus, Election Address (June, 1945)
Only a British Government friendly to Socialism can join effectively in making peace in Europe.
Throughout Europe the overthrow of Fascism has meant the downfall of capitalism, because the political parties of the Right and the leaders of trade and industry, with a few exceptions, have been associated with the Fascist and Quisling dictatorships and Hitler's economic system.
Throughout Europe, the resistance movements derive their main strength from the workers and their allies, and are largely under Socialist and Communist leadership. Their reconstruction programmes are based on sweeping advances towards Socialism.
Europe can be reconstructed, pacified and united, and democracy can be revived, only on the basis of a new social order.
To that policy the Soviet Union are already committed, and the French people have given their allegiance in the recent elections.
On that basis a Labour Government can work together with the Soviet Union and with the popular and democratic forces in Europe that would be irresistibly encouraged by Labour's coming into power.
That combination of states, bound together by such purposes and policies, would be so strong and so successful as to attract the friendship and cooperation of the American and Chinese peoples.
On these lines Labour would put granite foundations under the flimsy scaffolding erected at the San Francisco Conference, and take the lead in building a world organisation capable of guaranteeing peace and promoting the common interests of nations.
(9) Konni Zilliacus wrote about Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton in his unpublished autobiography, Challenge to Fear.
He (Bevin) was a great working class leader with a fine record. But he was tragically miscast as Labour's Foreign Secretary in 1945. For he did not have a due to the problems facing him. He was too old and set in his ways to learn. Or rather, to unlearn and then learn afresh: that is, to do the kind of painful thinking that goes down to one's own prejudices and assumptions, tests them in the light of reason and facts, and then works out a policy that is genuinely 'realistic' because it is rooted in reality and not to an out-of-date conception of the world in which we are living, and harnessed to Labour's view of the national interest and not to that of the defenders of the old order.
Hugh Dalton would have been far better, first of all because he really did know a lot about foreign affairs; secondly because he knew how to manage the Foreign Office officials, instead of being run by them; thirdly, because he was capable of learning from experience and correcting his mistakes; fourthly because he would listen to the views of back bench colleagues instead of treating any criticism or comments as an insult and relying on blind trade union loyalties and the power of the block vote to impose on the Labour Party the Churchillian policies that the Foreign Office had induced him to adopt.
(10) George Bernard Shaw, letter to the New Statesman (16th November, 1946)
Mr. Zilliacus is not a man to be ignored. I knew him in Geneva during his long connection with the League of Nations. He is the only internationally-minded member of any note in the House of Common. His queer name and extraordinarily composite nationality, backed by his supernational outlook and unique experience, to say nothing of his friendly and democratic private character, made him a marked figure in Geneva. He is a man who must be attended to and his question answered if another fiasco like that of Versailles and its sequel in 1939-45 is to be averted.
(11) Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of Commons (4th March, 1946)
One third of Britain's budget is on defence. I suggest that the price is too high ... I think that we can render better service to peace by scaling down our armaments to the point where we are solvent and can get on with our Socialist reconstruction, rather than by lowering the standard of living of our people and staggering into national bankruptcy under the burden of huge armaments.
Since the general election there has been no sign of any realistic insight into what is happening in the world, no sober appraisal of our own position or the limitations of our power ... We have sunk into ancient ruts, running back to the nineteenth century, and punctuated by two world wars. We are trying to make the ghost of Palmerston walk again.
(12) Konni Zilliacus, letter defending his decision to vote against the Labour government's foreign policies (January, 1949)
I hold it is my prime duty as a Member of Parliament to stick to the foreign policy statements and pledges on which I fought the general election and to do all I can to secure compliance with those pledges.
I know I must appear an awkward and self-righteous sort of beggar. But I don't do it for fun. As I see it, this is the fight for peace that I have been waging for most of my life and that has long become inseparable from Socialism and world government. I don't want to fight our side - apart from sentiment, after thirty years in the Labour Party, which is more than a party, I don't believe there is any other political instrument that can do the job. I want to fight the Tories. But in foreign affairs as things are, it is almost impossible to go for the Tories without having a slam at our leaders. But I hope that in the light of this memorandum and after the meeting the Committee may feel reassured and able to report accordingly to the NEC.
(13) Konni Zilliacus, interviewed in Paris (29th January, 1949)
It is obvious that the conception of civil liberties in Russia is not at all the same as ours. If there are still people among those present who show any surprise on hearing this, or ignore this fact, I am certainly not one of them. Frankly I believe that it will need at least another thirty years before countries where there has been a social revolution, including Soviet Russia, can accept a conception of individual liberty and rights of political minorities, such as exists in our countries. This can only take place if a policy of friendship towards such countries is pursued ... If one talks of war, of intervention, it is evident that such regimes will react and mobilise. And as a result the misdeeds of the police state will increase.
(14) Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of Commons (12th May, 1949)
The more we arm the more we increase fear and suspicion. The more we increase armaments, the less strong we feel ourselves and the more we feel the other fellow strength. In order to sustain the burden and sacrifice of the arms race one has to foment and sustain a psychological condition in the people who are bearing he strain, that unfits them for peacemaking ... So much for the Atlantic Pact: it scraps the Charter and returns to the balance of power. It commits us to a new arms race I beg the Government to find some way before it is too late to come back to the Charter of the United Nations ... to be conciliatory and moderate in their attitude, not to be rushed or stampeded into recrimination, not to put their faith in armaments, but in a wise and conciliatory policy.
(15) Tom Driberg, wrote a defence of Konni Zilliacus that was presented to the Labour Party National Executive Council (February, 1961)
It seems to me that this point illustrates what I believe to be the truth about Zilly - that he is not in the least a Soviet stooge or a fellow traveller (though there are, of course, some points of Soviet policy which he approves and which coincide pretty closely with our own Labour Party policy). He is primarily, and passionately, a United Nations man.
I am also, personally, convinced that, whatever his errors of judgement or indiscretions in the past, he will now make a genuine effort to be amenable to reasonable discipline - that he will, as I think he said, "count a hundred before speaking" (and will not think it necessary to speak at inordinate length and in a way offensive to his colleagues).
(16) Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of Commons (17th December, 1964)
Unless we do make radical changes in our international policies, which means foreign policy first and defence policy as a consequence of that, we are going to be on the rocks financially and economically, because this country cannot support anything like the present defence budget and at the same time supply the resources, not only in money but in technicians, and in manpower, and machinery, and the rest, which are needed to modernize our economy, to increase our productivity, to expand out exports, and to fulfil the noble and ambitious social programme to which the Labour Party has set its hand.
(16) Konni Zilliacus, Britain and the European Economic Community (1967)
Not only was the EEC launched as part of the cold war policy that had produced NATO. Its constitution, the Rome Treaty, was framed under the influence of the great cartels, combines, monopolies and holding companies which have dominated the life of the Six since the war. The Rome Treaty allows planning and even rationalization for greater economic efficiency, provided there is no interference with free competition, but rules out planning and public ownership geared to social purposes. In short, that in the EEC it is 'yes' to State capitalism and 'no' to Socialism.
(17) Konni Zilliacus, speech in the House of Commons (8th March, 1966)
This whole defence debate and the Defence White Paper are shot through with nostalgic illusions and nuclear and world military power hankerings and posturings ... The most depressing thing about the debate is the assumptions on both sides that we can go on indefinitely for years and years with the greatest, costliest and deadliest arms race in history. It will not work out like that and we must put our energy, will, purpose and policies into transferring the mutual relations of the great powers from the balance of power, as expressed in the rival military alliances, to their obligations, purposes and principles of the UN Charter ... We are no longer a first-class military power. But we could be a first-class political power and a first-class force for peace.
(17) The Times (7th July, 1967)
It was impossible to fit Zilliacus easily into any known political category whether as extreme left winger, fellow traveller or crypto communist. In the eyes of some he appeared to be, at times, one or all of these things, but somehow he managed to elude precise definition as any of them. His immense fecundity of ideas overflowed all over the place, carrying him into excesses of unorthodoxy which he could defend with elaborate logic as being in strictest accord with the true Socialist canon. He was always convinced it was the others that were out of step.
(19) Ian Mikardo, statement issued after the death of Konni Zilliacus (27th July, 1967)
Zilly was in many ways the greatest international Socialist of my time. It is for that reason, and only for that reason, he earned the distinction of being refused a visa to the United States, and being refused a visa to the Soviet Union, and of being expelled from the Labour Party all within the same year. He never gave up fighting for the principles of the United Nations, based on the all-inclusive covenants of the Charter, no matter who opposed him, whether it was Ernest Bevin or Wall Street or Stalin. He was completely devoted in the best sense to the socialist causes which are the basis of peace.
In a way Zilly was a non-politician. Most people who didn't know him personally but knew him only from reading what he wrote and reading about him, would think of him pre-eminently as a politician, but he really wasn't. He was a man of political ideas, but he wasn't very good at politics. The tactics, the ritual dances of parliamentary procedure and the order paper, were in a language that wasn't contained within the eleven he spoke. They were all foreign to him and when it really came to the tough stuff and the in-fighting I sometimes thought of Zilly as a child walking around a jungle of man-eating animals. That's why he was more than once such an easy victim for the hatchet men. Zilly was preeminently an analyst, perhaps unparalleled as a political analyst, and perhaps even more than that a teacher, a great teacher, and not only those like myself of his own generation learned at his feet, but the next generation of people in our movement derived a great deal from him and many of the new, younger men we have had in the House of Commons in the last three years know a great deal of what they know because of what they learned from Zilly.
(20) James Cameron, speech at Conway Hall on Konni Zilliacus (27th July, 1967)
It always seemed to me that Zilly's conflict with the world was not political opposition or moral indignation but the detailed exasperation of a gifted and experienced man who saw the fallacies of history and who saw all the libraries of human experience unexploited and unused, with power always in the hands of the clumsy people. I often used to wish I had an intelligence like his so much greater would have been my understanding, and then I sometimes was glad I had not, so much deeper would have been my disenchantment. I am grateful, nonetheless, that in that busy, good life he had a little time to include me.
(21) Michael Foot, speech at Conway Hall on Konni Zilliacus (27th July, 1967)
There was nobody to compare with him. Inquest on Peace was in my opinion the best book of the whole of that time. It was written from his deep knowledge, but it was written by a man who wished to prevent a world war. Long before the Churchills or Edens ever lisped the words collective security, Zilly understood it and was campaigning for it, and if Zilly's advice had been taken there would have been no Second World War, no Auschwitz, no Buchenwald, no Hiroshima or any of the other agonies that we have subsequently endured.
He also had, we should not forget, a marvellous gift of burning invective which he would unleash on the heads of all deserving candidates, and there were many available. Sometimes when I heard him in the House of Commons pouring out his anger, I almost thought there was a streak of aesthetic delight in the way he did it. He wanted the job to be done as well as possible and it was right that it should be so.
I will say no more because reference has already been made to some of the incidents in his conflict with the Labour Party, some incidents which were inevitable but some incidents which are so deplorable that some of us will never forgive them and never forget them. After the world war he had striven to prevent, he became a major exponent of the ideas and mainsprings of policy accepted by the Soviet Union. Sometimes charges were made against him on that account, that he was a spokesman for their policies. This was never the case. Zilly was an independent man the whole of his life, everyone who knew him knew that, but he knew more of Soviet policy than the rest of us. He was the most skilled and experienced interpreter of what made Russian policy and what actuated Russian policy. He set about, in 1945, to stop the third world war. He devoted all his energies to that purpose. Almost the last speech I heard him make was the one he made at a meeting of the foreign affairs group of the PLP about Vietnam and he raised the whole issue to a different plane than the other speakers could do.
