Re: [A-List] Michael Hudson's Super-imperialism (euro)

[Hudsonmi@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/25/03 4:51:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time, michael.keaney@xxxxxx writes:


> It would be a rich irony if that were the case, given all the paranoia
> surrounding Wilson and his entourage within MI5 and the CIA's
> counter-subversion division led by Angleton. However I doubt it --
> fear-inspired servility, pitiful as it might be, is not the same as paid up
> service. Clive Ponting ("Breach of Promise") has exposed the sort of
> intimidation that LBJ subjected Wilson to as a result of the latter's
> refusal to send troops to Vietnam and parallel efforts to cut back military
> expenditures propping up the remnants of empire during the 1960s (the "east
> of Suez" policy). Wilson was promised a balance of payments crisis if he did
> withdraw the Royal Navy from east of Suez, since that would look like overt
> criticism of US policy. That Wilson got a balance of payments crisis in 1967
> anyway was possibly LBJ making good his promise, in addition to the
> anti-Wilson machinations going on within the Bank of England and City of
> London at this time (see Stephen Dorril & Robin Ramsay, "Smear: Wilson and
> the Secret State", Grafton, 1991).
>
> The one Wilson-era cabinet minister who does seem to have been a paid agent
> of the US was foreign secretary Michael Stewart. I remember reading
> (possibly in Dorril & Ramsay's book) that Wilson and others were regularly
> frustrated by how often supposedly confidential cabinet discussion was
> evidently known by their US counterparts. The finger pointed squarely at
> Stewart.
>
> Given the disappointment that many on the left felt with regard to Wilson's
> performance as prime minister, it is not surprising that they regarded him
> as betraying the hopes of the working class. And they allowed this
> bitterness towards the person to cloud their judgment, if not obscure
> completely their recognition, of the structural configuration that Wilson
> faced. Paul Foot is a classic case in point, although he has recognised, to
> some extent, that this left bitterness was exploited by the right as part of
> a concerted campaign of destabilisation conducted because of the widespread
> belief in right wing circles that Wilson was a KGB agent.
>
> As for Schmidt, the circumstances of his rise to power would advertise the
> need for caution with a US flexing its muscles diplomatically and
> financially under Nixon/Kissinger. Whatever his servility when you met him,
> Kenneth O. Morgan (in his biography of James Callaghan) and Mark D. Harmon
> (in "The British Labour Government and the 1976 IMF Crisis", Macmillan 1997)
> both record Schmidt's effort to help Callaghan out of the crisis in 1976 by
> offering to instruct the Bundesbank to intervene in support of sterling. The
> US Treasury team led by William Simon slapped him down.
>
> Your comments regarding the Europeans' consistent inability to mount at
> least a token opposition to US bullying, much to the amazement of the US
> bullies themselves, rings truer than the idea that Wilson and/or Schmidt
> were paid agents. It's more likely that, like so many before and after, they
> tried to reconcile their dread of US power with their own desire to retain
> domestic power and work within whatever limits they found themselves subject
> to. This was especially the case for social democratic governments, and
> doubly so for pre-Blair Labour governments in Britain, which had to contend
> with formidable domestic saboteurs in addition to US interference.
>
> Michael Keaney



Dear Michael,
    What I meant to say was that Wilson behaved AS IF he were an agent. The Wilson watchers began to note his wildly pro-US views already in 1945 when he was, I think, with the Board of Trade. Already at that time he acted as an American toady.
    Probably you're right - it was simply trying to side with the bully, thinking that this was Britain's only hope of success, for better or worse. This is how Britain behaved all during World War II, and even Keynes couldn't get a better deal than he got and ultimately knuckled under. But Wilson did so in a much more "C'mon gang!" way than did Keynes.
    Michael Hudson