BRUSSELS JOURNAL: “Peace” is apparently the word on the lips of British politicians whenever the omens point, in stiff armed salute, to catastrophe. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain gave his now infamous speech, ‘Peace in our Time,’ in which he announced that Germany would be allowed to annex Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. This, the so-called Munich agreement, was meant of course to placate the Third Reich, but instead it is now seen as the first step to the occupation of Poland and to the onset of the Second World War. With utter lack of foresight Chamberlain had announced, “They [the various governments in the dispute] rejoiced with us that peace was preserved, and with us they look forward to further efforts to consolidate what has been done.” The British people, “were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy […] their intense desire for peace.”
There was a certain unintended dimension to junior Labour minister David Cairns’ recent statement, that Gordon Brown is the most unpopular British prime minister, “since Neville Chamberlain after Hitler invaded Norway,” as the same sort of language and mentality of appeasement that facilitated the rise of Nazi Germany is routinely employed by Brown and his government in regard to radical Islam. Its most literal outpouring came in July, when Brown spoke to the Knesset, and urged that Israel should share Jerusalem with the Palestinians. Like Chamberlain, Brown spoke of his belief that, “[…] this historic, hard-won and lasting peace is within your [Israel’s] reach, I urge you to take it by the hand.”
Neither Brown, nor Blair, nor the Labour Party, has acted mindful of the lessons that history has furnished us with. Indeed, the Party as a whole – and even British politicians more broadly – seems intent on repeating the most egregious mistakes of some other regimes now disappeared. Though perhaps the best known, the signing of the Munich agreement was far from the last time that government appeasement facilitated the rise of tyrannical organizations and regimes. In Algeria, as Walter Laquer has observed, “[…] the Islamists turned against the authorities who had done so much to support their activities. (Fascism: Past, Present, Future, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 164), and there is every reason to believe that the same will occur in Britain. Radical Islam, a Religion of “Peace in Our Time” >>> From the desk of A. Millar | September 23, 2008
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