Cockburn on Britain

It is difficult to see very much point in Alexander Cockburn’s article (“Brave Little Britain? Not Entirely,� Column Left, July 4). His grasp of the basic facts seems a little uncertain. He says Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland on May 11, 1941. He didn’t; it was May 10. (I remember it well; a pleasant Saturday afternoon.) He says Hess landed at “the estate of the Duke of Hamilton.� He didn’t, though he had apparently hoped to do so. He actually landed--not bad navigation--about a dozen miles away, near the village of Eaglesham, where he was confronted by a farm worker with a pitchfork, who took him to his cottage and gave him a cup of tea. The Duke of Hamilton was nowhere near.

Cockburn is flogging a dead horse when he reports gleefully that there were those in Britain who favored peace with Hitler. We have known for five or 10 years that in the summer of 1940 there were those in the British Cabinet (Lord Halifax, Sir Kingsley Wood) who argued it was at least worthwhile exploring whatever possibilities existed of a compromise peace. What are cabinets for, if not for debates about alternative possible policies?

What matters is not the debate, but the decision arrived at.

The bit about the Duke of Windsor seems to me pure fantasy. In 1941 the Duke of Windsor was governor of the Bahamas. To mount a coup against the British government from Nassau would have been far beyond the capacity of Bonaparte or Lenin; it is ludicrous to envisage the duke in this scenario.

To say that “Britain’s Continental neighbors� (France? or every German-occupied nation?) collaborated with the Germans “placidly� is an unjustified insult. Has Cockburn never heard of the maquis ? Has he never heard of the Polish Home Army? What may or may not have happened in the Channel Islands is hardly relevant.

There is no need to dignify, by discussing, Cockburn’s and his chum Clive Ponting’s fatuous speculations about British behavior if the island had been invaded. The Battle of Britain was fought, it was decisive and that was that.

ARTHUR CAMPBELL TURNER

Professor, Department of Political Science

UC Riverside