The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn’s Chatham House speech, full text

Chatham House has been at the forefront of thinking on Britain’s role in the world. So with the General Election less than a month away, it’s a great place to set out my approach: on how a Labour Government I lead will keep Britain safe, reshape relationships with partners around the world, work to strengthen the United Nations and respond to the global challenges we face in the 21st century.

And I should say a warm welcome to the UN Special Representative in Somalia,  Michael Keating, who is here today. On Monday, we commemorated VE Day, the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in Europe.

VE Day marked the defeat of fascism and the beginning of the end of a global war that claimed seventy million lives. General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in 1944, went on to become Republican President of the United States during some of the most dangerous years of the Cold War in the 1950s.

In his final televised address to the American people as President, Eisenhower gave a stark warning of what he described as “the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex.” “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry”, he said, “can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Sadly, in the more than half a century since that speech, I think it’s clear that Eisenhower’s warning has not been heeded. Too much of our debate about defence and security is one dimensional. You are either for or against what is presented as “strong defence”, regardless of the actual record of what that has meant in practice.

Alert citizens or political leaders who advocate other routes to security are dismissed or treated as unreliable. My own political views were shaped by the horrors of war and the threat of a nuclear holocaust.

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