Oration station: GREAT political speeches (final) - Part 1

Aneurin Bevan, 1956

Aneurin Bevan, anti-Suez speech, Trafalgar Square rally, November 1956.

On 4 November 1956 Aneurin "Nye" Bevan delivered an impassioned speech at a Labour-organised rally in Trafalgar Square condemning the Tory government's decision to take military action against Egypt during the Suez crisis.

Bevan was famously a versatile, charismatic and rousing public speaker, traits that were on display at this rally, and in a similar speech to the House of Commons a month later. John Selwyn-Lloyd, foreign secretary at the time, described the latter as the greatest ever Commons performance, even though "it was at my expense".

The rally was attended by 30,000 or more people, in the biggest national demonstration since before the Second World War. Eyewitnesses recall chants of "One, two, three, four! We won't fight in Eden's war!" The protest tapped into popular discontent with the war, but in its sheer scale, it has been credited with waking thousands from apathy over the invasion.

Bevan challenged government aggression, accusing the Tories of "a policy of bankruptcy and despair" that would "lead back to chaos, back to anarchy and back to universal destruction". His criticism of the reasoning behind the war is reminiscent of events surrounding the Iraq war nearly five decades later.

"We are stronger than Egypt but there are other countries stronger than us. Are we prepared to accept for ourselves the logic we are applying to Egypt? If nations more powerful than ourselves accept the absence of principle, the anarchistic attitude of Eden and launch bombs on London, what answer have we got, what complaint have we got? If we are going to appeal to force, if force is to be the arbiter to which we appeal, it would at least make common sense to try to make sure beforehand that we have got it, even if you accept that abysmal logic, that decadent point of view.
We are in fact in the position today of having appealed to force in the case of a small nation, where if it is appealed to against us it will result in the destruction of Great Britain, not only as a nation, but as an island containing living men and women. Therefore I say to Anthony, I say to the British government, there is no count at all upon which they can be defended.
They have besmirched the name of Britain. They have made us ashamed of the things of which formerly we were proud. They have offended against every principle of decency and there is only way in which they can even begin to restore their tarnished reputation and that is to get out! Get out! Get out!"

Enoch Powell, 1959

Enoch Powell, speech on the Hola Camp in Kenya, House of Commons, July 1959.

Enoch Powell might be an unexpected inclusion in the list, but this address to the House of Commons was nearly a decade before the "Rivers of Blood" speech. He stood before the House of Commons in July 1959 to denounce the killing of 11 rebels by security guards at the Hola detention camp in Kenya. Criticising the British government's lack of action, Powell said that we cannot say "because he was such-and-such, therefore the consequences which would otherwise flow from his death shall not flow".

Sharpening the British political mind on Africa, Powell was a lone voice that refused to lay the blame solely on the camp commander who ordered the attack, underlining the responsibility of their immediate superiors and the Colonial Service. Although the sentiments expressed in this speech, where he looked towards the end of colonial rule, were at odds with the controversial views he later expressed, this speech remains the strongest statement of principle about Britain's relationship with Africa ever made in the House of Commons.

"It has been said -- and it is a fact -- that these 11 men were the lowest of the low; subhuman was the word which one of my honorable Friends used. So be it. But that cannot be relevant to the acceptance of responsibility for their death . . . In general, I would say that it is a fearful doctrine, which must recoil upon the heads of those who pronounce it, to stand in judgement on a fellow human being and to say, "Because he was such-and-such, therefore the consequences which would otherwise flow from his death shall not flow."
Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, "We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home." We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere."

Peter Wilby chose this as his favourite political speech: "I choose it because, first, no less a judge than Denis Healey called it "the greatest parliamentary speech I ever heard", with "all the moral passion and rhetorical force of Demosthenes", and second, because Powell's words are so apposite to the recent controversies over Guantanamo, torture, extraordinary rendition, etc."

Harold Macmillan, 1960

Harold Macmillan, speech to the South African parliament, Cape Town, February 1960. 

Harold Macmillan's address to the South African parliament on 3 February 1960 was epoch-making. In it, he acknowledged the burgeoning strength of African nationalism and made it clear that independence would be granted to many African nations.

It also made explicit the British government's rejection of apartheid, a shift from previous policy and the first time a senior international figure had criticised South Africa's strict racial segregation. The Conservative prime minister described African national consciousness as a "wind of change blowing through this continent".
This was in fact the second time that Macmillan had given this speech (he gave the same address in Ghana a month earlier), but it was the first time that it received press attention, partly because of the controversy it provoked. At home, right-wing Conservatives, who wanted to retain the empire, were enraged. And Macmillan's South African counterpart, Hendrik Verwoerd, was no more impressed. He responded: "To do justice to all does not only mean being just to the black man of Africa, but also to be just to the white man of Africa."

But Macmillan's vision of Africa prevailed:

"Today the same thing is happening in Africa, and the most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness.
In different places it takes different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it."

originally published in the New Statesman