For months, a mixture of misinformation, ignorance and fear of U.S. conduct in Korea had been piling up in Britain like loose gunpowder on the floor of a fireworks factory. The surprise news of the big U.S. air raids on North Korea's power network was the spark that set it off. The explosion belched smoke and flames through Britain's House of Commons.
Was It Wise? The left-wing Laborite firebrands of Aneurin Bevan saw the news as a made-in-America chance to clobber both the U.S. and the Conservative government. "If you want to go to war," cried Bevan dramatically, "why not say so?" But this time the hostility did not stop at the left. Winston Churchill, embarrassed and angered by the U.S. failure to consult him in advance of the air raids, made only fitful attempts to douse the diplomatic blaze, and in the main debate he pointedly took no part. Quiet, colorless Clement Attlee, no enemy of the U.S., was so worried over the growing Bevanite strength in his own camp that he dare not leave the issue to them, and solemnly led his whole party into a posture of qualified hostility to the U.S. ally. "Her Majesty's government...ought to have been allowed to express an opinion as to whether this was wise," said he. "I think it is a profound mistake in psychology, and it is not the first...I think it...may lead us dangerously nearer to a general conflagration in theEast."
Pushed into the defender's role, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden began forcefully enough: "The [House] must bear in mind that all these targets .. . lay within Korea itself and are military targets . . . We were not consulted . . . There was no specific obligation to consult us. Although we are sorry we were not ... we give our allies full support in it." But the more he talked, the more halfhearted Eden's defense sounded. Attlee could conceivably be right, Eden confessed, in fearing that the bombings might upset the truce negotiations. "I do not care myself to try to estimate that at all . . ."
"It Was Clear." In came Nye Bevan from Labor's back bench, with klaxon at full blast. He had, he recalled, supported the late Labor government's decision to fight with the U.S. in Korea, because he believed the North Koreans had started it. But now Nye Bevan, reflecting the view of the pinkish wing of the British press, was questioning even that. "A good many commentators have expressed the view," said he mysteriously, "that there was quite considerable evidence that military moves had been made by the South Koreans ... It was also quite clear that there were certain elements, particularly in the U.S.A., who regarded these circumstances as an opportunity for counterrevolutionary action."
To Bevan, the Yalu River bombings represented a new Washington extend-the-war plot, fiendishly timed to take place just when the Korean truce hinged on but one unsolved issue.