ABSTRACT
The Vietnam War cast a permanent shadow over the Wilson governments’
foreign policy, particularly in relation to the question of whether or not
Wilson would commit British troops in support of US forces there. Barbara
Castle considered Vietnam to be the cause of more anger amongst Wilson’s
usual supporters than any other issue.1 Moreover, this anger was enduring.
When asked to list the most shameful acts in the Party’s history, a survey of
Labour MPs conducted to mark the Party’s centenary placed the Wilson
government’s support for the Vietnam War joint first with Ramsay MacDonald’s 1931 ‘‘betrayal’’.2 This shows a poor grasp of the party’s history. In
reality, Wilson played a limited hand with considerable skill, caught between
US pressure, bleak FO analyses of the military outlook on the one hand but
advocacy of support on the other, backbench opposition, a wafer-thin parlia-
mentary majority, and an opposition waiting to capitalise on any slip. Wilson
consistently declined to meet the US request for the dispatch of British
ground forces to Vietnam. As the poll cited above suggests, this achievement
was not regarded as such at the time, but inevitably emerges in a more positive light when contrasted with the Blair government’s 2002-03 decision
to commit British troops to war in Iraq.
