Policing the World: Lord Davies and the Quest for Order in the 1930s
| Published date | 01 April 2002 |
| Date | 01 April 2002 |
| Author | Michael Pugh |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117802016001007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol 16(1): 97–115
[0047–1178 (200204) 16:1; 97–115; 023353]
Policing the World: Lord Davies and the Quest
for Order in the 1930s
Michael Pugh, University of Plymouth
Abstract
In the 1930s there was an upsurge of interest in the idea of an International Police Force
designed to enforce the peace. One of the main proponents of the concept was (Lord)
David Davies, who laid out his own masterplan in his massive, The Problem of the
Twentieth Century (1930), a book which merits a high place in the interwar literature on
international relations. The idea itself had little likelihood of being implemented at the
time Nonetheless, it continued to exert an influence on those whose role it was to think
about the structure and operation of the United Nations. The simple fact that British
planners were amenable to some form of post-war international policing owed not a
little to the work of Davies.
Keywords: International Police Force, The New Commonwealth, David Davies,
collective security, League of Nations
In their research on British interwar politics, historians have paid much attention
to manifestations of ‘pacifism’. The 1930s debate on the contrasting but equally
controversial support for the concept of international military force has been
somewhat neglected. Admittedly, the tenets seemed rather academic and savoured
too much of militarism to capture widespread popular allegiance at the time.
Critics not only threw doubts on the operational feasibility of international
policing, but also raised ideological objections to a militarized League of Nations.
Yet the upsurge of British interest in an International Police Force (IPF) in the
1930s was remarkable, though of course the notion of international peacekeeping
and law enforcement was not new.1
The concept captured the interest of prominent politicians, academics and
publicists. Their enthusiasm was stimulated and channelled by the New
Commonwealth Society, founded in October 1932 by the newly-ennobled David
Davies (Lord Davies of Llandinam). Its patrons included Lord Gladstone, Lord
Robert Cecil (President of the League of Nations Union), Winston Churchill, and
Clement Attlee (then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party). In 1933 the Labour
Party Conference endorsed Attlee’s views. The following year, Neville
Chamberlain canvassed the scheme in Cabinet. In 1935, the Liberal Party backed
international military sanctions. Organizations as diverse as the British Legion and
the New Fabian Research Bureau accepted the desirability of international
policing. The idea prompted the Royal Institute of International Affairs to launch a
major study, and induced the Leverhulme Research Council to subsidize work on
the subject by the military intellectual, Basil Liddell Hart.2
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This article seeks to redress the historical neglect, not only because the concept
attracted some of the luminaries of the 1930s but also because it might be
regarded as a seminal influence on the provision for international force in the
United Nations Charter and the subsequent formation of the UN peacekeeping
forces. The first task here is to outline the IPF proposals espoused by Lord Davies.
The second is to explain the appeal of an IPF in the context of the disarmament
impasse and French security demands. The issue is equally significant for its
exemplification of the difficulties faced by individuals and organizations in their
efforts to define collective security. We therefore consider the impact of the IPF
debate on the political organizations that put it on their agenda papers. Fourth, the
evidence suggests that among individuals the IPF platform commanded an
element of cross-party consensus, in which a crucial factor was suspicion of Nazi
Germany’s intentions. Finally, the article addresses the significance of the debate
for post-war security planning.
A master plan
The British movement for an IPF owed its inspiration and elitist character to
David Davies, the wealthy landowner and Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire
(1906–29). During the First World War he had commanded a battalion of the
Royal Welch Fusiliers in France, before becoming Parliamentary Private Secretary
to Lloyd George. Possibly at the Prime Minister’s instigation, he launched the
League of Free Nations Association, which recommended military sanctions, as a
rival to the League of Nations Society, which preferred moral force. After these
merged to form the League of Nations Union, Davies financed the Union’s Welsh
Council. In 1923 he was convinced of the need for an international force by
French representatives at a meeting of the Federation of League of Nations
Societies. Henceforth Davies staunchly supported the French and other
continental theses of the kind promoted by Count Richard Coundenhove-Kalergi,
founder of the Pan-Europa movement in 1923, and by the French Prime Minister
Edouard Herriot, a lobbyist for a European Union.
Davies published his own master plan in a tome of 800 pages: The Problem of
the Twentieth Century (1930). In no sense can it be described as a best-seller. But
in scope, erudition and power of argument, if not in renown, it merits a high place
in the interwar literature on international relations. Although Davies produced
other books – Suicide or Sanity? (1932), Force (1934), Nearing the Abyss (1936)
– they were variations on the themes introduced in his first opus.
Addressing the intellectual lineage of the IPF concept, Davies saw himself as
the descendant of the Achaeans, Dante (in De Monarchia), the Duc de Sully,
Saint-Pierre, Rousseau and Kant. These federalists offer striking contrasts both to
the pioneers of liberal internationalism (Bentham and Cobden) and to proponents
of interstate competition (Hegel and Treitschke). Convinced that the unchecked
state system would lead to perpetual war, federalists sought structural rather than
98 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 16(1)
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