Percy Daines - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

At the 1953 Co-operative Party congress, Daines warned delegates against getting themselves into a "Munich mentality" which was thought to have helped persuade the congress to reject a motion calling for the abolition of national service. He spoke in a foreign policy debate in May 1953 regretting the tendency to anti-Americanism in the Labour Party, and said that the death of Stalin had not changed the policy of the Soviet Union. Daines was incensed when a Ministry of Defence booklet was published in February 1955 which revealed that British Communists had visited prisoner of war camps during the Korean War, and attempted to convert British troops to communism. He urged their prosecution, observing that men had been hanged for lesser crimes after the Second World War.