The Politics of World Federation (Session 3)

When a new weapon changes everything, who acts fast enough? Session 3 of The Politics of World Federation read chapters 8 and 16. They tell of two people who tried, Grenville Clark and Henry Usborne.

Discussion Highlights

Joseph Preston Baratta described the 1945 conference that Clark convened in Dublin, New Hampshire. Its declaration called the United Nations Charter inadequate in the atomic age. It urged a federal government with limited but adequate powers. Some newspapers called that unrealistic. Usborne, a British member of Parliament, took the opposite route. His pamphlet, titled If They Won’t, We Will, urged an unofficial people’s constitutional convention. It met in Geneva in December 1950, after the Korean War began, and failed.

Members asked about Clark’s influence on Alan Cranston and what became of the writer Emery Reves. They also asked what the movement’s ideological foundation was, and why United World Federalists drew attacks. One principle came up again and again: no peace without justice, no justice without law, no law without government. The group then turned to the war in Ukraine. Members discussed the European Union as the most advanced experiment in pooling sovereignty.

The World Citizen Book Club meets online on the second Saturday of each month and is open to anyone, whether you have read the book or not. See what the club is reading next.