After India

It was Philip Noel-Baker who presented Alexander with his first challenge on returning to Britain. In a letter of 15 April 1954 he told Alexander that Nehru's reputation had suffered badly over the previous two years. Ninety-nine per cent of the population (he claimed) supported the North Atlantic Treaty Organiation, and were disturbed by Nehru's neutralism – a policy that was not only unwise but immoral. As for Kashmir, only Kingsley Martin in The New Statesman supported India's line in that dispute. Nehru's recent out-burst on US aid to Pakistan was the last straw. Even the well-disposed Clement Attlee could not agree with him here.

As Alexander had only just come back to Birmingham he took his time in responding, but did so on 4 May. He accepted the importance of the principle of collective security, but suggested that the devastation in Korea showed the urgency of working for disarmament and the abolition of the war method. He had no radical objection to NATO, since it was genuinely supported by the people in member countries. Such support for a similar organisation did not exist in Asia. Those who said they wanted it did so because they thought it would help them get the aid they wanted – in Pakistan against India. Nehru's ‘dynamic neutralism’ deserved to be better understood. He and his colleagues were thorough democrats, and had no illusions about the difficulty of negotiating with the USSR.