He resisted them despite a painful economic dependence on the US

He resisted them despite a painful economic dependence on the US. And he did so although, like Tony Blair today, he faced a (rather more potent) opposition willing to back the US, right or wrong Sir Edward Heath is now the venerable doyen of peaceniks He wasn’t when he was Leader of the Opposition. He repeatedly criticised Wilson for being too lukewarm in his support for the Americans. It’s likely that in government he would have committed British troops. And when Wilson finally drew his line in the sand and condemned the US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, Heath justified the bombing on the ground that the war would not end until the Vietcong realised they could never win.Wilson’s stance wasn’t particularly glorious.

Some of his repeated attempts at peace-making ­ like his ill-starred dispatch of the MP Harold Davies to Hanoi ­ were embarrassingly half-baked But in retrospect he was right where Heath had been wrong. The domino theory of Communism that had sustained the Korean war was no longer universally applicable, particularly at a time when d?nte was just beginning. Vietnam was a tragedy, not least for the US, an unwinnable war. Whether for reasons of mere party management, or for higher motives, Wilson now looks in hindsight to have been pretty far-sighted to keep British forces out of it.Now, history does not repeat itself The “parallel” shouldn’t be strained. An Iraqi war, for a start, is winnable, perhaps quite swiftly, though at what cost in civilian and military life can’t of course be predicted Secondly, the opposition too is rather different.

The demonstrations against it have been much, much larger, much more peaceful, and much earlier in the crisis than those against the Vietnam war, which didn’t peak until about 1968 That’s something for the Government to worry about. But another difference in one sense works oddly in favour of the Government’s sometime flirtation with regime change as an objective, however legally and politically dangerous that objective is. Asked whether we would have regarded Ho Chi Minh as a preferable leader of a unified Vietnam to all the realistically available alternatives, most of us who demonstrated against that war, frankly, would have said “yes”. No one on that huge demonstration 11 days ago, from the SWP to the Women’s Institute, would say that for a second about Saddam Hussein Even those most opposed to war yearn to see him go. What the Wilson story does show, however, is that the rightness of a decision on war will take much longer to judge than a few intense weeks.

Conventional wisdom has it that Mr Blair is facing his most perilous period; in the absence of a UN resolution his own leadership could be at risk, particularly if the war is bloodier and longer than predicted. But conventional wisdom also has it that a swift, decisive victory, underpinned by relief and celebration by Iraqis, would have an entirely opposite effect. You don’t have to believe, in the cynical words of one (pro-war) frontbench Tory yesterday, that he will personally “go to Baghdad in triumph in time for the local elections” to see that his premiership will be immediately strengthened. But the big variables are far too unpredictable for that to be the end of the story. Many, though not all of them, were identified in the long series of backbench speeches yesterday in favour of Chris Smith’s delaying amendment, some of the most persuasive by the Tories Kenneth Clarke, Douglas Hogg and John Gummer. Won’t a pre-emptive invasion now increase rather than decrease the prospects of more terrorist massacres in the West? Isn’t the difference in the treatment of North Korea and Iraq an invitation to non-nuclear states to become nuclear? Where is the concrete evidence that an allied victory in Iraq would give the long-awaited push to a just peace in Israel-Palestine which Mr Blair has to his credit urged on George Bush? What are the long-term plans for stabilising and democratising the country after war? Of course, it’s impossible ­ even unreasonable ­ to be sure that we doubters will be proved right. Or not to be moved by the almost unbearable catalogue of atrocities by the Baghdad regime unveiled in a powerful pro-war speech by Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP.