Don't march against them. Snub them!

When James Callaghan was Foreign Secretary I used to visit him occasionally. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which has not been rectified to this day, proved a particularly busy time for both of us. As a supposed guarantor of the island's integrity, we played a somewhat ignominious role in the episode, in effect sitting on our hands. We adopted this posture partly because the United States was wary of offending the Turks, whose good offices were considered crucial to the future of Nato.

I am not saying that the new Labour government's passivity was wrong. It was perfectly understandable in view of the way in which Cyprus had poisoned politics in the 1950s. And I wonder how that great setter of the world to rights, Mr Tony Blair, would respond if the same circumstances were to recur today? I bet he would behave exactly as Harold Wilson and James Callaghan did nearly 30 years ago.

My purpose here, however, is not to sort out Cyprus – which is, I see, due to be admitted to the European Union. How you can admit into such an association an island which is not divided voluntarily (as Ireland is) is something that I find puzzling. But there we are. My purpose, rather, is to recall the Foreign Secretary's behaviour on that previous occasion. He was, as usual, the soul of affability, though he left no doubt in his interlocutor's mind that he could turn nasty if the circumstances so demanded.

"Excuse me, Foreign Secretary," a minion said, "but we have Dr Kissinger on the line."

I retired to an adjoining room but the connecting door was left open.

"Now, Henry," Jim said, as if trying to span the Atlantic with a megaphone rather than a telephone, "about this Cyprus business. Yes. Yes indeed. You provide the muscle and we'll provide the brains. Yes, thank you, Henry."

It was, I thought, imprudent to address the US Secretary of State in quite these terms but refrained from saying so. After all, Dr Kissinger prided himself on his possession of an abundant supply of grey matter too. He would not take kindly to being informed by Jim Callaghan that his function was to lead the heavy mob. That was what I felt at the time.

A few days later the thought occurred to me that perhaps Dr Kissinger had not been on the line at all. Instead the whole performance had been put on for my benefit, to demonstrate the government's attitude towards the United States: friendly, intimate even, but sturdily independent none the less. It is the traditional Labour posture, best expressed in the flight of C R Attlee to Washington to persuade Harry Truman not to extend the Korean War to China, with nuclear weapons or by other means.

The expedition has gone down in Labour mythology, but the story remains broadly correct. Both at the time and subsequently, it was used against Aneurin Bevan and his followers, who wanted the party to adopt a more independent stance. How could Attlee have done what he did if we had not been on such good terms with the United States?

Wilson played the same card over the war in Vietnam. He gave Lyndon Johnson ("LBJ", as he familiarly called him) his fullest support, while reserving the right to undertake various more or less hare-brained "peace initiatives" from time to time. The Tribune Group played a rather dishonest part in these proceedings. A roster of leftist MPs was allowed to protest in sufficient numbers to satisfy their consciences and their constituencies but not to imperil the government's majority. What Wilson consistently refused to do was commit British troops to the conflict, despite Johnson's pleas.

Mr Blair has been more than ready to commit troops at the behest of the United States, in Kosovo and in Afghanistan alike. Though the arguments of principle against these actions remain as valid as they ever were, the actions themselves appear to have been a limited success. Indeed, so bellicose have some newspapers become that the sending of the Marines into Afghanistan was denounced because they did not succeed in killing enough people or, for that matter, any people at all.

But the difference between Mr Blair today and Wilson and Attlee before him is not that he has dispatched troops, for British forces were involved in Korea in quite large numbers. It is rather that the President he has to deal with is quite different from his predecessors. They all made some pretence of respecting and, subject to the exigencies of the Cold War, observing international law. Nor was this attitude wholly for ostentation rather than for use. Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations as Franklin Roosevelt and Truman did the UN.

In Mr George Bush junior we have a President who, for the first time since the beginning of the last century, openly proclaims and is proud to declare that might is right. His belligerent predecessors of that earlier era at least had the modesty to confine their injunctions to the American continent alone. Not Mr Bush. Like John Wesley, he looks upon all the world as his parish – or as his private battlefield.

Mr Blair is an interventionist too. But he finds himself today in precisely the position which Charles de Gaulle predicted the Prime Minister would occupy when he vetoed Harold Macmillan's application to join the Common Market. He finds himself compelled to choose between Europe and the United States. When someone said that to govern was to choose, he clearly did not have Mr Blair in mind.

There is something the rest of us can do. We can demonstrate our disapproval. There is not the slightest point in marching about London if the United States invades Iraq. This only provides the opportunity for Mr Tony Benn, grand old trouper as he is, to make yet more speeches. Assorted sub-Marxist groups, whose idea of freedom is just a little more liberal than Saddam Hussein's, can duly join in the fun, as they always do on these occasions.

No, what Americans hate most is to be told they are not liked. Members of their cultivated or political classes are specially averse to this treatment. They tend to be tremendous snobs. They love being entertained at gentlemen's clubs; visiting art galleries; attending Glyndebourne or Covent Garden. Their English equivalents, ever alert to the opportunity of a visiting scholarship, a publishing contract or a grant to the foundation, are only too ready to oblige with invitations to whichever form of diversion seems appropriate.

Sorry, we say instead, but you are no longer acceptable in polite society. This may not work. It is the best I can think of at the moment. At least it is better than marching.