Making of Modern Britain World Role after 1945

Britain as a major power
after 1945: the changing
international context
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29/03/2016 Britain and the world 1

Changing world position of
UK
 In 1945 Winston Churchill characterised
Britain’s interests as involving three
overlapping circles – the British Empire,
Europe, and the special relationship with
the United States.
 It was the Prime Minister’s duty to maintain
harmony between the three circles. This view
of Britain’s global co-ordinating position was
shared by Clement Attlee who considered
himself ‘very happy and fortunate in having
lived so long in the greatest country in the
world’.

Post-war attitudes of prime
ministers to Britain’s status
 At each step of the process of
adjusting the balance between
Britain’s three circles of involvement,
old-school prime ministers preferred
to walk backwards, seeking to
maintain past British commitments
and maintain an independent
British nuclear bomb.

Suez Crisis, 1956
 The Suez War of 1956 was an extreme
and unsuccessful example of this
outlook. Those who questioned whether
Britain could remain a Great Power were
lonely voices.
 In Downing Street, Harold Macmillan
was exceptional in recognizing that post-
war international developments involved
irreversible structural changes to
which Britain had to adapt.

Sir Anthony Eden (1897 – 1977). Prime Minister 1955 to
1957. Foreign Secretary 1935 – 38. In 1938 he resigned in
protest at Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement of Hitler.
Foreign Secretary 1940 – 45 in Churchill’s wartime
coalition. Foreign Secretary 1951 – 55 in Churchill’s
peacetime Conservative government. Although Eden was
a very experienced diplomat, he miscalculated when
authorising the ill-fated invasion of Suez in 1956.

Retreat from global commitments
 Successive prime ministers have
retreated from global commitments.
 Domestic pressures to do so came
from the limited economic resources
of post-war Britain.
 The rise of superpowers such as the
United States and the Soviet Union
reduced Britain to a middle-rank military
power.

Britain had ‘not yet found a
role’
 The growth of national independence
movements on many continents led to the
end of Empire.
 In December 1962 Dean Acheson, a former
American Secretary of State, gave a speech
entitled ‘Our Atlantic Alliance’.
 Acheson said “Great Britain has lost an
empire and has not yet found a role. The
attempt to play a separate power role – that
is a role apart from Europe, a role based on a
‘special relationship’ with the United States,

Dean Acheson’s speech,
December 1962
 a role based on being the head of a
‘Commonwealth’ which has no political
structure, or unity, or strength, and
enjoys a fragile and precarious economic
relationship by means of the sterling
area and preferences in the British
market – this role is about to be played
out.”
 Reaction in Britain was swift and
angry. Acheson was accused of
stabbing America’s closest ally in the

Macmillan’s reaction
 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (P.M. 1957
– 1963) responded in a public letter, saying
that Acheson had committed ‘an error
which has been made by quite a lot of
people in the course of the last four
hundred years, including Philip of Spain,
Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser and
Hitler.’
 The disproportionate outcry in London
showed that Acheson had touched a nerve.
He also lodged a sentence irrevocably in the
phrasebook of British foreign policy: ‘Great
Britain has lost an empire and has not yet
found a role.’

British policy-makers responses
to decline as a world power
 Instead of realistically appraising what was
practicable with limited resources, Downing
Street continued to adapt on an ad hoc basis.
William Armstrong, a senior Whitehall civil
servant saw the adaptation to Britain’s new role
as a middle-ranking power as ‘the orderly
management of decline’.
 However, when Armstrong used this phrase in a
conversation with politically oriented Downing
Street staff in 1973, they were appalled by the
suggestion that the Prime Minister’s
influence was declining in the world beyond
Dover.

New-style prime ministers
 The new-style prime ministers,
Thatcher and Blair, continued to
define their role in global terms. New-
style prime ministers are expected to
take a much more active role in
government than Churchill or Attlee did.
 Thatcher felt more at home in
Washington than anywhere in Europe,
and when Whitehall officials look for
ideas about public policy they are more
likely to turn to the United States.

Tony Blair echoed Churchill
 Tony Blair echoed Churchill’s three
circles doctrine, claiming ‘We are
uniquely placed, with strong
partnerships with the EU, the US
and in Asia, to create a distinctive
global role.’
 Blair, like Prince Charles or Thatcher,
felt closer to Australia than to the
German-speaking lands of

Managing decline
 The claim is advanced that the Prime
Minister’s dealings with foreign leaders
‘enhances his or her power’, because
Downing Street is less restrained by
Cabinet or by Parliament when
representing the country as a whole.
 But when dealing with foreign
governments the Prime Minister is
much more constrained by what
happens in the world beyond Dover.

Managing decline
 While a British Prime Minister may
appear important in a gathering of
small Commonwealth countries, in the
White House a Prime Minister is only
one among many other prime
ministers.

Britain and the European Community
British rates of economic growth in the 1950s
were very high by historical standards, but
other European states were performing better.
Balance of payments crises became a
recurrent problem in post-war Britain.
Imports expanded more rapidly than exports,
and inflation was greater in Britain than in the
economies of her competitors.

The European Question: a central feature in
the making of modern Britain
 Britain’s relations with the European
Union/Community have played a very central part
in the making of modern Britain.
 The European Question has played a very
important role in British politics since the 1960s,
similar to the German Question of 1890 to 1945.
 It has split the Conservative Party and contributed
to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher and John
Major. It has also divided the Labour Party.
Therefore the significance of the European
Question should never be under-estimated.

John Major, Prime Minister 1990 to 1997. The
European Question split the Conservative
government of Major’s premiership and the
European Exchange Rate (ERM) Crisis of
September 1992 sealed his fate: defeat at the 1997
General Election.

The European Question
 Geography and history separate Britain from
mainland Europe. Britain gained an empire and
therefore her outlook was global, rather than
continental.
 Britain’s navy guaranteed her national security
against invasion attempts from Philip II’s Spain,
France, and Hitler’s Germany.
 Britain up to her first application for EEC
membership in 1961 was not predominantly
involved in continental affairs, but instead was
much more involved in the affairs of the
Commonwealth and financial investments and
trade around the globe.

British attitudes towards Europe
After 1945 and indeed up to the present
day, Britain retained her sense of mission
in international affairs, with the political
flair of a vastly experienced, victorious
major power and former imperial Titan.
But Britain’s lack of modernization in industry
and manufacturing, her balance of payments
deficits, and her lower economic growth rates
compared to the other major capitalist
economies, led the political and business
decision-makers to seek EEC membership in
the 1960s and 1970s.

The Hero of Great
Britain, Admiral Lord
Nelson. His victory at
Trafalgar in 1805 secured
British national
independence and
dominance of the seas
for a century. For a
century after Nelson’s
great victory, Britain was
the strongest naval
power, the world’s
leading industrial nation,
and the foremost
imperial power – the
Superpower of the
Nineteenth Century.

The reality of Britain’s position in the international
system after 1945
 British politicians and civil servants from 1945
underwent a process of gradually understanding
the realities of Britain’s decline from a Great
Power, the Superpower of the Nineteenth
Century, to a medium-sized power of the second
rank.
 Even with applications for EEC membership under
Macmillan in 1963 and under Wilson in 1967, both
prime ministers remained committed to the
‘special relationship’ with the United States, to
American leadership of European security, and to
multilateral free trade.

Edward Heath, Prime
Minister 1970 – 74. He
made history by
taking Britain into the
European Economic
Community (EEC) in
1973. Heath is the only
British Prime Minister
to date to have been
fully committed to the
idea of the
EEC/European Union.

Did Britain remain a major world power
after 1945?
 In 1945 Britain still had an empire, though
India was granted independence in 1947 and
the rest of the colonies also went independent
in the 1950s and 1960s.
 In the 1950s the British Empire evolved into a
Commonwealth with the Queen as the head
of the Commonwealth.
 Britain was a permanent member of the UN
Security Council from the very beginning of
the UN in 1945 and of NATO from its start in
1949.

Her Majesty
Queen
Elizabeth II,
head of the
Commonwealt
h

Britain and the Cold War 1946 to 1989
 Britain remained a significant power
throughout the Cold War period from 1946
to 1989. However, clearly the superpower
and leader of the capitalist democracies
was the United States.
 America was the only non-Communist
power who could take on the Communist
superpower, the Soviet Union. Britain
could not have defeated the Soviet Union
on her own.

President John F Kennedy and the First
Lady Jackie Kennedy. The President of the
United States was the leader of the
capitalist democracies after 1945.

Did Britain remain a world power after
1945?
 Britain remained one of the world’s largest
economies after 1945, with overseas
investments and global interests.
 However, Britain fell behind her main
international competitors, particularly the
United States, Japan, West Germany, and
France.
 Britain suffered from balance of trade deficits;
and then, in the 1970s, from high inflation and
rising unemployment.

London is the world’s leading financial
centre with the best business
environment and best human capital
on the planet.

1945?
 Britain’s decision to seek membership of the
EEC in the 1960s, first under Macmillan in 1961
– 63 and then under Wilson in 1966 – 67, was
a tacit acceptance of the new realities.
 The EEC led by France and West Germany
became the leading political power within
Europe and also the leading trading bloc of
the Continent. Therefore Britain sought entry
to the European Economic Community.

German ladies. Germany is the economic
powerhouse of Europe and is also a very
welcoming holiday destination as you can
see.

1945?
Britain played only a secondary role in
East/West détente in the late 1960s
and 1970s.
During the 1980s, the Cold War was
ended mainly by Mikhail Gorbachev,
leader of the Soviet Union, and Britain
played a minor role in this process.

Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the
Soviet Union 1985 – 91, the
statesman who ended the Cold
War.

De-colonisation after 1945
 The empires of the European colonial
powers, such as those of Britain, France,
and Portugal, were dismantled after the
Second World War.
 The vast European empires in Asia and
Africa were de-colonised and the peoples
of these continents gained independence
from their former European masters. This
was a major shift in world politics and
history.

The French
conquest of
Algeria.

Suez and the Falklands
 The Suez Canal Crisis of 1956 proved that
Britain was no longer an independent world
power.
 However, the Falklands War victory in 1982
restored British honour and prestige in the
world.
 Tony Blair (Prime Minister 1997 – 2007) was
confident enough to commit British forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan alongside the American-
led coalition.

British armed forces in Iraq 2003
following Blair’s decision to join
American forces in the invasion.

Decline and fall of the British Empire
 While Britain has declined in power and
international status, Britons have seen a
rise in income and material comforts.
 To make ‘decline’ the motif of post-war
British history is too simplistic.
 Did Britain lose an empire and not find a
role, as Dean Acheson suggested in 1962?

The shopping culture in action
(literally), Oxford Street, London.

Britain was not a Luxembourg
 Under Tony Blair’s government as in 1950
Bevin’s words still rang true – Britain was
not a Luxembourg.
 However, Britain remained an awkward
partner in the European Community since
joining the EEC in 1973. The rules and aims
of the Community embodied the interests
and aspirations of the original Six.

The original Six
member states
of the EEC
(Common
Market)

Britain out of step with the Community
 The Community Budget and the Common
Agricultural Policy were obvious examples
of Britain being out of step with the rest of
the Community.
 Britain during the premiership of John
Major was also wrong-footed by the
Maastricht project for monetary union and
exit from the ERM destroyed Major’s
government and kept the Conservatives in
the political wilderness until 2010.

The usual British subtlety of mind and
sophiscation is addressed to the President of the
European Commission, Jacques Delors, by Britain’s
biggest-selling newspaper.

Comparative perspective
 Germans have long struggled with the idea
that their lapse into militarism and racism
under Hitler reflected the country’s ‘special
road’ to modernity because Germany lacked
the liberal, democratic values and institutions
evident in the rest of Europe.
 However, each European country followed a
distinctive route into the modern age.
 In addition most continental governments
used European institutions for their own
national ends.

The making of modern Germany
included Hitler’s dictatorship.

Britain made too much noise about
Europe
 Other European countries were usually more
discreet than Britain when objecting to the
federalism of the European Commission and
project.
 The nationalist tub-thumbing for domestic
political gain of Labour in the 1970s or the
Tories in the 1990s was often counter-
productive in Brussels compared with the
quieter efforts by continental states to get
their own way by constructing transnational
coalitions.

Margaret Thatcher was popular at European
Community summits and always welcomed for her
teamwork skills.

Britain is not unique
 Britain is not a solitary post-
imperialist power. France, Spain and
Portugal have also had to adapt to
the post-1945 world.
 France has maintained substantial
overseas commitments, especially in
Africa, and immigration has brought the
empire home with a vengeance to many
Frenchmen.

Immigrants from the former French Empire
now living in modern France.

Devolution is a Europe-wide political
issue
 Devolution is a Europe-wide political
issue, not just limited to Britain.
 Such states as Spain have their history of
internal empire to rival that of Greater
Britain. British exceptionalism is a myth,
not accurate history.

Post-imperialism for the European
powers
 For centuries, European countries shaped the
wider world. Europe’s first overseas empires
were formed after 1492 by Spain and
Portugal. Several European nations are still
coping with the legacies of empire, not just
Britain but also France, Spain and Portugal.
Britain is not unique.
 A bunker mentality operates among some
British politicians and publics. However, in the
post-modernist age, multiple identities apply:
English, British, European, international.

British people identifying themselves with
the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee 2012. How
many Britons identify themselves with the
European Union and the United Nations?

Britain remained a significant player
 It can be argued that Britain since 1945 has
remained a significant player on the
international stage and has also remained
one of the world’s major military powers.
 This is despite various economic problems
and tight resources.
 The international context changed greatly
between 1945 and 1991, when the Soviet
Union collapsed.

The nerve centre of British power: a
Trident nuclear missile submarine.

Changes in the international context
1945 to 2003
1) End of the Cold War 1989 – 91. Soviet
socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe in
1989 and in the USSR itself in 1991.
2) De-colonisation: India granted
independence 1947; other colonies in
Asia and Africa granted independence
1950s and 1960s. Many stayed in the
Commonwealth, whose head is the
Queen.

Changes in the international context
1945 - 2003
 3) Britain’s entry into the European
Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. Britain
had stood apart from European membership
1945 to 1973 but under Edward Heath finally
joined the Community.
 4) International terrorism: after the end of the
Cold War in 1989, a new threat to Western
security emerged – international terrorism,
particularly from fanatical Muslims. Hence
Britain’s participation in the Iraq invasion in
2003.

The new century begins: Al-Qaeda, an
Islamic terrorist group, attacks New York
and Washington, September 11th, 2001.

Britain’s world role after 1945
 ‘Only the English-Speaking peoples count:
that together they can rule the world.’
(Winston Churchill, U.S. State Department
Dinner, April 1954)
 Churchill remained an imperialist to the
end. Under Churchill’s influence the
Conservatives in opposition had voted
against the independence of India and
Burma in 1947.

Churchill remained an imperialist to the
end
 Churchill had stated bluntly during the war
that ‘I have not become the King’s First
Minister in order to preside over the
liquidation of the British empire’ – and he
stuck to this position right up to leaving
office in 1955.
 The British governing classes, represented
above all by Winston Churchill, were
unable to adjust to their diminished world
role after 1945.

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, 1897

Britain’s governing classes could not
accept the loss of world power status
 The British governing classes after 1945,
both Labour and Conservative, were
completely unreconciled to the post-war
diminishment of Britain.
 However, in 1947 it certainly seemed for a
while that the Labour government was
withdrawing from Britain’s world role. But
this was forced on Labour by the pressing
demands of near-bankruptcy, rather than a
real change of heart.

Wrong set of priorities
 The leading British post-war historian Alan
Bullock, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and
Hitler’s first biographer, made the central charge
against all post-war British political leaders.
 ‘Instead of straining to keep up the part she had
played as a leading power since the eighteenth
century, so the argument runs, Labour should
have taken the opportunity to withdraw from all
overseas commitments in the shortest possible
time and concentrate the country’s energies on
rebuilding her economy and foreign trade.’

Winston Churchill remained an
imperialist to the end of his
premiership in 1955.

Something of its former greatness
 After 1945 the British governing classes
saw a Britain that could preserve
something of its former greatness. The
country was a permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council, still had
an empire in Africa and bases East of Suez.
 Britain accepted her junior partner
position with the United States in order to
bolster her retrenched imperial role.

Queen Elizabeth II,
Head of State of
the United
Kingdom and
Head of the
Commonwealth
since 1952.

NATO membership
 Following the foundation of NATO in 1949, in
which the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin
played a major part in establishing, Britain’s
political leaders could set about constructing
its new, updated and virtual, world role.
 By the mid-1950s the three key institutions
which would both embody and sustain the
great pretence of a ‘world role’ and ‘world
leadership’ were in place and are still there
today.

The Queen, the Commonwealth, and
the bomb
 The three key institutions which both
embody and support Britain’s
pretence of a ‘world role’ are:
 1 The Queen
 2 The Commonwealth
 3 The atomic bomb

The Queen

The Commonwealth

The bomb: one of Britain’s Trident
submarines armed with nuclear missiles.

The Coronation, summer 1953: a lavish
imperial event.
 The Coronation of the Queen in summer 1953 was
a seminal moment for defining Britain and its role
in the post-war world. It was a lavish imperial
event, relayed to Britain and the world via the
new medium of television.
 The newspapers talked of a ‘new Elizabethan Age’.
 The coronation displayed a Britain that still – for
all the reduced circumstances of war, and all the
egalitarian changes under Labour – saw itself as
an imperial, global power.

Denial of reality
 The coronation took place in 1953 as though the
empire was in full swing and Britain was crowning
an empress, and an ‘empress’ who derived her
authority from God.
 The young Queen herself and her court played
into the pomp of this global role as though to the
manner born. She proclaimed herself ‘Queen and
Head of the Commonwealth’ and would later
show a continuing personal resolve to stress the
importance of the newly-created ‘British
Commonwealth of Nations’.

The Queen has
placed her
headship of the
Commonwealth
at the centre of
her view of her
constitutional
role.

Continuing desire for global grandeur
 For Attlee’s post-war Labour government
the idea of a new multi-racial ‘British
Commonwealth’ was a godsend. It could
keep the Labour left with their growing
moral opposition to colonialism at bay.
 And the continuing desire for British
global grandeur could be fulfilled.
 The imperial mentality continued.

The British imperial lion.

The lingering sense of empire
 The lingering sense of empire was widely
shared throughout British post-war society in
the 1950s and 1960s. Above all the country’s
political and ruling classes believed that the
empire still existed.
 The top officials of the Foreign Office, the
intelligence services and the governing
political class were all drawn from a very
narrow social background, ex-public school
boys educated at a very small number of elite
institutions.

An imperial ruling class
 An imperial ruling class governed Britain
during the nineteenth century and up until
the 1960s. From 1918 – 1950 over 80% of all
Tory cabinets were populated from public
schools.
 By 1960, an incredible 83.2% of top army
positions, 65% of top civil servants and
82.6% of ambassadors came from public
schools.

The upper-class public school educated
ruling elites governed Britain until the 1960s.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (pictured) was the
last Prime Minister (1963 – 64) from this very
narrow social background until David
Cameron became premier in 2010.

The imperial ruling class governed
Britain until the 1960s.
 The post-war prime ministers – Attlee,
Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home
– and their civil servants, armed forces
commanders and ambassadors, had direct
experience of the empire in its heyday.
 They were imbued with the imperial
mentality as young men in the 1920s and
1930s when the empire was still a going
concern.

British superiority complex
 The British after the war, into the 1950s
and 1960s, and with lingering influence in
some sections of society after 1970,
continued to believe that they were an
exceptional people.
 Possession of an empire from the 18th
century until the 1960s, which covered a
quarter of the world, gave rise to a British
superiority complex.

Britannia: the
English did not
mix, they
conquered, and
then they ruled a
quarter of the
world.

Making of Modern Britain World Role after 1945

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