The Search for a New Role: The European Circle after 1956

Abstract

As noted in earlier chapters, throughout the postwar period successive British governments found it increasingly difficult, in the face of Britain’s long-term relative economic decline, to sustain the strategy of maintaining British influence in all three of Churchill’s ‘circles’. In Chapter 4 it was suggested that, from the mid-1950s onwards, partly as a result of indigenous nationalism and partly because of the diminishing importance of Britain’s imperial trade, Britain’s involvement in the Empire circle was gradually reduced. As will be seen in Chapter 6, by the 1960s, with the process of decolonisation well under way, Britain was also becoming less important to the United States as a strategically in the global struggle against ‘communist expansionism’. The obvious corollary to this reduction of influence in both the ‘Empire’ and ‘Atlantic’ circles was for the focus of Britain’s foreign policy to shift towards Europe. It was increasingly recognised in the years after Suez that it was here that Britain’s primary economic and political interests were located; that if Britain wished to retain a significant voice in world affairs, then it would have to do so in concert with its allies in Western Europe. The strategic shift towards Europe was not accomplished without difficulty, however. Significant problems were encountered in the 1960s as Britain attempted to institutionalise its European connections.