Abstract
As was seen in Chapter 2, the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States was forged during the vicissitudes of the Second World War. Yet as Chapter 2 also showed, in the late 1940s that relationship received a severe buffeting. The abrupt termination of Lend-Lease in September 1945 seriously weakened an already overstretched British economy. The passage of the McMahon Act in August 1946 unilaterally ended five years of intimate Anglo-American nuclear collaboration and obliged the Attlee government to initiate its own independent programme of nuclear research. American diplomatic pressure was an added factor in provoking the British withdrawal from Palestine in May 1947.1 And the US government’s insistence on sterling’s free convertibility in July 1947 produced a catastrophic run on the pound.2
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Notes and References
A large part of the problem, in fact, was Washington’s refusal to assist Britain’s efforts to pacify the growing intercommunal conflict. See Bradford Perkins, ‘Unequal Partners: The Truman Administration and Great Britain’, in William Roger Louis and Hedley Bull (eds), The Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations Since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) pp. 43–65;
Ritchie Ovendale, ‘The Palestine Policy of the British Labour Government, 1947: the decision to withdraw’, International Affairs, vol. 56, no. 1 (1956) pp. 73–93.
Susan Strange, Sterling and British Policy (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) p. 62.
Other commentators offer slightly differing periodisations from that presented here. Reynolds, ‘A “special relationship”?’, for example, views the entire 1945–63 period as a single phase of generally close relations which was followed by two periods of cooling (1963–73 and 1973+). Baylis, Anglo-American Defence Relations, in contrast, partitions the post-Suez period into four phases: the ‘preferential relationship’, 1957– 62; the ‘close relationship’, 1963–9; the ‘natural relationship’, 1970–9; and the extraordinary alliance’, 1980–7.
CMND 537, Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom … and the government of the United States … for co-operation on the uses of atomic energy for mutual defence purposes (3 July 1958).
Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 95.
For details, see ibid., pp. 96–7.
Ibid., pp. 97–101.
The precise details of the financial charges to be made by Washington were given in Article XI of CMND 2108 (6 April 1963). As The Times Defence Correspondent observed on 27 Jan. 1983, this constituted ‘… a bargain that for most of its life has cost the Government less than 2% of its defence budget’. Cited in Alistair Home, ‘The Macmillan Years and Afterwards’, in Louis and Bull (eds) The Special Relationship, p. 98.
See Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1971).
See, for example, John Mander, Great Britain or Little England (London: Penguin, 1963) p. 21.
Cited in Baylis, Anglo-American Defence p. 106.
Home, ‘Macmillan Years’, pp. 92–3.
Ibid., p. 100. The Partial Test Ban Treaty itself was signed in August 1963.
Ibid., pp. 95–6.
Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 147.
Cited in ibid., p. 154–5.
Cited in Ibid., p. 155.
CMND 6413 (25 Jan. 1976).
Peter Unwin, ‘British Foreign Policy Opportunities Part I — the Global context’, International Affairs, vol. 57, no. 2 (1981), p. 226.
David Watt, ‘Introduction: the Anglo-American relationship’, in Louis and Bull (eds), The Special Relationship, p. 13.
Cited in Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 151.
Reynolds, ‘A “special relationship”?’, p. 13.
See Chapter 8.
The result of Carter’s efforts was the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian Peace treaty. See Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, Mass: Little, Brown, 1982).
David Owen, Personally Speaking to Kenneth Harris (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987).
Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 182.
Ibid., pp. 182–3.
For review, see Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1984).
For the new right’s views of the left, see Roger Scruton, Thinkers of the New Left (Harlow: Longman, 1985).
Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 184. See CMND 8517, The British Strategic Nuclear Force (HMSO: March 1982).
Admiral Sir James Eberle, ‘The Military Relationship’, pp. 157–8,
and Ernest R. May and Gregory F. Treverton, ‘Defence Relationships: American Perspectives’, in Louis and Bull (eds) The Special Relationship, pp. 175–6.
Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 192.
The Times, 16 April 1986.
The British government’s permission was necessary under the terms of the ‘Truman-Attlee Understandings’ of 1951. See Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 186.
Two polls conducted in by-election constituencies (Ryedale and Derbyshire West) immediately after the Libyan bombing indicated that 61 per cent of the sample disapproved of the British government’s decision to allow US bombers to fly from British bases (Guardian, 30 April 1986).
‘Mad dog’ was the deliberately provocative phrase used by President Reagan to describe Colonel Qadafi on 9 April. (See the Observer, 20 April 1986.)
Guardian, 21 April 1986, p. 17. Cynics noted that the ‘surgical strike’ had not been carried out particularly accurately. Most of the Libyan casualties were civilian. Colonel Qadafi himself — the presumed target of the attack — was unharmed.
See Chapter 4, pp. 114–15.
On both the similarities and differences of the British and American political cultures, see Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1965).
At the mass level, these feelings of affect have consistently been reflected in opinion poll responses. Eurobarometer polls, for example, have consistently shown the British to be more trusting of Americans than any other nationality. (See, for example, Eurobarometer 17 (April, 1982; ICPSR Study No. 9023).) Polls conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations have similarly shown that Americans generally regard the British as being highly trustworthy. (See, for example, J. E. Rielly (ed.), American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy (Chicago: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1983).) Although there are no comparable data at the elite level, there is no reason to suppose that British or American elites are any less favourably disposed towards one another than their respective populations.
This is certainly the case for those periods where the officiai records have been opened. See, for example, Ritchie Ovendale, ‘The Palestine Policy of the British Labour Government, 1945–46’, International Affairs, vol. 55, no. 3 (1979) pp. 409–31;
Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Britain, the US and the Cold War in SE Asia 1949–50’, International Affairs vol. 58, no. 3 (1982) pp. 447–64.
Indeed, if anything, the United States became even more important as a trade partner for the United Kingdom. British exports to the United States increased from 6.3 per cent of total United Kingdom exports in 1955 to 14.4 per cent of total exports in 1984. (See Table 5.4.)
United States exports to the United Kingdom constituted 4.5 per cent of all United States exports in 1952; 5.5 per cent in 1960; 5.5 per cent in 1970; 5.3 per cent in 1980; and 5.2 per cent in 1986. Source: United Nations Yearbook of International Trade Statistics (New York: United Nations, various years).
The G7 group is comprised of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, FRG, Japan and Canada.
CMND 537.
Andrew Pierre, Nuclear Politics: The British Experience with an Independent Strategic Force, 1939–70 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972) p. 144.
This became particularly noticeable in the early 1960s, when decolonisation should perhaps have been reducing Britain’s overseas defence burden. From 1955/6 through to 1959/60, the Defence Estimates were in the region of £1500m per annum (1955/6 = £1548m; 1959/60 = £1514m). From 1960 onwards, however, costs rapidly escalated, even allowing for inflation. In 1960/1 the Defence Budget was £1629m; in 1961/2 £1655m; in 1962/3 £1721m; in 1963/4, £1838m. By 1966–7, the total annual estimate had risen to £2250m. (Source: Annual Statement(s) on the Defence Estimates 1955–1966).
Reynolds ‘A “Special Relationship”?’ p. 13.
Michael Clarke, ‘American reactions to shifts in European Policy: the changing context’, in John Roper (ed.), The Future of British Defence Policy (Aldershot: Gower, 1985) pp. 83–4.
Sir Michael Howard, ‘Afterword: the “Special Relationship’”, in Louis and Bull (eds), The Special Relationship, p. 391.
On the extent of this consultation, see, for example, Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1956–1959 (London: Macmillan, 1971).
The ‘evil Empire’ was, of course, one of President Reagan’s favourite euphemisms for the Soviet Union.
Watt, ‘Introduction: the Anglo-American relationship’, p. 7.
Max Beloff, ‘The Special Relationship: an Anglo-American myth’, in Martin Gilbert (ed.), A Century of Conflict 1850–1950: Essays for A. J. P. Taylor (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966) pp. 151–71.
Reynolds, ‘A “special relationship”?’, pp. 13–18.
Eberle, ‘The Military Relationship’, p. 154;
May and Treverton, ‘Defence Relationships’ pp. 168–9.
Margaret Gowing, ‘Britain, America and the Bomb’, in Dilks (ed.), Retreat from Power, Vol. 2, p. 137.
This seems most closely to accord with Thatcher’s own view. In December 1979 she referred to the Anglo-American relationship as ‘the extraordinary alliance’. Cited in Baylis, Anglo-American Defence, p. 182.
Home, ‘Macmillan Years’, pp. 90–2. Home quotes Joe Hersch’s comment that Macmillan was ‘… one of the few living British politicians who can manage to sound convincingly patriotic without sounding anti-American’ (p. 91).
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© 1989 David Sanders
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Sanders, D. (1989). The Changing ‘Special Relationship’, 1956–88. In: Losing an Empire, Finding a Role. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20747-3_7
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