‘He wanted to establish his own special relationship’

Abstract

On 28 February 1974, the Heath government was defeated in the British elections. When Kissinger passed through London a month later, the Labour Foreign Secretary, Jim Callaghan, told him that he wanted to put an end to the antagonisms with the United States that had developed under Heath. Callaghan was far from sharing Heath’s enthusiasm for the EEC — he was to spend much of his time as Foreign Secretary ‘renegotiating’ the terms of British entry — and was a committed Atlanticist. Nixon’ s Presidency by now was in its death throes and Wilson, in contrast to his first term, largely left foreign policy to Callaghan.¹