Free Trade and Democracy: The Ideals of the Wider English-Speaking Commonwealth

Abstract

The United Nations was not the only body to be established after 1945 to try to make the world a safer and better place. As the victor powers surveyed the rubble of the civilisation which had given its all to war, they tried to embody in a new global architecture the values they held dear. Both the US and the UK value liberty. British history is based on the story of the struggle to limit the actions of the king, to gain the vote, and to mobilise public opinion. The US nation was born from the Boston Tea Party, asserting the right to settle their own affairs in a democratic manner. Whereas Germany and Italy had struggled to unite their countries and were used to strong central power, whereas the smaller European countries were more worried about external threats to their freedom than internal ones, the two Anglo-Saxon countries saw the world in terms of trying to secure traditional democratic freedoms.