Abstract
In modern times, since the end of the Napoleonic wars, Britain’s connection with Spain was often concerned with that country’s internal affairs and its various revolutions and changes of regime. The response to these changes was invariably, though not always, to take a stance of non-intervention or non-interference. So that in the early 1820s, for example, both Foreign Secretaries Lord Robert Castlereagh and George Canning opposed external intervention in Spain. In his State Paper of 5 May 1820, circulated to the other European great powers (France, Austria, Prussia and Russia), Castlereagh, aware of their wish to make intervention against liberal revolution a dominant principle of the ongoing Congress system, asserted that to generalise ‘the principle of one state interfering by force in the internal affairs of another’ and ‘to think of reducing it to a system, or to impose it as an obligation’ was a scheme ‘utterly impracticable and objectionable’ and ‘no country having a Representative system of Government could act upon it’.1 When the French invaded Spain in 1823 to overthrow the Spanish liberal constitutional Government British liberals urged Canning to retaliate by guaranteeing to Spain the eventual restoration of the Spanish constitution. This he refused to do, though he confirmed that the principle on which ‘the British Government so earnestly deprecated the war against Spain’ was that of ‘the right of any Nation to change, or to modify, its internal institutions’.2
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Notes
Harold Temperley and Lillian Penson (eds), Foundations of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902) (London, 1966), p. 61.
George Canning, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to William A’Court, British Minister at Madrid, 18 September 1823. Cited in Ibid., p. 83 and James Joll (ed.), Britain and Europe: Pitt to Churchill, 1993–1940 (London, 1961), p. 93.
Richard Millman, British Foreign Policy and the Coming of the Franco-Prussian War (Oxford, 1965\0), p. 178.
TNA, CAB 23/46, CM 47(23). For the origins of the coup see Shlomo Ben-Ami, The Origins of the Second Republic in Spain, (Oxford, 1978), pp. 1–10.
For the shortcomings of the parliamentary system in Spain before 1923 see Charles Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age: From Constitution to Civil War, 1808–1939 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 206–56.
FO371/15771, W4251/46/41, minute by Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, 16 April 1931. See also D. Little, Malevolent Neutrality: the United States, Great Britain and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War (Ithaca, New York, and London, 1985), p. 65.
Enrico Moradiellos, ‘The origins of British non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War: Anglo-Spanish relations in early 1936’, European History Quarterly, vol. 21, 1991, pp. 341–4.
See also Enrico Moradiellos, Neutralidad Benévola: el Gobierno Británico y la insurrección Militar Española de 1936 (Oviedo, 1990), pp. 95–103.
For details see Little, Malevolent Neutrality, pp. 215–16; and C.E. Harvey, The Rio Tinto Company: An Economic History of a Leading Mining Concern, (Penzance, 1984), pp. 264–6.
Glyn Stone, ‘The European Great Powers and the Spanish Civil War’, in Robert Boyce and Esmonde Robertson (eds), Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (London, 1939), pp. 213–14.
For Vansittart’s conversion see Glyn Stone, ‘Sir Robert Vansittart and Spain, 1931–1941’, in T.G. Otte and Constantine Pagedas (eds), Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History (London, 1997), pp. 144–6.
Denis Smyth, ‘We are with you: solidarity and self-interest in Soviet policy towards Republican Spain, 1936–1939’, in Paul Preston and Ann Mackenzie (eds), The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain, 1936–1939 (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 105.
Duke of Alba, Nationalist Agent in London, to Gómez Jordana y Sousa, Nationalist Foreign Minister, 22 June 1938, cited in Enrico Moradielos, La perfida de Albión: El Gobierno britanico y la Guerra civil española (Madrid, 1996), p. 285.
Angel Viñas, El Honor de la República Entre el acoso fascita la hostilidad británica y la politica de Stalin (Barcelona, 2009), p. 444.
See Glyn Stone, Spain, Portugal and the Great Powers, 1931–1941 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 54–6, pp. 57–60.
See Glyn Stone, ‘Britain, France and Franco’s Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 6, 1995, pp. 375.
For details of the submarine bases see Charles Burdick, ‘“Moro”: the Resupply of German Submarines in Spain, 1939–1942’, Central European History, vol. 3, 1970, pp. 256–83.
See also Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (London, 1993), pp. 336–7 and Heinz Höhne, Canaris (London), pp. 426–7.
Malcolm Muggeridge (ed.), Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers (London, Odhams, 1948), p. 291.
Paul Preston, ‘Franco and Hitler: the Myth of Hendaye 1940’, Contemporary European History, vol. 1, 1992, pp. 1–16.
Franco’s policy of non-belligerency included economic cooperation on a large scale with the Third Reich. See Christian Leitz, Economic Relations between Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain 1936–1945 (Oxford, 1996).
Denis Smyth, Diplomacy and Strategy of Survival: British Policy and Franco’s Spain, 1940–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 53. As an indication of the continuing anxiety concerning anti-Franco opinion, when Franco made a number of ministerial changes in May 1941, which appeared to be to Britain’s advantage, Eden felt compelled on two separate occasions to warn his Cabinet colleagues that it was ‘most necessary that the Press should not comment on these changes’. CAB65/18, WM 47(41) and WM 49(41), War Cabinet meetings, 5 and 12 May 1941. In October 1941 Churchill was particularly incensed by an article in the Daily Mirror which contained a violent attack on Spain. He emphasised that it was ‘clearly contrary to the national interest that articles which increased the risk of Spain coming into the war against us should be published’. CAB65/19, WM 101(41), War Cabinet meeting, 9 Oct. 1941.
CAB65/10, WM 298(40), War Cabinet meeting, 28 Nov. 1940. For a full discussion of the Negrín case see Denis Smyth, ‘The politics of asylum, Juan Negrín and the British Government in 1940’, in Richard Langhorne (ed.), Diplomacy and Intelligence during the Second World War (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 126–46.
FO371/26964, C14354/1111/41, FO to Madrid, 27 Dec. 1941. For the Spanish opposition during the Second World War see David J. Dunthorn, Britain and the Anti-Franco Opposition, 1940–1950 (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 11–27.
24 May 1944. Hansard, HC Deb, 5th series, vol. 400, c. 771. Hugh Dalton, Labour MP and President of the Board of Trade, noted in his diary that, according to Gladwyn Jebb of the Foreign Office, Churchill had ‘made up his praise of Franco and his Government’ at 2.30 a.m. on the morning of his speech. The Foreign Office did not see a draft of the Prime Minister’s speech until an hour before it had to be delivered and although they had done their best to tone it down they had met with hardly any success. B. Pimlott, The Second World War Diaries of Hugh Dalton, 1940–1945 (London, 1986), diary entry, 9 June 1944, pp. 755–6.
Churchill to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 4 June 1944. Warren F. Kimball (ed.), Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence. Vol. 3 Alliance Declining (Princeton NJ, 1984), pp. 162–3.
See also W.S. Churchill, The Second World War: Vol. 5. Closing the Ring (London, 1954), p. 554.
President Roosevelt to the Ambassador in Spain (Norman Armour), 10 March 1945. FRUS, 1945, vol. V, p. 667. For Roosevelt’s policy towards Spain see Joan Maria Thomàs, Roosevelt, Franco and the End of the Second World War (Basingstoke, 2011).
Documents on British Policy Overseas: The Conference at Potsdam, series I, vol. I (London, 1984), pp. 424–7. For details relating to Spain and the Potsdam Conference see Enrique Moradiellos, ‘The Potsdam Conference and the Spanish Problem’, Central European History, vol. 10, 2001, pp. 73–90.
Jefferson Caffery, Ambassador at Paris, to the Secretary of State, 12 December 1945. FRUS, 1945, vol. V, pp. 698–9. Preston, Franco, p. 543. For French policy and attitudes towards the Franco regime after the Second World War see David Messenger, L’Espagne Républicaine: French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France (Brighton, 2008), pp. 75–138.
See Qashin Ahmad, Britain, Franco Spain and the Cold War, 1945–1950 (Kuala Lumpur, 1995), pp. 47–58.
F. Portero, Franco aislado: La cuestion española, 1945–1950 (Madrid, 1989), p. 216. According to Paul Preston, Francoist sources claim there were 700,000 attending in the Plaza. Whatever the veracity of this claim, as he says, it was a very impressive demonstration. Franco, p. 561. The Madrid Embassy calculated that there may have been more than 300,000 attending. FO371/60370, Z10464/36/41, Mallet to the Foreign Office, 11 Dec. 1946.
Paul Preston and Denis Smyth, Spain, the EEC and NATO (London: 1984).
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Stone, G. (2013). Britain and the Spanish Connection, 1931–1947: Non-intervention and Regime Change. In: Baxter, C., Dockrill, M.L., Hamilton, K. (eds) Britain in Global Politics Volume 1. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367822_9
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