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British Labour and the Cold War: The Foreign Policy of the Labour Governments, 1945–1951

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Peter Weiler
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Labour took office in 1945 amid high hopes that its socialist message could be applied abroad as well as at home. Although Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, and other Labour leaders had had almost as much responsibility as their Conservative counterparts for Britain's wartime foreign policy, it was widely believed that once on its own Labour would play a different role in world affairs. Let Us Face the Future, the party's election manifesto, pledged to “apply [a] Socialist analysis to the world situation.” Bevin's famous “Left understands Left” remark was widely taken to mean that Labour would be more sympathetic to revolutionary developments throughout the world but above all to the Soviet Union. For many in the Labour movement, a socialist foreign policy and sympathy for the Soviet Union also implied distrust of the United States and its attempt to create what the New Statesman called a capitalist “economic empire.” For the Labour movement as a whole, the story of these years can be summarized simply: the reluctant abandonment of hopes of Anglo-Soviet friendship and the grudging acceptance of an Anglo-American alliance.

Labour leaders, of course, did not fully share the assumptions of their more enthusiastic followers, and they made clear from the start that they intended no radical break with the foreign policy of the wartime coalition that they had helped to shape. Ernest Bevin told the Commons in his first major speech as foreign secretary that he accepted the foreign policy of his predecessor, Anthony Eden. But a commitment to continuity in foreign policy did not immediately entail complete hostility to the Soviet Union or a special relationship with the United States.

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Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1: England's Foreign Relations , January 1987 , pp. 54 - 82
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1987

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References

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25 United States policy was not unambiguously pro-Zionist but was filled with twists and turns, once leading Sir Alexander Cadogan to comment that determining American policy was “like trying to tickle a trout with oiled gloves” (cited by Hathaway, p. 225). See also Nachmani, Amikam, “‘It Is a Matter of Getting the Mixture Right’: Britain's Post-war Relations with America in the Middle East,” Journal of Contemporary History 18 (January 1983): 117–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Because of his brash and outspoken manner—he once said the Americans favored admitting another 100,000 Jews to Palestine because they “did not want too many Jews in New York”—Bevin was accused at the time of anti-Semitic feeling. Although agreeing that he was insensitive and failed to understand how strongly European Jews felt about leaving Europe, all the works under review acquit Bevin of this charge. See Bullock, pp. 177, 277; Hathaway, pp. 222–23; Morgan (n. 7 above), p. 208; Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 384Google Scholar.

27 Bullock defends Bevin's policy as prescient; it was only the situation that was impossible (p. 564). Although critical of Bevin's handling of the Palestine issue, Morgan concludes it is difficult to see an alternative possible policy (p. 217). In The British Empire in the Middle East, Louis eschews a summary evaluation.

28 Cited by Anderson (n. 7 above), p. 91.

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35 The Times called this “the most disturbing statement ever made by a British Government” (Hathaway, pp. 298–99). Until 1947 most British policymakers assumed that Britain would recover its prewar condition, making it in fact, not just in name, one of the Big Three (see Adamthwaite, Anthony, “Britain and the World, 1945–9: The View from the Foreign Office,” International Affairs 61 [Spring 1985]: 223–35)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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39 Alexander (n. 7 above), p. 116. Rothwell makes clear the twists and turns in Foreign Office opinion about this region (pp. 193–221). The famous percentages deal of October 1944 was intended to validate Soviet control in Rumania and Bulgaria in exchange for recognition of British paramountcy in Greece (see Resis, Albert, “The Churchill-Stalin ‘Percentages’ Agreement on the Balkans, Moscow, October, 1944,” American Historical Review 83 [April 1978]: 368–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Interestingly, the Foreign Office in late 1944 was also willing to accept Soviet demands for an oil concession in Iran for the sake of Anglo-Soviet friendship (Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 58Google Scholar).

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42 Rothwell briefly surveys Foreign Office views (chap. 7).

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46 Bullock, pp. 843, 10.

47 See also Adamthwaite (n. 35 above).

48 Bullock, pp. 513–27.

49 Vyacheslav Molotov complained to Bevin in September 1945, “Relations with the Soviet Union must be based on equality. Things seemed to be … like this: there was the war. During the war we had argued but we had managed to come to terms …. At that time the Soviet Union was needed. But when the war was over His Majesty's Government had seemed to change their attitude. Was that because we no longer needed the Soviet Union?“ (cited by Knight, Jonathan, “Russia's Search for Peace: The London Conference of Foreign Ministers, 1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 13 [1978]: 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For a critical view of Bevin's role, see Saville, John, “Ernest Bevin and the Cold War, 1945–1950,” in Socialist Register (London, 1984), pp. 68–100Google Scholar.

50 Gormly, James, The Collapse of the Grand Alliance (Baton Rouge, La., in press)Google Scholar; Bullock, p. 25. On Potsdam, see Butler, Rohan and Pelly, M. E., eds., Documents on British Policy Overseas, ser. 1, vol. 1 (London, 1984)Google Scholar. To date this is the only volume in the series to appear.

51 Bullock, p. 118. Morgan says that Bevin's “suspicions [were] almost unconquerable“ by March 1946 (p. 245). Morgan also comments on the “consistent anti-Soviet cast” of Bevin's policy in 1946 (p. 246). Bevin told Attlee in April 1946 that the Russians “have decided upon an aggressive policy based upon militant Communism and Russian chauvinism and seem determined to stick at nothing, short of war, to obtain their objectives” (Bullock, p. 234). Kenneth Harris contends that Attlee concluded after Potsdam that Anglo-Soviet cooperation was an impossibility (Attlee [London, 1982], p. 267Google Scholar). This is contested by Smith, Raymond and Zametica, John, “The Cold Warrior: Clement Attlee Reconsidered, 1945–7,” International Affairs 61 (Spring 1985): 237–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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54 Ibid., pp. 29, 271; J. Knight. At the least, the British assumed that the only alternative in most areas was either British or Soviet hegemony. Thus Bevin concluded that if Britain moved “out of the Mediterranean, Russia will move in” (Barker, p. 56). Bullock defends this assumption (pp. 156–57).

55 For example, Taubman, William, Stalin's American Policy: From Entente to Detente to Cold War (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

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58 Ryan, Henry, “A New Look at Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech,” Historical Journal 22 (December 1979): 918–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Privately, Bevin was pleased with the speech. Bullock dismisses the Soviet response (p. 225).

59 Bevin even thought Israel would become a Communist state (Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, pp. 569–70Google Scholar).

60 Alexander (n. 7 above), pp. 218–19, 250. As he also points out, however, a victorious Greek Communist party could not be expected to be friendly to British interests.

61 Ibid., p. 245. Here too the source of Britain's action was its assumption about its global position. “We must maintain our position in Greece as a part of our Middle East policy,” Bevin told the cabinet shortly after assuming office. “Unless it is asserted and settled it may have a bad effect on the whole of our Middle East position” (Bullock, p. 160)Google Scholar. Bullock's discussion of British policy in Greece largely fails to consider the social and political context of the evolving civil war in Greece, thereby validating instead of holding up to critical scrutiny the British evaluation of developments. See Iatrides, John O., ed., Greece in the 1940s—a Nation in Crisis (Hanover, N.H., 1981)Google Scholar.

62 Alexander, p. 249. Some Greeks might regard this as a somewhat ethnocentric judgment that ignored the more fundamental structural reasons for the polarization of Greek politics.

63 Bullock, p. 351. The joint chiefs agreed: “If we surrendered that hold [on the Middle East] and the responsibilities which it entails, we should automatically surrender our position as a world power, with the inevitable strategic and economic consequences. We should join the ranks of the other European powers and be treated as such by the United States” (cited by Louis, , “American Anti-colonialism …” [n. 17 above], p. 405)Google Scholar.

64 Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 737Google Scholar. Bullock presents Bevin's desire to transform Britain's imperial relations but not what Louis calls its imperialist goal (e.g., p. 114). As D. K. Fieldhouse points out, the fact that Bevin could proclaim that “we have ceased to be an Imperialist race; we dominate nobody” does not necessarily mean that in practice Britain ceased to dominate her colonies (“The Labour Governments and the Empire-Commonwealth, 1945–51,” in Ovendale, , ed. [n. 7 above], p. 102Google Scholar).

65 Northedge, F. S., “Britain and the Middle East,” in Ovendale, , ed., pp. 149–80Google Scholar. Northedge concludes that British policy “cannot be said to reflect much credit either on Britain or the makers of British policy” (p. 176). As late as 1950, Attlee lectured Truman and Acheson about “how the British understood Asian nationalism and the Oriental mind far better than they did” (Morgan [n. 7 above], p. 193).

66 Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 18Google Scholar.

67 Nevertheless, Louis also contends that, if Labour's goals in the Middle East were completely traditional, its policies were not interchangeable with the Conservatives. Not only did they have a stronger commitment to economic development, but they refused to intervene forcibly in Arab countries as British governments had routinely done in the past; this was particularly the work of Ernest Bevin.

68 Morgan, pp. 193, 203, 231. For India, see Moore, R. J., Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar.

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70 Ibid., p. 99. Parathat Sarathi Gupta presents a more balanced evaluation: “The imperial role of the Labour government … is neither as unselfish as the official manifesto would lead us to believe, nor as single-mindedly Machiavellian as some of its critics have claimed, both then and now” (“Imperialism and the Labour Government of 1945–51,” in The Working Class in Modern History: Essays in Honour of Henry Petting, ed. Winter, Jay [Cambridge, 1983], p. 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

71 Constantine, Stephen, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 1914–1940 (London, 1984), p. 303Google Scholar. See also Morgan, D. J., The Official History of Colonial Development, vol. 1, The Origins of British Aid Policy, 1924–1945 (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Weiler, Peter, “Forming Responsible Trade Unions: The Colonial Office, Colonial Labor, and the Trades Union Congress,” Radical History Review, nos. 28–30 (1948), pp. 367–92Google Scholar. Louis (The British Empire in the Middle East), however, indicates that Fieldhouse's judgment (p. 116) is too harsh. “In Attlee's day … Labour's position on imperial issues was almost identical with that of most Conservatives and … their policies in office were shaped by circumstances rather than principle.” Labour was more committed both to reform and to nonintervention.

72 Fieldhouse presents a useful summary of the literature on Asia and Africa. “Africa, where the British Empire might be maintained indefinitely, became the mystique,” Louis, comments (The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 16)Google Scholar. The British contemplated establishing a replacement for their Suez base in both Cyrenaica and Kenya. For the contrasting view of Labour's policy in Africa, see Pearce, R. D., The Turning Point in Africa: British Colonial Policy, 1938–1948 (London, 1982)Google Scholar.

73 Fieldhouse, p. 94. See also Singh, A. I., “Keeping India in the Commonwealth: British Political and Military Aims, 1947–49,” Journal of Contemporary History 20 (July 1985): 469–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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75 Ovendale, Ritchie, “The South African Policy of the British Labour Government, 1947–1951,” International Affairs 59 (Winter 1982–1983): 41–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although it approved the absorption of South West Africa (Namibia) in 1946, after 1950 Labour was concerned to prevent the spread of South African power. It is perhaps noteworthy that Labour leaders were close to Jan Smuts.

76 Bullock (n. 6 above), p. 473.

77 Michael Wright, assistant under secretary at the Foreign Office, cited by Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 111Google Scholar. The combined chiefs of staff had remained in existence after the war, but serious military and technical cooperation only began again in late 1946 (Hathaway [n. 7 above], pp. 264 ff.; Anderson [n. 7 above], pp. 190–91).

78 Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 102Google Scholar. Bevin told Acheson that “Britain provided the ‘best window’” on both Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Bullock, p. 673).

79 Rotter, Andrew J., “The Triangular Route to Vietnam: The United States, Great Britain, and Southeast Asia, 1945–1950,” International History Review 6 (August 1984): 422–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rotter contends that the British feared for their own economic recovery if Southeast Asia became Communist, a view that the United States came to accept.

80 “It was a considerable achievement on the part of Bevin, and his Foreign Office officials,” Ovendale concludes, “to help secure the American commitment to stop communist expansion in Asia” (“Britain and the Cold War in Asia,” in Ovendale, , ed. [n. 7 above], p. 142Google Scholar). See also Ovendale, Richie, “Britain, the United States, and the Cold War in South-East Asia, 1949–1950,” International Affairs 58 (Summer 1982): 447–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Bullock, p. 675.

82 Ibid., p. 404. Morgan (n. 7 above) agrees and judges the period from mid-1947 to mid-1949 as one of “great creativity” (pp. 270, 275).

83 The Marshall Plan also sought to create a framework that would facilitate the economic revival of Germany, a goal that European countries would have opposed under other circumstances. See Gimbel, John, The Origins of the Marshall Plan (Stanford, Calif., 1976)Google Scholar. For a review of the literature about the Marshall Plan, see Jackson, Scott, “Prologue to the Marshall Plan: The Origins of the American Commitment for a European Recovery Program,” Journal of American History 65 (March 1979): 1043–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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85 Ibid., p. 239. Bullock accepts the charge made at the time that Soviets opposed European recovery on the assumption that an economically prostrate Europe would enhance the fortunes of local Communist parties. Soviet intentions cannot be known, but in 1945 and 1946 Communist parties had been staunch supporters of recovery plans, even when these required sacrifices from the working class (Bullock, p. 418).

86 Cromwell, p. 233; Ovendale, , “Britain, the U.S.A. and the European Cold War” (n. 31 above), p. 233Google Scholar. There is considerable debate about whether the United States and, to a lesser extent, Britain deliberately tried to establish financial terms that would force the Soviets to withdraw, thereby securing a great propaganda victory when the Soviets came to be seen as opponents of European recovery. Most recently, Cromwell has argued that this was not the primary purpose of the plan's terms but that they had that effect (pp. 234–37).

87 “It was Bevin's imagination in seeing what could be made of it [Marshall's offer] and his boldness in taking the initiative which gave Marshall's remarks the resonance they needed to become effective” (Bullock, p. 405).

88 See Maier, Charles, “The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II,” International Organization 31 (Autumn 1977): 607–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Two Postwar Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth Century Western Europe,” American Historical Review 86 (April 1981): 327–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hogan, Michael, “Revival and Reform: America's Twentieth Century Search for a New Economic Order Abroad,” Diplomatic History 8 (Fall 1984): 287–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “American Marshall Planners and the Search for a European Neocapitalism,” American Historical Review 90 (February 1985): 44–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Watt (n. 10 above) talks about the “myth” of Bevin's unique role in the formation of the Marshall Plan (p. 109).

90 When Bevin proposed to pull the last contingent of British troops out of Greece, he was sharply reminded by the United States that “a large measure of U.S. foreign policy has been predicated upon the British willingness to contribute what they can to the maintenance of stability in Europe” (cited by Bullock, p. 469). Bevin struggled with Dalton about the extent of British commitments. Dalton sought to save funds for the sake of British recovery while Bevin opposed any measures that “might impair American confidence in Britain as a reliable partner” and prejudice American aid (Bullock, p. 445).

91 Brett, Teddy, Gilliatt, Steve, and Pople, Andrew, “Planned Trade, Labour Policy and U.S. Intervention: The Successes and Failures of Post-war Reconstruction,” History Workshop, no. 13 (Spring 1982), p. 140Google Scholar.

92 Shlaim, Avi, “Britain, the Berlin Blockade, and the Cold War,” International Affairs 60 (Winter 1983–1984): 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bullock, pp. 571–94, 634–35, 655.

93 Bullock, p. 617. It should be noted that the purpose of NATO was not military but “political and psychological.” Bevin and other Western leaders did not anticipate a Soviet attack. Would the Cold War in Europe have been more susceptible to settlement had this decision to militarize the Western bloc not been made? Bullock does not speculate.

94 Baylis, John, “Britain, the Brussels Pact and the Continental Commitment,” International Affairs 60 (Autumn 1984): 615–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As in the case of the Marshall Plan, there is some debate about where credit for the organization lies and who moved whom. See Petersen, Nikolas, “Who Pulled Whom and How Much? Britain, the United States, and the Making of the North Atlantic Treaty,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 11 (Summer 1982): 93–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ireland, Timothy P., Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Westport, Conn., 1981)Google Scholar.

95 Morgan (n. 7 above), p. 275.

96 Bullock, p. 655. See also Ovendale, ed. (n. 7 above), p. 6; Barker (n. 7 above), pp. 232–33; Pelling (n. 7 above), p. 145.

97 Ovendale, Ritchie, “Introduction,” in Ovendale, , ed., pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

98 Gormly, James, “The Washington Declaration and the ‘Poor Relation’: Anglo-American Atomic Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History 8 (Spring 1984): 125–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bullock, pp. 185–90, 352–53; Harris (n. 51 above), pp. 277–91; Hathaway (n. 7 above), pp. 212–16, 260–63. Arguably, this decision, which Harris calls “constitutionally dubious,” may well have had a profound impact on the Labour party, which to this day remains divided over the wisdom of Britain's possessing an independent nuclear deterrent. The question is, Would divisions in the party have been less if the decision had been made democratically?

99 “The Cold Warriors have taught us not to sell out to the Russians,” Paul Addison comments. “If there is anything academic historians can contribute to political sanity, it is by pointing out that ever since 1940 we have been selling out to the United States” (“Naked Except for a Bath Towel,” London Review of Books [January 24, 1985], p. 5Google Scholar).

100 The most recent discussion of this subject is Pollard, Robert, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

101 Barker, p. 131. The Foreign Office concluded in 1949 that Britain needed to “show enough strength of national will and retain enough initiative to maintain her position as a world power, and, as such, influence the United States” (cited by Adamthwaite [n. 35 above], pp. 229–30).

102 The first phrase was written by the Foreign Office; the second, by Sir Oliver Franks, ambassador to the United States (Ovendale, ed., p. 131; Morgan, p. 423).

103 Morgan calls the decision a “profound watershed in British political history” (p. 435).

104 It is also true that he distrusted the Europeans as a “broken reed” (Bullock, p. 776).

105 It was, Morgan comments, “a practical imperative as well as a partial reflection of a self-contained, insulated economy” (p. 398). See also Young, John W., Britain, France, and the Unity of Europe, 1945–1951 (Leicester, 1984)Google Scholar; Warner, Geoffrey, “The Labour Governments and the Unity of Western Europe, 1945–51,” in Ovendale, , ed., pp. 61–82Google Scholar; Newton, Scott, “The 1949 Sterling Crisis and British Policy towards European Integration,” Review of International Studies 11 (July 1985): 169–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Britain, the Sterling Area and European Integration, 1945–50,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13 (May 1985): 163–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 Jonathan Schneer, Labour's Conscience: The Labour Left, 1945–1951 (in press).

107 Hugh Dalton shared this view. See Pimlott (n. 34 above), p. 499.

108 The joint chiefs argued the opposite: “Our main strategic requirements are based principally upon facts of geography and the distribution of man-power and natural resources which do not change. We consider therefore that the basic principles of our strategy … will not be radically altered by new developments in methods or weapons of warfare” (cited by Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East [n. 7 above], p. 29)Google Scholar.

109 Cited by Smith, Raymond and Zametica, John, “The Cold Warrior: Clement Attlee Reconsidered, 1945–7,” International Affairs 61 (Spring 1985): 248CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Ibid. In 1948 Bevin thought that the “most dangerous development would be if Russia suddenly became conciliatory, dividing the democracies and leading them ‘to ease up on the creation of the solidarity’ which was essential” (Bullock, pp. 557–58).

111 Louis, , The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 50Google Scholar. Adamthwaite (n. 35 above) argues that Britain was a world power and could only have acted as such (p. 231). Bullock too sees a “Little England" alternative as unrealistic (p. 33).

112 “It is easy and fashionable to dismiss the events of these years as British and American imperialism threatening a peaceful non-expansionist Russia,” Ovendale writes in criticism of the revisionist interpretation of the Cold War. “To do this neglects the real sense of threat felt in Britain and the United States” (“Britain, the U.S.A., and the European Cold War” [n. 31 above], pp. 235–36).

113 Bullock, of course, would disagree. “There is nothing to show that anything Bevin or any other Englishman could have said would have persuaded him [Stalin] to act differently. The commonest criticism of Bevin in 1945–7, that he was responsible for the deterioration in Anglo-Russian relations, seems to me to have lost much of its substance with the passage of time” (p. 843).

114 “It can be said that the emergence of the cold war marked a transitional period in relations between Britain and the United States, and the western world and Russia. The United States took over Britain's mantle of world leadership—which British statesmen, in view of the supposed Russian threat, saw as necessary” (“Britain, the U.S.A., and the European Cold War,” p. 236). On the Cold War as ideology, see Weiler, Peter, “British Labour and the Cold War: The London Dock Strike of 1949,” in Social Conflict and the Political Order in Modern Britain, ed. Cronin, James and Schneer, Jonathan (London, 1982), pp. 146–78Google Scholar.

115 Bullock, p. 840.

116 Louis calls the “special relationship” a “myth” (The British Empire in the Middle East, p. 112).

117 Minute, Bernard Burrows, Foreign Office, German Department, July 31, 1947, PRO, FO 371/64371/C1070/194/18.

118 This is a major theme of Gormly's The Collapse of the Grand Alliance (n. 50 above). It is arguable that the British overestimated their influence over American policy, misunderstanding the degree to which the United States had arrived on its own at a global (and anti-Soviet) perspective.

119 Fieldhouse (n. 64 above). Bullock would disagree: “Far from agreeing therefore that Bevin saddled Britain with a world role she could not sustain,” Bullock concludes, “I suggest that what he did was to provide his successors with the indispensable basis of security in the Western Alliance on which they could then proceed to make whatever adjustments were necessary and to develop such options as entry into Europe and withdrawal from the Middle East and from east of Suez” (p. 847).

120 Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East.

121 Morgan (n. 7 above), p. 33.