Britain failed to develop its own missiles to
carry the nuclear warheads and so was obliged to
buy them from the US. In December 1962
Macmillan met President Kennedy in the Bahamas
and successfully negotiated the Nassau Agree-
ment, under which the US undertook to supply
Polaris missiles to be fitted to British-built atomic
submarines. This Anglo-American deal was to
have profound implications for Anglo-French
relations and so for Britain’s attempts to join the
Common Market in the 1960s, because de Gaulle
interpreted it as evidence of a British decision to
opt for the US rather than Western Europe and of
a British desire to relegate France to a second-class
status. As a result, in 1963 the general turned
down Britain’s application to join the Common
Market. Although eventually Britain and the US
sought to pacify their non-nuclear NATO allies by
setting up in 1966 joint nuclear defence commit-
tees, which would share nuclear planning rather
than weapons, the French – who by now had their
own nuclear missiles – maintained their refusal
to participate in NATO’s integrated nuclear struc-
ture and went their own way, testing their
weapons in the South Pacific.
The continuous nuclear debate highlights the
significance of these decisions at home and inter-
nationally. At home the horror aroused by a
weapon of indiscriminate mass destruction
prompted in 1958 the largest popular protest
movement of post-war Britain, the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Originally its moral
appeal cut across traditional party and class lines.
CND became a powerful radical movement led by
middle-class left-wingers, who sought to persuade
the Labour Party to abandon the bomb unilaterally
and so give a moral lead to the world. Within the
Labour Party, demands for unilateral disarmament
became a serious embarrassment for its leaders
from Gaitskell to Neil Kinnock in the 1980s.
Britain’s fivefold policy aims looked fine on
paper, but the essence of a successful and coherent
strategy is that all its elements should harmonise
and that its priorities should be ordered correctly.
Britain was handicapped by its success in the
Second World War and by its unbroken historical
tradition. It would have been difficult to foresee in
the 1950s the rapidity of Western Europe’s recov-
ery from the war. Towards its European neigh-
bours Britain followed a policy of a partial com-
mitment. This involved encouraging the collabora-
tion of the Western European states, the Federal
German Republic, France, Italy and the Benelux
countries, without embroiling Britain too closely
in their emerging political and economic arrange-
ments. Britain saw its role as a powerful ally – sup-
porting, together with the US, the strengthening
of Western Europe rather than trying to lead it.
This was partly because considerable importance
was still attached economically and politically to
Britain’s ties with the Commonwealth, the inde-
pendent Dominions – Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and South Africa – which were joined by
India and Pakistan and later by many former
colonies as they gained independence.In colonial and imperial affairs Britain continued to
adjust gradually to the new realities, but not with-
out difficulty. Even if it had wished simply to aban-
don its colonial possessions quickly, it could not be
done without conflict. There were always rivals
ready to take Britain’s place, who even before its
departure tried to make good their claims by fight-
ing for them. British troops, and often their fami-
lies too, were exposed to terrorism. Palestine was,
thus, only the first of many quagmires.
Cyprus, an important British base, flared into
violence in 1955 after the British, Greek and
Turkish foreign ministers, meeting in conference,
failed to agree a solution to the problem of the
island’s self-government. The leader of the Greek
Cypriots, Archbishop Makarios, representing
some 80 per cent of the inhabitants, wanted
union with Greece, enosis, which was anathema to
the Cypriot Turks. Britain wanted to retain a
secure base, which became all the more import-
ant after the Suez debacle in 1956. A terror cam-
paign was launched on the island by EOKA (the
National Organisation of Cypriot Struggle),
headed by a former Greek colonel, Georgios
Grivas. Greece was backing the Greek Cypriots,
and Turkey followed suit, backing the Turkish
Cypriots with still greater militancy. Only in 1959
was there sufficient agreement between Britain,
Greece and Turkey to allow the setting up of an
independent republic of Cyprus, whose Turkish538 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s