the party, though its most radical exponent was
Harold Macmillan. Macmillan was entrusted
with redeeming Tory pledges to build 300,000
houses a year, and he succeeded brilliantly. Lord
Woolton was another popular minister; responsi-
ble for food, his success was inexorably linked to
the rising meat content of the British sausage.
Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office enjoyed a
national prestige, in part based on his resignation
before the Munich settlement and in part on his
close association with Churchill during the war.
The last Churchill administration set the guide-
lines for successive Conservative governments for
more than a decade. In overseas relations and for-
eign affairs British policy followed five comple-
mentary aims: to strengthen as far as possible the
alliance with the US; to maintain an independent
military capacity as a great power by joining the
nuclear superpowers, the USSR and the US, in
building atomic weapons; to defend what were
regarded as Britain’s essential worldwide economic
and strategic interests in eastern Asia and the
Middle East; to promote cooperation among the
Commonwealth countries and to adjust to a new
relationship; and, finally, to assist as an ally West
European defence without becoming embroiled in
continental moves for closer collaboration. This
combination of policies, reflecting what were then
the perceived national interests, was based on a
mixture of foresight and rather more hindsight. It
delayed Britain’s decline in influence in world
affairs only to hasten it later, as the attempt to play
a more independent role revealed Britain’s grow-
ing inability to sustain it. At home these efforts
overseas diverted resources that were badly needed
to renew the industrial base. The retreat from
power is more difficult to manage successfully than
mastering the problems of expansion.
In fostering the American alliance, Britain
hoped to counterbalance its declining strength by
emphasising the historic special relationship that
has often been said to bind together the two
English-speaking countries. British statesmen
could also emphasise their country’s long experi-
ence of world affairs and saw themselves as able
to provide wise counsel to their ‘inexperienced’
American cousins. In the real world most of these
assumptions were illusory. Despite its nuclear
capacity, Britain ceased in the 1950s to be
regarded as the third world power. Anglo-
American interests in the post-war world coin-
cided on some questions, especially the defence
of Western Europe against Soviet threats, but
they could also diverge, especially in the Middle
East. That was to be demonstrated starkly over
Suez in 1956, after Anthony Eden had taken over
the premiership. The American alliance, and
America’s continued commitment to European
defence, which could not be taken for granted in
1945 or 1946, has remained the cornerstone of
British foreign policy, but since the 1950s Anglo-
American cooperation could not truly be said to
amount to an exclusive or a special relationship.
Britain’s choice of the nuclear option did not
give it the added weight in world affairs its leaders
expected from it, nor did its role at the head of the
too-disparate Commonwealth. For a time, Britain
was the only nuclear power besides the Soviet
Union and the US. In 1946 the Americans had
repudiated agreements to share with Britain the
secrets of the bomb, so Attlee decided to develop
an independent bomb. Research and development
in Britain, however, reached fruition only in 1952,
a year after the Conservatives had returned to
power. Even then the full lethal consequences of
radiation were not understood; Britain’s chief sci-
entists had recommended that the atomic tests be
conducted off the coast of Scotland. In the event,
Monte Bello Island off the coast of Australia was
chosen and, in consequence, Australian rather
than British lives were unknowingly jeopardised.
Only a month after Britain’s first successful test in
1952 the ante was raised when the US demon-
strated the much more destructive thermonuclear
bomb, the H-bomb. Churchill was determined to
keep pace with the US and the Soviet Union:
Britain would not surrender the option of pursu-
ing independent policies. Five years later, in May
1957, Britain carried out its own successful H-
bomb test. By then Harold Macmillan had taken
over the premiership from Eden after the 1956
Suez fiasco. A strong adherent of both traditional
British independence and the American alliance,
Macmillan was able to restore some glow to the
special relationship by persuading Eisenhower to
resume Anglo-American nuclear cooperation.
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