Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951

928 Pages·1983·16.761 MB·English

by  Alan Bullock

ERNEST BEVIN
FOREIGN SECRETARY
1945“ i95i
BOOKS BY
ALAN BULLOCK
Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (revised edn 1964)
The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin
yo/7 Trade Union Leader (i960)
vol II Minister of Labour (1967)
Edited:
(with Maurice Shock) : The Liberal Tradition (1956)
The Twentieth Century (1971)
Faces of Europe (1980)
(with Oliver Stallybrass) : The F on tana Dictionary of Modern Thought (1977)
(with R. B. Woodings): The Fontana Biographical Companion to
Modern Thought (1983)
ERNEST BEVIN
FOREIGN SECRETARY
Alan Bullock
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
Copyright © Alan Bullock 1983
First American Edition 1983
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-393-01825-3
AUen County Public Lfbfiry
^ Ft. Wayne, Indiana
Photoset in Great Britain by
Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
and printed by St Edmundsbury Press
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
2227481
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Preface xiii
PARTI WHERE BEVIN CAME IN
i The World in the Summer of 1945
3
2 The Labour Government of 1945-50
49
3 Bevin as Foreign Secretary 81
PART II FRUSTRATION, 1945-6
4 First Encounters 121
“All the world is in trouble and I have
5
to deal with all the troubles at once” 184
6 The Northern Tier, the Middle East and Palestine 219
7 Paris, Summer 1946: “Open disagreements openly
arrived at” 259
8 Six Weeks in New York, November-December 1946 307
PART III BREAKTHROUGH, 1947
9 Seven Weeks in Moscow, March-April 1947 357
IO Marshall’s offer, Bevin’s response 393
il Coal, dollars and convertibility 428
12 London, November-December 1947:
“We cannot go on as we have been” 468
PART IV TEST AND ACHIEVEMENT, 194&-1949
13 “The next 6 to 8 weeks will be decisive” 513
H Berlin blockaded, Israel proclaimed 549
The West’s resolution tested 586
15
16 A Western plan emerges 614
17 The plan realized: the North Atlantic Treaty signed 655
V
PART V CONTROVERSY REVIVED
i8 The Berlin blockade lifted; another sterling crisis 685
19 Washington, September 1949 (sterling devalued);
Paris, November 1949 (the Petersburg Agreement) 716
20 Colombo, January 1950; General Election,
February 1950 743
21 London, May 1950 (the Schuman Plan); Korea
invaded 766
22 Washington, September 1950 (German
rearmament); Bevin’s resignation and death 803
PART VI EPILOGUE
23 Bevin’s place in British history 839
1
Sources and Bibliography 858
Index 870
List of Illustrations
Between pages 464 and 465
In July 1945, Attlee and Bevin leave Northolt aerodrome to take the place of
Churchill and Eden at Potsdam. (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
Potsdam 1945. Stalin, Truman, Byrnes, Attlee, Bevin. (Foreign Office)
Bevin in the Secretary ofState’s room at the Foreign Office. (Foreign Office)
Bevin ribs Vyshinsky at the U.N. Security Council, London, February, 1946.
(Foreign Office)
The ruins of Krupps’ factory at Essen and an underfed German steel worker at
Duisburg. (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
Bevin in Moscow, March—April 1947.
Bevin with Marshall, Molotov and Bidault at the 1947 Moscow Council.
(Foreign Office)
Bevin signing the agreement setting up the first OEEC as Europe’s response to
Marshall’s offer, September 1947. (Foreign Office)
Bevin greets General Marshall, at the UN session in Paris, September 1948.
(BBC Hulton Picture Library)
The ruins of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, blown up in July 1946.
(Illustrated London News Picture Library)
The refugee ship President Warfield (renamed Exodus) brought into Haifa
harbour by the Royal Navy, July 1947. (Illustrated London News Picture
Library)
The British withdrawal from Palestine: May 1948. (Illustrated London News
Picture Library)
Bevin and Molotov. (Foreign Office)
The Berlin airlift. (BBC Hulton Picture Library)
The Berliners demonstrate in front of the ruined Reichstag, September 1948.
(Illustrated London News Picture Library)
The British and American military governors during the Berlin crisis 1948.
(BBC Hulton Picture Library)
Bevin with the ambassadors with whom he collaborated closely during the
Berlin crisis. ( Foreign Office)
Bevin speaking at an official dinner in London. (Official US Navy photo­
graph)
Bevin with Sir William Strang, the head of the Foreign Office. (Foreign
Office).
Bevin and the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, talking together at
the Foreign Office, January 1949. (Keystone)
Bevin and Acheson at the conclusion of the devaluation talks in Washington,
September 1949. (Wide World Photos)
Bevin aboard the Queen Mary on his final journey to the United States,
September 1950. (Cunard White Star, photograph by W. A. Probst)
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank: Lady Dixon and Mr Piers Dixon, MP, for permission to quote
from the diaries of the late Sir Pierson Dixon; Miss Ivy Saunders for
permission to quote from letters from Mr Bevin in her possession; Lady
Younger for permission to quote from the diaries of the late Sir Kenneth
Younger, and Professor Geoffrey Warner for making available to me a
transcript of them.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to quote the following
copyright material: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (Attlee by Kenneth
Harris and The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn); Victor Gollancz Ltd and John
Farquharson Ltd (In My Way by Lord George-Brown); William Collins Sons
& Co Ltd and Doubleday & Co Ltd (Memoirs by Jean Monnet); Hamish
Hamilton Ltd (Sketches from Life of Men I have Known by Dean Acheson);
Hughes Massie Ltd and W. W. Norton Inc (Present at the Creation by Dean
Acheson); Faber & Faber Ltd and Alfred A. Knopf Inc (Modem British Politics
(American edition: British Politics in the Collectivist Age) by Samuel H. Beer);
William Heinemann Ltd and Consolidated Publishing Corporation (A Prime
Minister Remembers by Francis Williams); Frederick Muller Ltd (High Tide and
After by Hugh Dalton); Victor Gollancz Ltd and Harold Matson Co (The
Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg ed. by Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr); Sir
Roderick Barclay (Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office igj2-6g).