The Foreign Policy of the Douglas-Home Government: Britain, the United States and the End of Empire

227 Pages·2014·2.136 MB·English

by  Andrew Holt (auth.)

The Foreign Policy of the D ouglas- Home Government
The Foreign Policy
of the D ouglas- Home
Government
Britain, the United States and
the End of Empire
Andrew Holt
Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK
© Andrew Holt 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-28440-2
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First published 2014 by
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For my mother
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
Sir Alec D ouglas- Home 4
R. A. Butler 9
Foreign p olicy- making 12
The European situation 18
The historiographical debate 24
2 Anglo- American Relations and the Caribbean 27
Personal relations 29
Trade with Cuba 31
The future of British Guiana 37
Conclusion 43
3 NATO and the Multilateral Nuclear Force 47
The origins of the MLF 49
The British position 51
The Thorneycroft proposals 55
The European question, non- proliferation and
the general election 59
Conclusion 61
4 Africa, Race and the Commonwealth 64
Arms sales to South Africa 65
Southern Rhodesia 70
Constitutional reform in Southern Rhodesia and
the threat of UDI 74
The Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference 78
Ian Smith’s visit to London 80
Conclusion 83
5 Aden, Yemen and the Middle East 86
The beginning of the Aden Emergency and
disengagement in Yemen 90
Fort Harib and its aftermath 93
The move towards independence 98
Conclusion 101
vii
viii Contents
6 Confrontation in South- East Asia 104
Military strain and the need for allies 106
The United States and the Kennedy mission 109
Deadlock 113
Covert action, the Tunku and the United Nations 115
The Indonesian infiltrations begin 119
Conclusion 122
7 The Cyprus Crisis 125
Pacification 127
The search for a peacekeeping plan 130
The approach to the Security Council 133
The move towards enosis 137
Conclusion 143
8 Conclusion 145
The shadow of the general election 150
Notes 156
Bibliography 200
Primary sources 200
Secondary sources 203
Index 213
Acknowledgements
The completion of this work owes much to the many people who
have supported me throughout its preparation. I would like to begin
by expressing my gratitude to the Earl and Countess of Home for their
kindness and hospitality. For their very helpful suggestions and advice,
I am grateful to Dr Spencer Mawby, Professor Matthew Jones, Lord
Hennessy of Nympsfield and Professor Richard Toye. I would also like
to acknowledge Holly Tyler and Jen McCall at Palgrave Macmillan, and
Mary, Brian and Claire.
Through their efforts in facilitating my research, I have accumu-
lated debts of gratitude to the staff of the British Library, The National
Archives, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, the Lyndon
Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, the US National Archives
at College Park, the Library of Congress, the Wren Library at Trinity
College, Cambridge, the Churchill Archives Centre, the Conservative
Party Archive and the Hartley Library at the University of Southampton.
For permission to access certain materials, I am grateful to the Chairman
of the 1922 Committee, the estate of Lord D uncan- Sandys, the estate
of Paul H. Nitze, and Dr Nelson D. Lankford and the Virginia Historical
Society. For permission to quote from the R. A. Butler papers, I would like
to acknowledge The Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge.
For their help in supporting vital research trips, I would like to acknowl-
edge the generosity of the Royal Historical Society, the Wortley Founders
Fund, and both the School of History and the Graduate School at the
University of Nottingham.
There are, however, three people to whom my debt of gratitude is par-
ticularly large. Professor John W. Young has been a source of wisdom and
encouragement for many years. S arah- K ate has borne the impositions
of my research without complaint. That the past years have been such
happy ones owes much to her. My final thank you is to my mother, Kay.
Without her love, sacrifice and unwavering support, none of this would
have been possible. It is to her that this book is dedicated.
ix
1
Introduction
At 11.00 a.m. on 18 October 1963, Queen Elizabeth II went to see a
69- year-o ld man at the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers. This was
no ordinary royal visit. The patient was Harold Macmillan, Conservative
prime minister from 1957 until earlier that morning, when he had ten-
dered his resignation. Shortly afterwards, the Queen controversially
invited the Foreign Secretary, a member of the House of Lords, to try to
form a new government. After consultations with colleagues, the Earl
of Home officially succeeded to the premiership the next day. There
remained one more obstacle to overcome, however, and on 23 October
the ‘14th Earl’ disclaimed his title under the Peerage Act. As Sir Alec
Douglas- Home, he became the ‘unremembered Prime Minister’.1
Douglas- Home entered 10 Downing Street at a moment when Britain
was in an increasingly precarious position in world affairs. In December
1962, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously remarked
that ‘Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role’.2
This touched a raw nerve. It was clear that Winston Churchill’s concept
of Britain as the only nation able to link the United States, Europe and
the Commonwealth was losing relevance. While the British viewed
interdependence more as a partnership in which the US depended on
Britain in certain areas, the US, envisaged a greater degree of control.3
If the American alliance seemed increasingly one- sided, the success of
the European Economic Community (EEC) threatened to leave Britain
behind. For Macmillan, ‘the problems involved in the future of our rela-
tions with Europe are among the most difficult and the most important
that the nation has ever had to face’.4 When French President Charles
de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s application for membership of the EEC in
January 1963, partly because of suspicion of Britain’s close relations
with Washington, he closed off another avenue for rebuilding British
1
2 The Foreign Policy of the D ouglas-H ome Government
political and economic power. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth was
bitterly divided over racial discrimination in Southern Rhodesia, raising
questions as to whether some states would leave the organisation. Worse
still, Cold War ideological divisions were being played out in Africa and
Asia, where one- party rule and central planning seemed an acceptable
way forward and communism was viewed as an ally of racial equality.
Despite these challenges, the government remained reluctant to sur-
render Britain’s privileged position in international matters, won over
centuries. She held one of five permanent seats on the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) and retained considerable commitments as far
afield as Africa and the Caribbean; Aden, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. The
‘Macmillan directive’ of 1961 thus outlined Britain’s three priorities as
nuclear deterrence, the defence of Western Europe and the role East of
Suez, all of which the Cabinet reaffirmed in 1963.5 The Foreign Office
(FO) maintained that ‘It must be our intention to maintain our position
as a great Power … If we accepted a lesser role, it would be so modest
as to be intolerable’.6
The problem lay in reconciling this with her diminishing resources.
The economic situation was not encouraging. On the one hand, living
standards had risen and consumer goods were more widely available, as
Douglas- Home avoided the severe economic problems faced later in the
decade that ‘saw the [Wilson] government lurch from crisis to crisis’.7
On the other hand, the British economy remained sluggish. Growth was
slower than in much of Western Europe and attempts to boost spending
tended to lead to higher imports, which were met in turn by budgetary
restraints— the s o- called ‘s top- go’ economy. Sterling was still weakening
as a global trading currency and the growing size and diversity of the
Commonwealth meant that 60 per cent of investment came from with-
out the organisation, mostly from the US.
Economics continued to influence defence changes. Half of Britain’s
oil came from the Persian Gulf and 25 per cent of exports still went to
countries bordering the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. Given the
instability of those regions, a British presence there still seemed desirable.
With the Royal Navy seeking a role in the nuclear era, jockeying for posi-
tion between branches of the defence community was intense. The First
Sea Lord, Louis Mountbatten, established the doctrine that the aircraft
carrier could be useful as a ‘mobile air station’ for colonial policing of
counter- insurgency and all three services envisaged a significant role East
of Suez.8 Indeed, a January 1962 paper by the Chiefs of Staff concluded
that intervention in Asia (and Africa) would be Britain’s predominant
military role for the next decade.9 Yet this role was already being seriously