Darwin J. The Empire Project. The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970
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605 / The third world power, 1951–1959
frantic effort to revive it that led to the desperate measures, and even
more desperate failure, of October–November 1956.
No end of a lesson?
‘Let us admit it fairly as a business people should, We have had no end
of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.’ This was Rudyard Kipling’s
harsh comment on the failings and blunders that the Boer War had
exposed.
91
Its key phrase was adopted by Anthony Nutting (Eden’s
junior minister at the Foreign Office, who had resigned in protest at
his policy) as the title of his book published ten years after the crisis.
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For Kipling, the point of the lesson was to waken British opinion to
its imperial duty. ‘We have had an Imperial lesson. It may make us an
Empire yet.’ For the ‘Suez generation’, perhaps the lesson was different:
bleaker for those who were still deeply attached to an imperial destiny;
salutary for those who were anxious to escape from the futile pursuit of
imperial power, and the deadweight of tradition it laid (so they thought)
on British society.
Suez has been seen very widely as the real turning point in
Britain’s post-war attempt to remain a great power. The crushing humil-
iation of the premature ceasefire; the enforced withdrawal of British and
French troops; the public excoriation at the United Nations; the open
breach with the United States; and Eden’s fall as prime minister (even
if masked by ill-health): these were misfortunes that befell lesser pow-
ers, not one of the Big Three that had won the Second World War.
Suez on this count appears as the end of illusion: a brutal exposure of
geopolitical realities in a ‘superpower’ world. Suez marked the pricking
of the Churchillian bubble: the belief that Britain could intervene deci-
sively in world affairs, when and if it chose. Yet it is doubtful how far
British leaders drew such an apocalyptic conclusion or abandoned their
great power mentality. It has also been argued that Britain’s defeat over
Suez was the trigger for the rapid withdrawal from colonial respon-
sibilities that set in after 1960. That too may be too simple a view.
Official opinion had long since accepted that maintaining colonial rule
against mass opposition, or the resistance of local political leaders,
was counter-productive at best. Independence for Ghana, Malaya and
Nigeria, and increasing self-government in most other colonies, were
agreed as objectives well before Suez. The conversion of ‘empire’ into
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a self-governing ‘Commonwealth’ had been loudly proclaimed as the
keystone of policy. And, although the disaster of Suez might have made
British governments more nervous about the risks of military action, it
did not deter them from keeping their existing commitments in Aden,
South Arabia and the Persian Gulf as well as in Southeast Asia after
1960, although the military burden these imposed began to rise steeply.
Nor did it discourage the confident view that British power was suffi-
cient to delay self-rule in East Africa until ‘safe’ successor regimes had
emerged on the scene.
It may be more plausible to see the domestic divisions over Suez
as heralding a more sceptical view of the value of Empire to Britain. The
prestige and appeal of ‘imperial attitudes’ had suffered severely: to mock
or attack them had become somewhat safer. Suez in that sense might
almost be thought of as the domestic equivalent to the loss of Singapore
in 1942. After Singapore’s fall, recalled the novelist J. G. Ballard, then
a youthful internee in Shanghai, ‘Chinese shopkeepers, French dentists
and Sikh school-bus drivers made disparaging remarks about British
power’.
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After Suez, an alternative view of Britain’s place in the world,
no longer ‘great’, no longer imperial, could not be lightly dismissed.
Indeed, some six months before the Suez invasion was launched, the
BBC had screened a series of programmes titled ‘We the British: Are We
in Decline?’, a question to which the first (on colonial wars) had replied
with a disconcertingly definite yes.
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Yet it took considerably longer
before it seemed wise to assume that the imperial idea (in however
diluted a form) no longer commanded wide public loyalty.
From our vantage point some fifty years later, the ‘logic’ of
Suez was to show how constrained British power had become. Eden
had struggled to maintain at least the appearance of parity with the
United States. Britain’s Middle East role had been crucial to this. The
defeat over Suez had a dual implication. It revealed the grim truth that
to incur serious disapproval in Washington would place any British gov-
ernment in considerable danger, while the collapse of British influence
in the Middle East region simultaneously shrivelled the leverage that
London could exert on its superpower partner. Henceforth, Britain’s
place in great power diplomacy would depend even more on a rhetor-
ical ‘leadership’, on a confident voice influencing global opinion, and
on the reinvention of empire as a beneficent legacy, a school of sta-
ble democracy. It may have been this that made Harold Macmillan, an
actor to his fingertips, a more attractive successor to Eden than his main
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Conservative rival, R. A. Butler. Only very gradually did British lead-
ers begin to accept that the adventure of Suez had made them ‘Public
Enemy Number One’ in the eyes of much of the world.
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Secondly, Suez revealed the continued fragility of the sterling
economy. ‘Whatever longer term effects Suez may prove to have on the
economy’, the Governor of the Bank of England told Harold Macmil-
lan soon after, ‘it has certainly had the immediate effect of laying bare
to the public eye, both at home and abroad, some of the weaknesses
of which we have long been conscious.’
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It was a strident reminder
that diplomatic isolation could disrupt economic and financial stabil-
ity, and thus hopes of recovery. London had always depended on flows
of ‘hot money’ – short-term deposits by overseas lenders, placed there
for convenience or to exploit higher interest rates. They made London
more ‘liquid’, and were a profitable adjunct to the City’s other activ-
ities. Before 1914, fears of conflict or crisis would usually drive ‘hot
money’ towards London, not away. By 1939, the strength of the dollar
meant that New York was a haven, so the prospect of Britain’s involve-
ment in war drained money westwards. But the danger this posed was
reduced by the scale of Britain’s overseas assets and it took defeat in
the European war of 1939–40 to make it acute. In 1956, however,
no ‘cushion’ of assets was there to protect sterling from anxious or
speculative selling – and the Chancellor of the Exchequer from his
descent into panic. In fact, it seems likely that Macmillan exaggerated
the loss of sterling reserves, through muddle or deliberately.
97
But fear
of falling short of the minimum floating balance for the sterling area
was undoubtedly real.
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As long as sterling’s fixed value was the centre-
piece of their policy, British governments were desperately vulnerable to
the threat of a ‘run’, whether imagined or real. Eden’s successors knew
how quickly sterling’s weakness could disable a policy that offended
the White House.
Thirdly, Suez exposed the divisions that would make themselves
felt if London resorted to unilateral action internationally – the alliance
with France cut little ice with the critics of Suez. It might have been
true that Eden’s opponents at home were more vocal than numerous,
and that he enjoyed the support of a silent majority. The protracted
delay before he took action may have amplified doubts and multiplied
doubters. But the torrent of criticism showed that ‘liberal internation-
alism’ – faith in collective action and the ‘rule of law’ – enjoyed wide
public support, not least among the elite. Ignoring its precepts risked
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the corrosion of a government’s moral authority, and made it more
vulnerable to external pressures. Division at home was mirrored in the
Commonwealth. Among the Commonwealth countries, only Australia
and New Zealand gave Eden full backing. The Liberal government in
Canada, mindful of Washington’s views, and traditionally mistrustful
of Britain’s Middle Eastern adventures, expressed deep reservations.
Nehru’s opposition was vehement.
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It could hardly be doubted that,
if they wanted the Commonwealth to reflect British influence, British
leaders would have to take care not to upset its new member states,
henceforth mainly Asian and African. Old-fashioned imperialism (of
the Suez variety) would be self-defeating at best.
Fourthly, Suez suggested the limits of British military power.
In 1882, they had landed from the Canal, scattering the Egyptians at
Tel el-Kebir before entering Cairo to install a puppet regime. In 1956,
they occupied (most of) the Canal Zone alongside the French. But there
would be no knock-out blow and no Egyptian collapse.
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The British
faced a tougher regime, an urban environment and a hostile population.
Nor could they count on their regional allies where the popular mood
was one of Arab nationalist outrage: their bases in Libya (perfect for
use against Egypt) could not be used.
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Their military action was then
brusquely called off on Washington’s orders. Suez seemed to show
that the age of colonial ‘expeditions’ had passed. It was one thing to
engage in counter-insurgency (as in Malaya, Kenya or Cyprus) or to
defend a frontier against foreign incursions (as the British were to do in
Kuwait, Borneo and Oman). But invading a recalcitrant state to defend
British interests was now beyond British strength. Of course, this was a
symptom not just of military weakness but of geopolitical change. 1956
marked a shift in superpower competition. The dual crisis set off by the
Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt
signalled a new phase of Cold War. It confirmed the effective partition
of Europe between two grand ‘protectors’. But it was also the moment
at which Soviet–American rivalry began to extend much more widely
in the ex- (or nearly ex-) colonial world. The British had their part in
this new global struggle, but they had to observe the new rules of the
game. It was more important than ever to show that the West was the
nationalists’ friend. Independent Afro-Asia must not turn to the East.
Colonialism’s aim should be to wind itself up, as a finishing school
for Afro-Asia’s new nation-states. The other ground-rule was just as
important. Deploying British troops against mass political movements
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had always been risky, and was rarely favoured in London. By the late
1950s, to be trapped in a struggle against any popular movement with
no end in sight and no local allies seemed the worst possible option.
We will see in the next chapter how London reacted to the threat of
this happening.
It might be deduced from these objective conditions that a
British world-system could survive in some form, at least for a while.
But it could have no real independence while the Cold War persisted (as
Churchill had seen) and could face no serious opposition. Its internal
solidarity (as a grouping of Commonwealth countries) was bound to
be fragile. The burden on Britain, economic and military, was bound
to be large. Yet British leaders, however shrewd and pragmatic, saw
little choice but to press on. Why they did so, and what happened, is
the theme of what follows.
14
RELUCTANT RETREAT, 1959–1968
The most curious aspect of the British reaction to Suez, once the imme-
diate drama had passed, was the mood of public indifference. There
was no grand debate about Britain’s place in the world, no official
inquiry into what had gone wrong. Neither main party showed any
desire to rake over the details, perhaps because even those most against
Eden’s policy realised how deeply the crisis had divided British public
opinion. Instead, all sides seemed anxious to treat it as an unfortu-
nate accident, or as Eden’s personal tragedy, as if the whole episode
could be laid at his door. A desire to avoid any further embarrass-
ment, or perhaps some awareness of what an inquiry might reveal,
may explain this response. But what seems even more curious is that,
after such a defeat, British leaders still showed an extraordinary faith
that, with its sails duly trimmed, Britain must remain a world power.
For, despite the conventional view that they hastened to scuttle their
remaining commitments and fall back upon Europe, the reverse was
the case. The dream of a British world-system, updated and mod-
ernised, haunted Harold Macmillan, prime minister 1957–63. A less
robust version, more anaemic and ethereal, bewitched Harold Wilson,
who led the Labour government of 1964–70. The rapidity with which
what remained of the Empire was wound up politically, far from being
planned, was a painful surprise. Official opinion had intended a ‘man-
aged’ withdrawal, with a ‘transfer of power’ to carefully chosen ‘mod-
erates’. Constitutional change would proceed on a schedule, and local
politicians would have to ‘earn’ each incremental advance by displaying
their fitness to govern. Respect for the institutions with which a benev-
olent Britain had endowed them, and a desire to maintain some form
of ‘British connection’, would be the test of this. But, when these plans
began to unravel, British policy fell into confusion. Behind the facade
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of memoranda and minutes, official anxiety sometimes bordered on
panic. By the time that a general withdrawal from Britain’s eastern
commitments was eventually ordered in January 1968 (to take effect
three years later), the familiar conception of a British world policy,
inherited from the late Victorians, had almost completely dissolved.
Amid a blizzard of vacuous reports into what Britain’s interests now
were, a future in Europe (as yet undefined) seemed the only fixed point
on which (almost) all could agree.
Why was it possible to go on believing in a British world-system
(however constrained) in the later 1950s? In fact, as is often the case, the
logic of their situation appeared quite different to contemporaries who
had no means of predicting the scale and speed of geopolitical change.
Far from enforcing a drastic rethink, that logic encouraged their hopes
of renewal and prolonged a Churchillian view of Britain’s ‘manifest
destiny’ for nearly a decade. The main source of hope was the rapid
resumption of friendly relations across the Atlantic. Washington’s fury
at Suez was quickly assuaged. The growth of superpower competition
and Khrushchev’s global ambitions made the British too useful an ally
to fall out with for long. Their curious attachment to an ‘independent’
nuclear deterrent could be safely indulged: indeed, it quickly led London
to scrap its own missile programme for an American substitute. From
the British viewpoint, this was a huge reassurance that, if they avoided
the sort of catastrophic misjudgment of which Eden was guilty, they
would enjoy the support – diplomatic and material – which they now
knew was essential. It reinforced their belief that what remained of their
empire, if properly managed, was an invaluable asset as the Cold War
expanded. The process of transition from an empire of rule to an empire
of influence was as yet incomplete. In plenty of places, a decade might
be needed before a suitable class of political leaders could be trained
up for the work of representative government. Nor was it obvious that
colonial authority was bound to break down in the foreseeable future.
Where it was still a ‘going concern’, it was hard to imagine its sudden
displacement or who might push it aside. Constitutional change was
essential. But it was easy to think that London held the initiative and
could settle the timing.
In holding these views, British leaders were in tune with the
main stream of public opinion. Another Suez adventure would have led
to an outcry. But belief that Britain held a special place in the world
was still deeply embedded in popular attitudes. This was only partly a
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residue of the imperial past. It also sprang from the feeling that Britain’s
parliamentary, industrial and cultural achievements embodied a wealth
of experience and conferred a moral authority that no other country
could match. No one could doubt (this was the premise) that British
institutions were best, and that British motives for fostering them were
altruistic and disinterested. A hasty withdrawal – as had happened in
Palestine – might be forced by necessity. But it should not be a ‘policy’
or a deliberate plan. And, in the late 1950s, one other force was at
work. Britain was still in the grip of its ‘post-war’ mood and mentality.
A heroic conception of the British war against Hitler pervaded both
popular culture and middle-class attitudes. It was purveyed by film,
a huge war literature and an array of children’s comics, then at the
height of their influence before the full advent of television.
1
Settling
instead for a secondary role in the world was not easy to square with
the service and sacrifice of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz,
Alamein or the D-Day invasion. It was an historical irony that patriotic
support for some version of empire had been nourished by the war that
had destroyed its foundations.
White hopes in Black Africa
One of the main justifications for retaining Britain’s presence in the
Middle East after 1945 had been that it would help to protect Sub-
Saharan Africa from Soviet intrusion and subversion. Even Attlee, who
had opposed staying on there in 1946–7, had imagined a neutralised
Middle East as a ‘glacis of desert and Arabs’, barring the way to the
valuable – and defensible – British sphere in Africa. Far beyond Attlee,
and far beyond Whitehall, Africa’s importance was now on the rise.
With the loss of India, and all that it had meant for British power
and prestige, Africa became the main theatre for constructive imperial
energy.
Three kinds of assumptions helped to entrench what appears in
retrospect a romantic delusion, cherished as much on the Left as on the
Right in British politics. The first was that Sub-Saharan Africa was still a
safe geopolitical niche, sheltered from the storms of the post-war world.
Without a bridgehead in the Middle East, the Soviet Union lacked the
will or the means to exert any influence in the African colonies, British,
French, Portuguese or Belgian. Geographical access from the Soviet
613 / Reluctant retreat, 1959–1968
bloc was very restricted. Colonial Africa lay well behind the front-line
in the emerging Cold War. There was little need for the British to take
much account of external pressures on a continent still largely frozen in
diplomatic time. Secondly, Africa’s politics remained on the face of it
extraordinarily placid. The political legacy of the inter-war years in the
British dependencies had been ‘indirect rule’. The effect was to localise
political life and marginalise those who wanted states and nations on
the Western model. Colonial Africa thus lagged far behind Asia. There
was nothing to compare with the vast popular movements that had
revolutionised politics in India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam before
and during the Second World War. Hence it was widely assumed that
Africans were still in their political innocence. Their ideas and habits
could be formed and moulded by the adept use of tutelage. Unlike
Asians (‘Asiatics’ remained common usage in the 1950s), with their
tenacious traditions, complex religiosity and hyper-sensitive cultures
(to which the intensity of ‘Asiatic nationalism’ was usually attributed),
Africans seemed likely to embrace Western modernity with much less
ambivalence. So the colonial mission would be much easier, as well as
more satisfying, than it had been in Asia.
Thirdly, there was Africa’s place in the world economy. In the
depressed 1930s, African resources had attracted little interest (with
the exception of gold). But the Second World War and its turbulent
aftermath transformed the prospects of its export commodities. In the
era of shortage and Britain’s ‘dollar famine’, they assumed a vast new
importance. Colonial producers, after all, could be paid in inconvertible
‘soft’ sterling and at prices prescribed by official ‘marketing boards’.
Strategic minerals like uranium, copper and tin; foodstuffs like cocoa
and vegetable oils; and tobacco (the one indispensable luxury in the age
of austerity): all were urgently needed to speed Britain’s recovery, ease
the pangs of denial, earn dollars or save them. Modernising the colonial
economies became an official priority. Partitioned in haste, ruled on a
shoestring, colonial Africa had come into its own. And with the richest
parts – if not the largest share – of Sub-Saharan Africa, the British could
expect to profit the most from this reversal of fortune.
The easy assumption that political change would proceed at
worst on a leisurely timetable, allowing plenty of time for a controlled
experiment in social and economic reform, did not last long. Within
fifteen years of the end of the war, British power in Africa was in a
state of collapse. Between 1960 and 1965, it vanished altogether. But,
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although the symptoms of weakness can be detected much earlier, it
was surprisingly late before the loss of British authority had become
a political fact and not a fear, a hope or a rumour. It is sometimes
supposed that the British withdrawal was a serial affair: marked by the
orderly transfer of power to successor regimes by due constitutional
process. And so it was on the surface, with one crucial exception. The
reality was that British plans for transition were swept away by the
crises that afflicted much of the continent from early 1959 onwards, so
that in the event the British departure was at best hasty and improvised
where it did not break down altogether (as over Southern Rhodesia).
Yet, until the crises set in, it had seemed quite realistic to treat colo-
nial Africa as a cluster of regions, with different demands, different
solutions and different political clocks. Hence the British applied dif-
ferent rules and imposed different timetables in the three main divisions
of their African empire: in ‘British West Africa’, where there were no
white settlers or major strategic interests; in the East African territories,
where the settler interest was vocal (in Kenya), absent (in Uganda) or
muted (in Tanganyika, a United Nations trust territory); and in South
Central Africa, where a self-governing settler colony (Southern Rhode-
sia) was yoked in 1953 to the two ‘Northern’ protectorates, in one of
which (Northern Rhodesia) the settler population was rapidly growing
with the boom on the Copperbelt. Looming over British interests (and
also their thinking) was the fourth great component of Britain’s African
imperium. The Union of South Africa was a fully self-governing domin-
ion, and a sovereign state (unlike Southern Rhodesia). After 1948,it
had an Afrikaner nationalist government. But, in the long view from
London, it was a quarrelsome, irritating, but exceptionally valuable
partner in the defence of what remained of British world power. The
hope that its British connections (including the 40 per cent of whites
who were ‘English’, i.e. English-speaking) would help liberalise its
politics was not given up until after 1960.
By the mid-1950s (as we saw earlier), the British had accepted
the need to stage a more or less rapid transfer of power in their main
West African colonies, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Nigeria.
Failure to press on in this direction, the Colonial Secretary told his
Cabinet colleagues in September 1953, ‘would bring to an end settled
government by consent and forfeit the goodwill towards the United
Kingdom and the desire to retain the British connection which are
common to all parties in the Gold Coast’.
2
Two years later, as the tim-
ing of independence was gradually finalised, it was the crudeness and