Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The Labour Party was similarly divided, and similarly fell under the control of a man whose will to power was stronger than any ideology or party principles. On the whole the party was split between leaders of labor-union origin and intellectuals from jobs in university teaching. At the same time, it was split between those who still saw some merit in the old theories of class struggles and imperialist wars and felt that the solutions to both was to be found in nationalization of industry and drastic, if not unilateral, disarmament (at least in regard to nuclear weapons). The postwar world, in Britain as elsewhere, violated all the anticipations of Socialist Party theories. The former Socialist Utopia, the Soviet Union, became the archenemy, and the United States, previously regarded as the epitome of capitalist corruption, became a combination of St. George and Santa Claus; the postwar experience with nationalization disillusioned all but the most doctrinaire of Socialists, and the majority of voters, once they had obtained the basic elements of social welfare, medical care, and social insurance in the immediate postwar period, showed a strange preference for moderate or even Conservative leaders rather than for the advocates of Left-wing policies.

As a consequence of these experiences, the Labour Party tended to split into a major wing that sought to win votes and office by appeals to moderation and a minor wing that sought to repeat the older war cries for seeking working-class benefits through class legislation and nationalization. The disappearance from the scene of the prewar Labour Party leaders, such as Clement Atlee, Ernest Bevin, and Hugh Dalton, made Hugh Gaitskell leader of the party and of its moderate wing. By 1956 Gaitskell was being challenged from the Left by Frank Cousins, a former miner, who was backed by a million votes in the Transport and General Workers Union. At the Party Conference of 1960 Gaitskell was defeated on four resolutions favoring unilateral disarmament and rejecting British cooperation with NATO, which were passed over his objections. Gaitskell was able to reverse these votes in 1961, but could not wipe from the public mind the impression that the party might not be completely reliable in support of Britain’s role in the defense of the West against Communist aggressions. While still concerned with this task, Gaitskell died early in 1963, and was succeeded as party leader by Harold Wilson, whose brilliant record as student and teacher did not hamper his work as a skilled and tireless manipulator of intraparty political influence.

From 1959 onward, a small but steady sagging in popular support for the Conservatives was evident. The party delayed calling a new election until the very end of the five-year term of the Parliament’s life in the vain hope that some success, or at least some decisive improvement in Britain’s economic condition, might provide the margin for an unprecedented fourth consecutive electoral victory. By late 1960 it was clear that some decisive step must be taken to regain popular support.

Macmillan was driven, still with reluctance, to seek membership for Britain in the booming European Economic Community. Application was made in August 1961, opening many months of onerous negotiations. During this period De Gaulle made a spectacular state visit to West Germany, spoke of the national glories of Germany, and persuaded Chancellor Adenauer to sign a special treaty of Franco-German friendship, whose real meaning was ambiguous to all concerned, except that it seemed to exclude both the great English-speaking Powers from the inner European circle. The latter two reaffirmed their solidarity—in what looked to some like British inferiority to Washington—in a conference between Macmillan and President Kennedy in the Bahamas in December 1962.

The Nassau Conference sought to iron out various Anglo-American differences, to agree on steps that might avert De Gaulle’s steady weakening of NATO, and, on Macmillan’s part, to show the British electorate the Conservative leader’s close relations with President Kennedy. The meeting confirmed an American decision to abandon the “Skybolt,” an air-to-ground missile on which the British had constructed much of their nuclear defense, and proposed to strengthen NATO by establishing a “multinational force.” The latter project hoped to establish NATO’s strategic nuclear force in a fleet of surface naval vessels, armed with Polaris-type missiles and operated by mixed crews from all the NATO Powers. These mixed crews would prevent France from continuing its divisive policies within the NATO military array, increase the cohesion of Europe, give its nuclear strategy at least an appearance of independence from the United States, and provide the groundwork for some kind of European Defense Community, including Britain, if France split NATO completely.

De Gaulle’s answer to this weak and symbolic gesture of Anglo-American cooperation was decisive. Within less than a month, in January 1963, he rejected the British seventeen-month-old application to join the EEC. This resounding defeat to Macmillan and the United States was delivered in typical De Gaulle fashion. In superb disregard of the established EEC procedures for dealing with applications for membership, De Gaulle, at a personal press conference, announced that France would oppose the British request, on the grounds that it was a belated effort to get into a system that the British had earlier sought to impede with their rival Outer Seven Free Trade Area and that Britain was not yet ready for admission to any purely European system since, as he said, “Britain, in effect, is insular, maritime, and linked by her trade, her markets, and her suppliers to a great variety of countries, many of them distant ... [so that] the nature, structure, and circumstances of Britain differ profoundly from those of continental states.” If Britain were admitted to EEC, according to De Gaulle, she would at once seek to bring in all the other members of OECD, and “in the end there would appear a colossal Atlantic community under American dominance and leadership which would completely swallow up the European Community.”

The other five EEC nations, with Britain and the United States, opposed De Gaulle’s efforts to break off the Brussels talks on the British application for membership, but on January 29, 1963, the French vetoed continuance of the discussion, and the British application was, in effect, rejected.

The De Gaulle veto suspended indefinitely the movement toward Europe’s political unity. At the same time, De Gaulle rejected the Anglo-American suggestion for a multinational nuclear force within NATO. On January 22, 1963, with President Adenauer of West Germany, he signed the French-German Treaty of friendship and consultation, providing periodic conferences of the two countries on foreign policy, defense, and cultural matters. Before the end of the month, over strong Labour Party opposition, the British Parliament approved the Anglo-American Nassau Pact and heard Prime Minister Macmillan announce his government’s determination to build an independent nuclear force of four or five British-built Polaris submarines by purchasing the necessary equipment from the United States.

In this way, the movement for European unity was suspended and the Continent remained “at sixes and sevens.” This condition of stalemate was protracted for almost two years, through 1963 and 1964, by extensive governmental changes and important national elections. In February 1963, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Diefenbaker of Canada was overthrown on a no-confidence vote based on charges that he had failed in vigor in supplying warheads for Canada’s section of the North American defense system. He was replaced by a Liberal government headed by Lester B. Pearson. In the same month, in England the death of the Labour Party leader Gaitskell brought to the head of that opposition group a relatively unknown Left-wing intellectual and former university instructor, Harold Wilson, who had often supported Aneurin Bevan against Gaitskell’s more moderate views. In June of 1963 the whole movement for Christian religious reunion and reform of the Catholic Church was suspended by the death of the very popular Pope John XXIII and installation of his successor as Pope Paul VII. In October one of the semipermanent fixtures of the European postwar political scene disappeared when the eighty-seven-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer resigned after a fourteen-year term; he was replaced in the chancellorship by Economic Minister Ludwig Erhard, who was widely regarded as the chief architect of Germany’s spectacular economic recovery. Three days after Adenauer’s resignation, Harold Macmillan, on grounds of ill health, resigned as prime minister and was able to impose on his party as his successor the ex-Earl of Home, renamed Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Thus the