UC Berkeley GAIA Books Title Dilemmas of Decline Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05g4n84c ISBN 978-0-9845909-9-5 Author Hall, Ian Publication Date 2012-10-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Dilemmas of Decline The Berkeley SerieS in BriTiSh STudieS Mark Bevir and James Vernon, University of California, Berkeley, Editors 1. The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, edited by Simon Gunn and James Vernon 2. Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945 – 1975, by Ian Hall Dilemmas of Decline British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945 - 1975 ian hall Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley loS angeleS london The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the University of California system. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2012 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Manufactured in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of anSi/niSo z39.48 – 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). For my parents Contents Acknowledgments ix 1. Introduction: The Dilemmas of Decline 1 2. Traditions and Dilemmas 14 3. The Fall and Rise of Political Realism 29 4. The Persistence of Liberalism 48 5. The Fragmentation of Internationalism 64 6. The Whigs and the Diplomatic Tradition 83 7. The Radicals 107 8. The Revolt against the West: Decolonization and Its Repercussions 131 9. War and Peace 152 10. Conclusion: British Intellectuals and the Retreat from Power 170 Notes 185 Index 249 Acknowledgments This book concludes more than a decade’s research on British international thought in the aftermath of the Second World War. It began with a doctoral thesis on three particular figures, Herbert Butterfield, Arnold J. Toynbee, and Martin Wight, who were central to the development of British inter- national thought in the twentieth century. It continued through a mono- graph on Wight’s ideas and a series of narrower studies of other thinkers, including George Orwell and Charles Webster, and particular traditions, especially political realism. This book offers something different: a syn- optic account of the ways in which British intellectuals responded to world politics after 1945. The account is far from exhaustive, but it tries to bring narrative order to a very fragmented intellectual history. All historiogra- phy requires abridgement, and while some will no doubt disagree with the way that it is done here, this book aims not just to give today’s professional students of international relations a better sense of their forebears, but also to explain why the British struggled to come to terms with their new place in the world in the aftermath of 1945. The origins of this book can be traced back to the University of St Andrews, in the northeast of Scotland, but it was written at Griffith Uni- versity, in the rather different climate of Brisbane. I have accumulated a number of debts on my travels in between. At St Andrews, Michael Bent- ley, Tony Lang, Nick Rengger, and especially Mark Imber, who donated a considerable collection of postwar international relations texts to my own growing hoard, all influenced my thinking in the crucial early stages. At Adelaide, Juanita Elias, Lisa Hill, Clem Macintyre, and Czes Tubilewicz contributed useful thoughts as my work progressed. The project also could not have been undertaken without the research funding provided by the University of Adelaide’s Qantas Early Career Researcher Grant ix x / Acknowledgments and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Small Grant, both of which permitted necessary travel to archives. Finally, I thank my former colleagues at Griffith University, especially Gideon Baker, Tom Conley, Martin Griffiths, Michael Heazle, Haig Patapan, Jason Sharman, Pat Weller, and Michael Wesley. The intervention of Duncan Bell was decisive in pushing this book to completion and for that I am very thankful. I hasten to add — in case his association with the project compromises him in the eyes of the Cam- bridge School — that he would almost certainly disagree with the approach I have used. The advice of Chris Brown and Mick Cox was indispensible when it came to untangling the intricacies of radicalism in the 1960s. So too, on a range of issues, were conversations with James Cotton, Richard Devetak, Tim Dunne, Jeanne Morefield, and Casper Sylvest. David Long and another, anonymous, reviewer provided a series of helpful sugges- tions on the original manuscript, and while I have not taken all of their advice, I hope they find the completed book much improved as a result. I am also most grateful to Mark Bevir, who first suggested that I submit a proposal for this book to the Berkeley Series in British Studies, which he edits with James Vernon. At the University of California, Nathan MacBrien was a very patient and tolerant editor. Lastly, I would like to thank Taylor and Francis for their permission to reprint parts of an article from the International History Review in chapter 8. Any errors of fact or judgment are my own. Renée, Sadie, and latterly Scarlett showed immense forbearance dur- ing the time it took to get this book done, and for that they deserve and probably want an apology rather than gratitude. I offer both. This book is dedicated to my parents, children of the postwar era, who witnessed firsthand Britain’s decline and the dilemmas it posed. 1. Introduction The Dilemmas of Decline Next year we shall be living in a country That brought its soldiers home for lack of money. The statues will be standing in the same Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same. Our children will not know it’s a different country. All we can hope to leave them now is money. PhiliP larkin, “Homage to a Government” (1969) Within fifteen years of Allied victory in the Second World War, the United Kingdom was shorn of all but a few fragments of its colonial empire and displaced from its preeminent position in the international hierarchy of states. Another fifteen years on, Britain was mired in eco- nomic recession and political stasis, dependent on the United States in its finances and its security, and a supplicant to the European Economic Community. In just three decades, Britain’s relationships with the major powers of world politics were transformed. As the United States and Soviet Union rose, the European empires that had dominated modern international politics for four centuries were eclipsed, their global interests circum- scribed and their ambitions curtailed. British voices could still be heard in Washington, as the United Kingdom tied itself ever closer to the United States by treaty, sentiment, and a carefully tended historical memory.1 But this process had not occurred without resistance and resentment on the part of many Britons, for the “special relationship” barely disguised the brute fact their country had been overtaken and supplanted as the leader of the Western powers. Britain’s relations with its other major wartime ally were no less complex. Although the Soviet Union had been rendered a latent enemy by the Cold War, reserves of sympathy for Russia and its political system, especially among British intellectuals, remained considerable. By the mid-1970s, as F. S. Northedge pointed out at the time, the “British people . found that there was little they could do in interna- 1 2 / Introduction tional affairs from the basis of their own strength.” 2 That strength had ebbed away and with it Britain’s ability to shape world politics. Whether this dramatic and unprecedented transformation of Britain’s global stand- ing constitutes “decline” — and in what sense of that term — remains bit- terly contested. It was certainly thought so at the time, as the title of North edge’s 1974 book — Descent from Power — illustrates so well. Britain’s loss of global power and influence went hand in hand with the raising of domestic living standards and extensive social reform, but whether these changes made Britain “better” and whether they compensated for that loss is still a matter of intense debate.3 This book sidesteps this issue. What matters, from the point of view of the intellectual history of the postwar period, is not whether decline occurred, but whether contemporaries perceived it to be occurring. Of this there can be little doubt. Almost all the intellectuals discussed in what follows were convinced that Britain — and indeed “Western civiliza- tion” more generally — was in some kind of decline, be it political, moral, cultural, social, economic, or spiritual. This “declinism” is perceptible among some British thinkers in the interwar years, but in the 1940s it became far more general, reaching its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s.4 It spurred a series of meditations not just on British politics and society but on foreign policy and international relations. British reactions to the changing place, power, and role of Britain in world politics were shaped and conditioned by this shared perception of decline.