Who Is Anti-American ?': the British Left and the United States, 1945-1956

(1) 'Who is anti-American ?': The British Left and the United States, 1945-1956 by Giora Goodman University College London A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) © 1996 U (2) Abstract The subject of this research is British 'anti-Americanism' in the decade after 1945: a complex phenomenon with often contradictory political and cultural manifestations. This study focuses primarily on the attitudes towards the United States of the organized political Left, because the Left came to be regarded in this period as the most 'anti-American' element in British political life. Examining that charge, this study follows the development of attitudes towards the United States in British political life, particularly within the Labour Party, long- established as the most serious organized force on the Left, and the governing Party from 1945 to 195 1. The study aims to show that hostile responses towards the United States on the British Left imbibed the same national resentments which could be found in other quarters of British political life. The British Left had its own set of ideological and emotional prejudices which gave a distinct colour, and perhaps added impetus, to its resentments. However, underpinning all the hostile sentiments was the resentment of Britain's postwar domination and displacement by the United States, which among Conservatives was concealed only by the onset of the Cold War, until it forcefully erupted during the Suez crisis. Finally, this study delineates and examines the great concern with which 'anti- Americanism' was viewed at the time by policy-makers and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. Such manifestations of British prejudice and hostility seemed to threaten the stability of the Anglo-American Cold War alliance, and as a result anti-anti-Americanism became a powerful emotion in British political life. This study demonstrates and considers the anti-anti-American plans made by Whitehall, Washington, and the Atlanticist faithful, of which there were many in the Labour Party too, to promote in Britain a positive image of the United States as a people - and as Cold War allies. (3) Table Of Contents Acknowledgments Page 4 Chapter 1: Introduction Page 5 Part A: "The Stran2e New Sin of Anti-Americanism" Chapter 2: "The America Complex" Page 50 Chapter 3: "How to Like Americans" Page 93 Chapter 4: "No Annihilation without representation" Page 147 Part B: "Who Is Anti-American?" Chapter 5: "America Riles Mr. Bevan" Page 190 Chapter 6: "We Are Not Anti-American But ..." Page 237 Chapter 7: "Understanding America" Page 296 Conclusion Page 341 Bibliography Page 350 (4) Acknowledgements Many heartfelt thanks to my supervisor, Professor Kathleen Burk, who provided constant advice, guidance and encouragement. I am grateful too for the keen interest of my second supervisor, Professor Martin Daunton, and to all those at the History Department who made my time at University College London a pleasant and productive experience. I am pleased to have the opportunity of acknowledging the organizations and institutions who assisted this study: The Tel Aviv University Trust, the Anglo- Jewish Association, the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme, The Royal Historical Society, The Polonsky Foundation, The Ian Karten Charitable Trust, the Graduate School of University College London, and The Lord Ashdown Charitable Settlement. Not least, my thanks go to the Spiro Institute for Jewish History and Culture, and particularly to Trudy Gold. I am grateful for the support of many friends, among them: Adam Bloom, Raya Cohen-Bloom, Gil Beth, Rotem Pearlson, Martin Grimes, Susan Grimes, Elaine McTavish, Tamar Segalis, Ruth Segalis, Illi Adato, Einat Pa.z-Adato, Richard Weight, Nony Boxer, Un Roodner, Katie London and Aya Thompson. I would especially like to thank Sharon Sandak and Yishai Gaster. Finally, special thanks to my cousin David Goodman for considerable and ready assistance and to his wife, Beverley, for warm hospitality. Arid above all, I wish to thank my parents, Geoffiey and Susan Goodman, and my sisters, Chana and Debbie, for their love, their endurance, and their big and brave hearts. (5) Chapter One: Introduction 'Anti-Americanism' has been widely acknowledged as a deeply-rooted feature of postwar British politics and culture. 1 Yet important as it may have seemed to contemporaries from the 1 940s to the present day, no comprehensive study has been made of 'anti-Americanism' in Britain, in particular when compared to the amount of research carried out on the same phenomenon in postwar France.2 'Anti-Americanism' usually gets only a brief mention in studies of Anglo-American relations or British social and cultural life, confined to paragraphs or footnotes. Few articles treat it as a subject in itself.3 The lack of research into British 'anti-Americanism', however, is less surprising considering the elusive nature of the subject, which crosses the boundaries of different fields of historical or sociological research and interpretation. Quantitative methods are rather limited in assessing how large and heterogeneous groups such as nations relate and view each other. 4 The study of 'anti-Americanism' thus tends to resort to a qualitative exploration of images of the American people, or the American nation. Some of these images, in fact, have shown remarkable durability over the centuries ever since the discovery of the American continent - which the United States eventually came to symbolize and dominate - shocked the physical and the mental boundaries of European politics and thought. Images of 'America', some based on experience and some based on fantasy, have made their way into numerous European works of literature and art, saying as much about European hopes and fears as about American realities. 5 Fixed stereotypes have emerged, notes Pascal Ory, that 'admirers' and 'detractors' have both employed, lending (6) them only a different meaning: youth or immaturity, idealism or hypocrisy, freedom or lawlessness - to mention but a few.6 The United States, of course, has not been an impassive object in this process Since its foundation, the Republic across the Atlantic has been conscious y responsible for presenting itself as a land of hope and refuge, and an exemplary model of social justice. In these transatlantic polemics, as C. Vann Woodward has pointed out, the United States defined itself in opposition to class-ridden Europe. 'In sheer vituperation', he has written, 'few anti-Americans of any time or country could hold their own with the anti-Europeans of America in their prime ' A great deal of this, of course, was aimed at Britain, the Old Country whose political authority was directly rejected in a bloody revolution and whose economic influence and cultural snobbery continued for many years to be the source of anger, and target of abuse, for American patriots and aspiring politicians.8 Amencan nationalism, however, provides only part of the American contribution to the transatlantic debate. Much of the fault-finding and the disparagement of American society associated with 'anti-Americanism' - in Britain and elsewhere - has been performed by Americans themselves with a zest that foreigners could not easily match. That Americans were 'the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the middle ages', was the verdct of no other than the proud American nationalist H L. Mencken, a scourge of British condescension who could nevertheless describe his own nation as a 'Common- wealth of third-rate men', peopled not by 'the hardy adventurers of legend, but simply by incompetents who could not get on at home ' Could any Bntish writer (7) have penned more scathing remarks? American self-criticism has indeed supplied foreign critics with ample ammunition. 'In the past twenty years', a Dutch writer commented in 1983, 'the United States exported anti-Americanism just as it did Coca Cola But if misgivings expressed by Americans about their own country or people are to be adjudged as 'anti-Americanism' to&', then this is equally true for the last two hundred years. In the second half of the twentieth century, 'anti-Americanism' has indeed become such a widely-used and loosely-applied term in and outside the United States that it begs definition. The 'Americanism' which it negates, David Strauss has observed, was 'a set of values, practices, and institutions which had their origin in the United States ... Hence, anti-Americanism was a philosophy, ideology, or institutional framework based on assumptions and principles which ran counter to the Americanist position."2 In this context, the United States often became a target in what were, primarily, domestic European debates. In the heated polemics on political reform in nineteenth century Britain, for example, radicals were wholly laudatory about the values and virtues of American Democracy while Tory aristocrats, alarmed at the impact of American democratic ideals, were already complaining by 1860 about the 'Americanization' of Britain.' 3 While initially the United States was a rather remote entity across the Atlantic, in the twentieth century it has emerged as the most powerful nation on earth Within the context of American g'obal hegemony the more recent use of 'anti-Americanism' appeared, according to Strauss, to denote 'sharp criticism of American policies, frequently resulting in violent demonstrations against the symbols of American power abroad."4 As these symbols can be an American air base, a Ford Motor factory or (8) a Coca Cola bottle, the political, the economic and the cultural are all closely related. American global influence has been evident in all these spheres, in certain respects not unlike British gun-boats, merchants and Bibles in the nineteenth century, which were hardly more popular outside Britain. II British fears of American influence were apparent, however, even at the so- called height of British power.

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