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Integrating Europe or Ending the Cold War? 31
narrow fringe on the west of the great Communist empire of Eurasia” – but did
not intend to participate in that venture themselves. Politicians from all major
parties had a “nasty feeling” that if Britain “went off into Europe and left the
Americans outside, they would reduce their own commitment”. And committing
the Americans to Western Europe was the “prime concern” which united the vast
majority of politicians in Westminster. 83 Thus, Churchill’s war-time objections to
the creation of a purely western European bloc under British leadership were still
widely shared.
The Labour government’s early interest in close co-operation with the European
continental states in the years between 1945 and 1948 ought to be regarded as mere
contingency planning. Part of this policy were the creation of an Anglo-French military
alliance (the Dunkirk Treaty) in March 1946, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s
initial enthusiasm for a customs union with some of the continental states, and
the formation of a Western European Union, as expressed in Bevin’s speech to parliament
in January 1948 and realized by means of the Brussels Treaty Organization
three months later. Although almost all of these schemes avoided any supranational
elements and concentrated on intergovernmental co-operation, they largely represented
attempts to develop a British led third force in world affairs based on cooperation
with the European continent. 84 After all, until the beginning of the successful
implementation of the Marshall Plan with the help of the OEEC in early
1948 and the negotiations from mid-1948 which led to the creation of NATO, Britain
could not be sure whether or not there would be an active and benevolent American
involvement in Western Europe. However, this policy of co-operation which
included quite naturally a certain dependence on and involvement with Western
Europe had always been regarded as a compromise solution, as a mere alternative
to an American commitment to Europe. 85 For both Attlee’s Labour government and
Churchill’s Conservative opposition, American involvement in European affairs
was their ultimate aim. Thus Britain’s bipartisan European policy strategy after the
81. On 9 October 1948 Churchill declared with reference to the three circles: “(...) we have the opportunity
of joining them all together. If we rise to the occasion in the years that are to come it
may be found that once again we hold the key to opening a safe and happy future to humanity,
and will gain for ourselves gratitude and fame”. “Perils Abroad and At Home”, speech to the Annual
Conservative Party Conference, Llandudno, Wales, in R. R. JAMES (ed.), Winston S.
Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963, vol.7: 1940-49, London 1974, p.7712. See also
for similar remarks in 1949, ibid., pp.7870-71; also Keesing’s Contemporary Archive, vol.7,
1948-50, p.10288.
82. Quote: CAMPS, Britain, p.4. For the view of the Labour governments see for example K. O. MOR-
GAN, Labour in Power, 1945-51, Oxford 1984, pp.66 ff., 271 ff., 389-98, 417-21; G. WARNER,
“Labour Governments”, pp.61 ff.; S. CROFT, “British Policy towards Western Europe, 1945-51”,
in P.M.R. STIRK and D. WILLIS (eds.), Shaping Postwar Europe: European Unity and Disunity,
1945-57, London 1991, pp.77 ff.
83. Quotes: HEALEY, When Shrimps Learn to Whistle, p.76.
84. See LARRES, “Search for Order”, pp.71-72, 85-86. See also WARNER, “Labour Governments”,
pp.61-82.
85. Ibid. See also M. HOGAN, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the reconstruction of Western
Europe, 1947-52, Cambridge 1987, pp.46-48.