THE COMING OF THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY TO OFFICE IN 1951 AND THE NATIONALISATION OF THE ANGLO-IRANIAN OIL COMPANY’S CRISIS.
Conservatives had canvassed the idea of Greater Britain, and subsequently Imperial Federation. They had the liberal idea of free trade to combine with that of imperial preference. They had done most to formulate and harmonise imperial sentiments with social-imperialism, by which, in effect, the working classes had been offered imperialism as a substitute for socialism. The imperialist beliefs which many Conservatives were still professing after 1945, had been fixed by the history of this period (Second World War). About half the members of the parliamentary party had been born before the turn of the century. It was still possible for a conference to be addressed by a man who had been Joseph Chamberlain’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. It was a Conservative belief that Britain’s imperial mission and the Conservative’s imperial mission were one and the same.
Having examined the basic attitude of the Conservative Party towards colonialism, the response of the Conservative Government in its coming to office in 1951, to what they perceived as a major threat to British interests, will be followed.
There was, however, a continuity of the Foreign Office or the ‘official mind’ between the Labour and Conservative Governments. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s crisis was a case of vital national interest, over-riding the doctrinal differences of the Labour and Conservative Governments. The continuity was not because there was so little doctrinal difference about the Empire, it must be emphasised.
As the Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said, ‘governments found most of their legislation in the pigeon-holes of their predecessors.’1 This was the case with regard to the handling of Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s crisis under the Conservative Government of 1951. To expand on this point, it is important to return to the Labour Government briefly. As Professor Partha Gupta has said, ‘an oversimplified or sentimental view of the Labour’s Commonwealth and colonial policy should not be taken.’2 He continued by pointing out that ‘considerations of national and imperial self-interest, especially in relation to… the needs of the British economy, helped to determine Labour’s policy.’3 Shrewd economic considerations were targeted, by the Labour Government, at safeguarding and protecting the huge and well established prestige, way of life, culture, strategic basis, trade investments and diplomatic influences on which Britain’s role had rested.
To safeguard British interests, Labour came up with a diffused method of control in order to maintain the imperial connections and influence. Having always believed that Britain would improve the economic and social conditions in spheres under her domination, and bring prosperity to them, the Labour Government of 1945-51 formulated a policy of assistance to the developing countries. That was the Colombo Plan of 1950, which was described in Chapter Two. In 1951, when the Tories were questioned during the general election campaign,
on the action that a Conservative government would have taken, both Churchill and Eden were evasive. ‘If a strong Conservative government had been in power the Persian crisis would never had arisen in the way it did,’ said Churchill. ‘No intelligent government,’ added Eden by way of amplification, ‘would have got into the position in which this government got itself.’4
On 27th June 1951, Churchill had said to Attlee that he ‘never thought that the Persian oil fields could be held by force.’5
On 25th October 1951, the Conservative Party took office, with, once again, Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. From the outset Churchill was critical of the United States Government’s attitude towards the British handling of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s crisis.
- L. A. MONK, Britain 1945-1970, (London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd., 1976), p. 100.
- K. O. MORGAN, Labour in Power 1945-51, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 229.
- Ibid.
- L. P. ELWELL-SUTTON, Persian Oil: A Study in power Politics, (London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., 1955), p. 258.
- PRO, London, FO 371/91555, The General Political Correspondence of the Foreign Office, about a discussion that took place between Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill on 27th June 1951, regarding the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
