British Diplomatic Oil Crisis: Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geopolitical Rivalries in the Persian Gulf: Drawing a Lesson? Or Sir Anthony Eden‘s Delusion of Grandeur.

in modern
times; the Conservatives were nothing if not conservers of
Britain’s greatness.7

The
Conservatives labelled themselves the ‘imperial party’ and their
attitudes towards Empire distinguished their party from others as
fundamentally as, for example, towards nationalisation. According to
the 1950 Conservative Conference Report, ‘socialism by its nature
could not comprehend the problems of the Empire, particularly the
Colonial Empire.’ 8 It continued by saying
about socialism that: ‘they nurse a few prejudices and call these a
policy, but they regard the responsibilities of the Colonial Empire
as a tiresome hindrance to other things.’ 9

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
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 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