The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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be used or
when a territory should be annexed. They were operating from various
State Departments, such as Colonial,
Defence/War, Foreign and the Cabinet
Office (i.e. the Prime Minister).

The reason for focusing on
the elite, or the British political elite, in this
case is because I believe, as the book in Chapter One will
show, that in a living
community there is a minority which controls or rules the majority. In order
to
examine why a certain state or nation behaves in a particular way, one should
investigate who the
leaders are and what their needs are. This is to say, one should
examine those who are the decision makers.
Social hierarchy is a reality in any
society. Therefore, the ruling classes or the elites in any society
should be treated
as s central explanatory factor. Consequently, in this thesis, the elite or
those
decision makers, the British political elite, will be the focus of the investigation.

With regard to choosing
the ending of British Empire to examine in this
book it starts with the fact that the United States was a
colony of Britain two
hundred years or so earlier and not until the Second World War was she a
super
power. The United States had established its independence at Britain’s expense,
defining many
of its values in antithesis to those of the monarchial, aristocratic,
imperialist, colonialist mother
country. Britain never willingly relinquished her
Empire and she skillfully managed to maintain her Imperial
connections until the
present day. That is the Modern Commonwealth.

Hence too, after the
Second World War, as the studies in Chapter Six will
explain, Churchill popularised the concept of a
‘common language and heritage’
or ‘special relationship’ (because of Britain’s economic
crisis, and her attempt to
involve the United States in Europe for defence in the face of the
Communist
expansion) as a device or tool of diplomacy to harness a rising inexperienced
giant (the
United States) to serve Britain’s own ends. Although it was Churchill
who first used the phrase
“special relationship”, such a concept had in fact been
an objective of British foreign policy
since early in this century. The following
example will illustrate the concept. “In September 1917,
Robert Cecil emphasised

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