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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As
time progressed it became evident that the imperial system could not
long continue to resist the pressure
of nationalism in various empire zones. As
India still lacked self-governing status and nationalism
continued in Ireland it
looked clear that not only the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd
George’s,
efforts to sustain the spirit of co-operation and the practice of centralisation
were
not successful but the unity of the British Empire was already set upon a course
of steady
decline.

The
impact of the Second World War was also a further push in the British
Empire’s process of
disintegration. Unlike the First World War, Britain’s plunge
into the Second World War did not itself
commit the whole of the Colonial
Empire and the Dominions. Although, in 1939, the Colonial Empire and
the
Dominions together were larger in terms of territory and population than in 1914
they were also
much more fragile and disaffected. “With the exception of India,
whose central government was still
controlled by London, the other members of
the empire had each to make the supreme decision. Eire
unhesitatingly took its
stand as a neutral, Canada and South Africa waited a few days until
their
parliaments voted for war, while Australia and New Zealand declared that they
were at war
simultaneously with the mother country.”38

During the Second World War, however, the contribution of the empire
was training and food supplies.
From September 1939 until mid1940 when
France fell and Italy entered the war “Canada and Southern
Rhodesia became the
hosts to air crew training schemes far from the battlefield. Australia, New
Zealand
and South Africa provided reinforcements for Egypt, the major base for British
power in the
Mediterranean, where in 1939 there were only 50,000 British troops,
compared with 200,000 Italians on
either side in Libya and Ethiopia. In the early
fighting in Europe the British expeditionary force in
France and the British force
in Norway included some Empire volunteers who had been students in Britain
at
the out-break of war. One Canadian battalion went to the West Indies and others

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