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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1945,
no less than 45 per cent of the nation’s employable man-power was still
directly or indirectly
directed to the war effort. Conversion to the needs of peace
had barely begun. “20 As a result “the material fruits of victory were not much in
evidence.
“21

If
not among the public, defence, foreign and colonial policy received
considerable attention in the Labour
Party. This was as a result of the emergence
of two new super powers, the United States, with its
possession of atomic
weapons, and the Soviet Union, which would clearly have such weapons
soon.
Moreover, the Labour leader, Clement Attlee, had already been, even before the
Second World
War, speaking of Labour’s commitment to the ‘abandonment of
imperialism’ in the colonies.
This was partly because of the Labour’s colonial
doctrine, and, therefore, it is essential to bring
this to our attention. Although the
economic pressures on the Labour Government were a principal cause of
its post-
war decolonisation policies, ideological factors played a leading role in
influencing
Labour leaders in formulating their policies.

“The Labour party always considered itself primarily a socialist party and
only to a limited
extent as Marxist. Its organization and doctrine grew out of the
pragmatically oriented British
trade-union movement and an old humanitarian
Christian reform ideal, which at times entered a phase of
social and political
radicalism and took over the liberal inheritance. This characteristic tradition
of
the British working-class movement, which survived in years to come 1n spite of
the adoption of
some Marxist theories, also determined the Labour party’s
colonial doctrine” 22

The
British Labour party until 1914 did not have an anti-colonialist
doctrine which could differentiate it
from the continental socialist parties. “In
1900, led by Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, the Fabian
Society even openly
supported imperialism and rejected the pro-Boer attitude of leading
liberals.”23
But, in the years which followed, Sydney Oliver,
C. R. Buxton, Mary Kingsley

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