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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action
that Britain could take, in order to maintain her economic and political
interests in the
ex-colonies.

Having given additional attention to MacMillan’s policy of preserving
British interests, I now
continue my work by looking at his policy of defending
both Britain and her Commonwealth. Due to the
circumstances that Britain found
herself in, during the war and after, the evolution of the Modern
Commonwealth
had been taking place, and would have continued under MacMillan’s
premiership, in any
case. However, MacMillan’s fear of Communism being
spread into the colonies, persuaded him to
accelerate the decolonization process.
The Soviet Union’s expansionist policy had made Macmillan look
for an
immediate and effective defence that could protect Britain and her interests. The
obvious
solution was to follow the policy that the previous Conservative and
Labour Governments had adopted, in
other words, to pursue Churchill’s ‘special
relation’ concept, by seeking to re-establish and
maintain partnership with the
United States in defence and foreign policy.

In
March 1957 MacMillan met Eisenhower in Bermuda. After frank
exchanges on the Suez crisis the atmosphere
between the two leaders improved.
The two leaders re-established top-level contacts between each
others’
governments and agreed to exchange communications regularly. In fact, during
that
meeting. MacMillan and Eisenhower laid the basis of an Anglo-American
nuclear relationship that has
continued to the present day. As a result of
agreements in 1943-45, the United Kingdom and the United
States became
partners to develop nuclear weapons. However, the United States abandoned
the
agreements, although Churchill and Roosevelt had decided to share knowledge
in the development
of nuclear weapons. Opposition had grown in the United
States to sharing the monopoly of such weapons,
and an Act was forced through
to suspend such co-operation. The Act was known as the McMahon
Act.
Nevertheless, Britain went ahead with her own atomic programme. In 1952, the

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