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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at the
exploitation and repression of the colonial system. Thus the British political
elite had to seek solutions to
safeguard British interests. Not being able to provide
an effective defence for the Empire in the face of the
world which emerged after
1945, British interests could easily become subordinated to the Soviet
Union
and/or the United States. To safeguard and protect the huge and well established
prestige, way of
life, culture, strategic basis, trade investments, and diplomatic
influence on which Britain’s world role
had mainly rested, the British political
elite adopted an approach based on a diffused system of
control

The
imperial decision makers in London after the Second World War,
proceeded with an accelerating and disciplined
process of granting full political
independence to all the Empire nations starting with India in 1947 and
virtually
completing the programme of decolonisation by 1963. However, the ex-colonies
were encouraged
to retain the old connections against such a dangerous and
rapidly changing world. The persuasion of the
British political elite led to the
acceptance by most of the ex-colonies of the retention of the historical
ties with
the United Kingdom. The decision to maintain close links with Britain was
embodied principally
in practice by their incorporation in the British
Commonwealth whose members up till then comprised only the
white
Dominions. The incorporating of the newly independent nations and states (ex-
colonies) in Africa
and Asia post-1945, into the British Commonwealth led to
this now multi-racial institution becoming known as
the Modern Commonwealth
or just the Commonwealth, which was defined in Chapter Three.

The
retaining of the historical ties by the former colonies with Britain was
one of the triumphs of the Labour
Government of 1945-51 and more to the point
of Ernest Bevin, the Labour Foreign Secretary. In 1950 during the
first meeting
of the Commonwealth Foreign Secretaries in the Sinhalese capital of Colombo,
Ernest Bevin,
one of the greatest supporters of British imperial power managed
to harmonise Labour’s socialist and
anti-colonisation with British nationalism and

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