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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authority
are followed because it is believed that they fulfil a need within the
community in a political system.
Authority then is linked to respect, which creates
legitimacy, and therefore leads to power. Something that
the British political elite
have managed to do in Britain, among the British people and in the
ex-colonies
of the Modern Commonwealth, in the course of post-1945 history, especially
when the material
base for the maintenance of imperial power could no longer be
sustained.

As a
result of size, population, but essentially her richness in natural
resources, the United States, due to
Britain’s economic crisis after the Second
World War, emerged stronger than Britain. In fact power fall
into America’s
hands rather than having to be wrested from Britain. Moreover, given its own
history
it had little sympathy for Britain’s imperial position and role. For their
part, the British political
elite, who had worked together in the War Cabinet
during the War, as this work has shown, had very little
disagreement about the
need to maintain British power and interests in the post-war world.

To that
end, both Labour and Conservatives, Attlee, Bevin and Churchill
took the view that an alliance with the
United States was essential. This was
prompted in particular by their fear of the threat posed by the
communist
expansionist policy of the Soviet Union to British interests, not least in the
Commonwealth.
Having decided to proceed with the decolonisation process both
the Labour government of 1945-51 and the
Conservative governments of 1951-
55, 1955-57 and 1957-63 pursued the policy of involving the Americans in
the
defence of Western Europe and Britain against the Soviet threat. Taking into
account too, after the
Second World War, the concept of a “common language
and heritage” or “special
relationship” which was first spoken of by Churchill in
a speech in Fulton, Missouri, when he visited
the USA in March 1946 on a private
visit. The phrase “special relationship” was a tool of diplomacy
for harnessing a
rising, inexperienced giant, America, to the achievement of British ends. Though

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