British ‘Greatness’ after Empire

Abstract

As Prime Minister Harold MacMillan said, the ‘winds of change’ were sweeping through the British Empire in 1960.1 India, Pakistan and Ghana were already independent states and, within a few short years, all of Britain’s African colonies followed. While MacMillan’s pronouncement referred specifically to political changes in Britain’s African colonies, no one, including MacMillan, could yet foresee what sort of impact these changes would have on politics, society and culture within the United Kingdom. It was apparent that politicians, senior civil servants and the upper classes put great stock in the empire, but the extent to which the majority of Britons knew or cared about the empire has been widely disputed.2 The extreme right were certainly concerned about the loss of empire as were the more moderate right wing of the Conservative Party. Churchill himself was a strong advocate of empire and particularly bemoaned the loss of India.3 The picture on the left was slightly more complicated. Labour Party policy was that Britain should give up its empire. Opposition to empire was one of the few truly unifying aspects of the postwar British left.4 There was general agreement that colonies and colonial peoples should be in control of their own destinies, but what exactly this meant for Britain — what this did to Britain’s international position, its place in the world — was a point of dispute.