British policy towards Western Europe, 1947–9: the best of possible worlds?

Abstract

The course of postwar British relations with the countries of Western Europe is often seen as having been set by the developments of 1947-9. In early 1948, Britain was regarded as the leader of Western Europe; a year later the British had not only lost that leadership, but with hindsight had lost their place in future European political developments. How and why did such a transformation come about? During 1947 and 1948, the British government took a leading role in bringing about West European union. This represented an attempt to achieve a close association of West European states working at intergovernmental level. Concrete examples of Britain's leading role were the signing of the Dunkirk Treaty on 4 March 1947 between Britain and France and the Brussels Treaty on 17 March 1948 between Britain, France and the Benelux countries. The concept of West European union to which the British were committed, and which was explicitly espoused in the Brussels Treaty, seemed to imply a greater commitment of the United Kingdom to European affairs than had existed in British foreign policy hitherto. Yet during 1948 and early 1949, when the governments of France, Benelux and Italy started to propose some form of West European unity, they found that they were faced by implacable British opposition. This unity sought to go beyond the intergovernmental level towards West European federation. Even when the US government supported West European unity strongly, British opposition to it did not lessen. The distinctions between union and unity seem to have been clearly conceptualized by the British by 1948. This failure of the British government to move from working for European union towards working for European unity has widely been regarded as a missed opportunity. During the late 1940s, the policy of the British government on the issue of unity was opposed by everybody; abroad by the major European governments and the United States, and at home by the Conservative Party. Many historians have since sided, in varying degrees, with this contemporary criticism of the Labour government. 1 However, this article will argue that such a critical approach does not allow for