British Policy-makers Research Articles

How do you Solve a Problem Like Pitcairn?

ABSTRACT This paper examines the historical, administrative, and socio-political history of Pitcairn Island, a British Overseas Territory in the Pacific, which was compounded by the external threat of French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Despite its negligible economic and strategic value, Pitcairn exemplifies the complexities of Britain’s smaller territories in the post-decolonisation era, because the UK remains responsible for its administration and people. The island's isolation, dependency on external aid, and declining population have posed unique challenges for British policymakers, who have grappled with balancing local autonomy and cultural identity with the logistical and financial demands of maintaining such a remote territory. The study contextualises Pitcairn’s position as a ‘problematic remnant’ of empire, exploring its symbolic importance, the implications of nuclear testing in its vicinity, and the broader legacy of imperial governance. Highlighting Pitcairn’s social, economic, and administrative history, the paper situates the island within the broader narratives of decolonisation and the ‘smaller territories problem,’ ultimately reflecting on its status as a microcosm of Britain's imperial legacies and the limits of post-imperial responsibility.

Facing the ‘Rogue Elephant’: The Evolution of British Strategy Towards Japan in the 1970s and 1980s

ABSTRACT By the 1970s, Japan had become a key player in international relations. Less than two decades after the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, and the formal end of the Second World War and Japanese occupation, the nation now stood as one of Richard Nixon’s ‘three pillars’ of the Western World, with her Gross National Product placed third internationally. Scholarly attention has reflected this inflection point, particularly with regards to the European Community and American relations towards Japan. However, little coverage of how Britain strategized towards Japan has been done for the same period. Utilising recently released archival material, this article identifies core strategic concerns for policymakers when it came to Japan, and how these concerns acted as a framework for a steadily evolving strategy. For Britain, an inherent tension existed between keeping the Japanese ‘bound’ to the Western political system and the domestic political imperative of safeguarding British industry and jobs from a rapidly expanding Japanese export juggernaut. As both Japan’s and Britain’s positions in the world changed, so too would the ways in which British policymakers would envisage methods to balance these strategic ends. This would be marked by an increasing level of centralisation of strategy regarding the Japanese, moving key decision making away from the Foreign Office specialists in the periphery of government towards the Cabinet Committee system. Though the specialists never lost their influence over the direction of strategy, by the late 1980s British policymakers had developed a fully coherent, all-of-Whitehall approach vis-à-vis Japan.

The Malacca dilemma of the Raj: the Indian Uprising of 1857, the Second Opium War, and the British proposal of a Kra passage

AbstractIn the late 1850s and early 1860s, the idea of building a passage through the Isthmus of Kra in the Malay Peninsula was hotly debated amongst British officials, merchants, and investors. This study finds that the British East India Company's rule over the Straits of Malacca had been a dilemma for itself and British merchants in China. The Second Opium War and the Indian Revolt of 1857 exacerbated the dilemma and pushed some British policymakers and investors to seek an alternative route between India and China. The proposal of the Kra passage was the response and solution to the Malacca dilemma. In historicising the Kra passage proposal and putting it in the context of the British empire's simultaneous crises in Asia in the mid-nineteenth century, the case of the proposed Kra passage reveals the complex relations between different actors within the British empire and the challenges of integrating multiple imperial interests into a British world system

‘A Cultivated Leader and Sensible Spokesman for Black African Views’1: Britain's Courting of KaNgwane Chief Minister Enos J. Mabuza

AbstractThis article analyses British policymakers’ efforts to court Enos John Mabuza, Chief Minister of the self‐governing South African homeland of KaNgwane, in the final years of apartheid. It contends that despite taking place nearly 30 years apart, there were striking similarities between British policy at the end of apartheid and in the era of decolonisation, particularly the efforts to build relations with moderate nationalists in an effort to maintain long‐term influence. While KaNgwane was a small territory lacking in material resources, Mabuza, as a moderate Black leader working within the law to challenge apartheid, took on greater importance in the minds of British policymakers seeking a peaceful transfer of power in South Africa. This was helped by Mabuza's ability to maintain relations with a diverse range of important political actors including the South African government, KwaZulu Chief Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and the African National Congress in exile. Additionally, KaNgwane's close proximity to Mozambique, which at the time was in the midst of a civil war, also gave the territory greater prominence. This article will highlight how Mabuza used these interconnecting factors to demonstrate his value as an important ‘interlocutor’ for Britain, which in turn saw him extract important resources for both the KaNgwane people and his own family, as well as a degree of protection from interference by the South African government.

The state of British policymaking: How can UK government become more effective?

Abstract How can UK and devolved governments be more effective when addressing chronic problems like inequalities or crises like climate change? The dominant story is of pessimism: policymaking is bound to a Westminster tradition of short-termism, elitism, and centralization, and reform efforts are doomed to failure. We present a more cautiously optimistic account about the prospects for a more effective government, grounded in theory-informed lessons from two decades of UK and devolved government reform efforts. We describe a potentially more innovative and less blundering state and present a coherent Positive Public Policy agenda that can help to realize this potential.

Legitimising Occupation: The Quest for Popular Consent during the British Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949

This article explores the quest for legitimacy and popular consent during the British occupation of north-western Germany between 1945 and 1949. It does so through an analysis of two major propaganda campaigns that sought to publicly legitimise the British occupation at home and in Germany: ‘Germany under Control’, a large-scale exhibition put on display in London in 1946; and ‘Operation Stress’, the largest propaganda campaign in the British Zone, run in 1948 to legitimise food policies. Through an investigation of the internal rationale amongst British policymakers, the objectives behind the campaigns, the popular reception, and the broader outcomes, the article shows that both campaigns ended in failure and did not succeed in convincing the population of the need to maintain British rule in Germany. Propaganda was an ineffective tool to generate popular legitimacy at a time of austerity at home and severe material suffering in the British zone of occupation. As such, the British authorities encountered populations whose ‘moral economy’ and expectations from government were fundamentally opposed to the maintenance of the occupation. Both campaigns, therefore, epitomise the pitfalls of propaganda campaigns when facing bitter social realities and demonstrate the intricacies of the quest for legitimacy during military occupations.

Imperialism after decolonization? British relations with Bahrain from the withdrawal East of Suez to the Iranian Revolution

There is a growing consensus that the end of empire did not necessarily equate with a severing of imperial ties. Some historians have even argued that there was a shift from formal to informal empire in Britain’s relations with the emerging Gulf States. This is especially so with respect to Bahrain which had represented the epicentre of Britain’s position in the Gulf. Nevertheless, an analysis of British relations with Bahrain from the withdrawal East of Suez to the Iranian Revolution belies any notion that Britain succeeded in establishing an informal imperial position after 1971. Not only were Britain’s economic interests in Bahrain eroded by growing competition from its industrial rivals, but also its political and military position was challenged by the encroachment of regional powers. Any hope that Britain could retain an imperial role in Bahrain was undermined still further by the emergence of new internal political forces in Bahrain beyond the direct control of either the ruling family or Britain itself. The unfeasibility of maintaining an imperial relationship with Bahrain after 1971 persuaded British policymakers to seek to establish recognizably post-imperial relations with the Emirate in the decade following the withdrawal from East of Suez.

The German opposition question in British World War II strategy: Interpreting Hugh Trevor-Roper’s wartime intelligence reporting

ABSTRACT What explains the British decision not to lend significant support to the internal German opposition to Hitler during World War II? Some historians have labelled the absence of aid to the German resistance as an intelligence failure. P.R.J. Winter and others instead accuse the British government of policy failure by highlighting the excellent efforts of Britain’s wartime radio intelligence team, led by Hugh Trevor-Roper. But by closely reading the key piece of evidence in this case for intelligence success, the ‘Canaris and Himmler’ report, and by placing that assessment in the broader context of Trevor-Roper’s intelligence reporting through the end of the war, we argue that Trevor-Roper’s team did not lay the analytical groundwork for a shift in British strategy. Trevor-Roper neither appreciated nor conveyed to British policymakers the existence and strength of the German opposition, and he denigrated the opposition’s central hub, the Abwehr. This can be classed as a significant intelligence failure. Nevertheless, we also suggest that the intelligence versus policy failure framing of the German opposition question is something of a false dichotomy, as Whitehall’s intelligence and policy communities operated under a shared set of assumptions and reinforced each other’s beliefs about the appropriateness of British strategy.

The Discourse of ‘The People’s War’ in Britain and the USA during World War II

Abstract David Edgerton has argued that the term ‘people’s war’ was not much in use during World War II and that where it did occur it was used in ‘a critical and oppositional, rather than an official-celebratory’ sense. We show that Edgerton’s conclusions are an artefact of his limited source-base and narrow reading of the evidence. The phrase ‘people’s war’ was in fact used in Ministry of Information propaganda and cropped up widely in the press, leading contemporaries to comment on its overfamiliarity. But we do not merely seek to restore previous interpretations. We show the longer history of ‘people’s war’ terminology in both Britain and America. We further demonstrate how Britain’s US sympathisers, such as the CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, used this language to argue that British class barriers were breaking down, thus making the country worthy of American support. British policymakers consciously encouraged this, and there were consequences for US domestic politics too. The concept of the ‘people’s war’, then, was a contemporary Anglo-American co-production. It was not, as Edgerton wrongly suggests, an invention of the historians of the 1960s and after.

The Diplomacy of Military Assistance: The Royal Navy Training Team and the Nigerian Civil War

ABSTRACT This article studies the Anglo-Nigerian negotiations for a Royal Navy training team during the Nigerian Civil War against the background of Africa’s ‘phoney’ Cold War and Britain’s global strategic withdrawal. This allows it to show Britain’s diplomatic manoeuvres to simultaneously prevent provoking debilitating opposition against its tightrope policy of supporting Federal Nigeria against Biafra and safeguard its significant, predominantly economic – particularly oil – interests in Nigeria. Initially inconvenienced by the Nigerian request for a naval training team, British policymakers gradually agreed to send one after the war, then promised to do so already before, and, after the foreign policy establishment had overcome the Ministry of Defence’s resistance, finally sent out Royal Navy officers to Nigeria before the end of hostilities. In this process, the Nigerians had allies in the British High Commission in Lagos and the Foreign (and Commonwealth) Office, as well as substantial leverage as a result of Indian and Soviet competition in the Nigerian market for military assistance. Yet this leverage was mitigated by the Federals’ preference for British over Indian military assistance, and fear of becoming too reliant on Moscow. Not only in the British, but also in the Nigerian case, diplomatic concerns thus outweighed the military rationale for the naval training team, and this ‘diplomacy of military assistance’ contrasts with the basic tenor of the theoretical literature on military assistance in civil wars.

Penny Sinanoglou. Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire.

Journal Article Penny Sinanoglou. Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire. Get access Penny Sinanoglou. Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Pp. x, 251. Cloth $43.00. Martin Bunton Martin Bunton University of Victoria, Canada Email: mbunton@uvic.ca Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 1069–1070, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad189 Published: 22 June 2023

The Impact of Brexit on Illegal Immigration to the UK

The United Kingdom's political, economic, and social challenges have been greatly impacted by the Brexit referendum (UK). The problem of immigration to the UK is also among the most significant Brexit-related challenges. The issue of illegal immigration to the UK will be the main subject of this study. This study's goal is to analyse the most significant effects that have an impact on the prevention of unauthorized immigration into the UK. The UK government's decision to announce new immigration regulations as one of its immigration-control measures will have a significant impact on the country's capacity to manage its borders. Additionally, the Dublin Accord, which is regarded as the most significant agreement between the EU member nations with regard to the control of illegal immigration, will no longer apply to the UK if it withdraws from the European Union (EU). The conclusion of this research is that leaving the EU will result in the loss of the Dublin Agreement as a symbolic tool for British policymakers, preventing them from turning to the EU for assistance should they lose control over immigration. This will increase in the number of illegal immigrants in the UK.

Strategic forgetting: Britain, China, and the South China Sea, 1894–1938

AbstractThis article clarifies a mythologized episode in the early development of the South China Sea disputes and shows how it was later ‘forgotten’ by British policymakers for strategic reasons. Using documents from the UK National Archives it confirms, for the first time, that Qing/Chinese officials did deny responsibility for the Paracel Islands in 1898/1899. It then shows how this correspondence was strategically ignored by British officials during the 1930s in the context of renewed disputes between China, France, and Japan over the sovereignty of the islands. It argues that during the 1930s, British officials sought to bolster the Chinese position in the South China Sea because of a concern that France would remain neutral in any forthcoming conflict. This resulted in Britain taking a view on the sovereignty disputes that was at odds with the evidence in its own archives but which provided useful political support for the Republic of China.

A Historical Approach towards Baloch-British Contact: An analysis of Baloch Wars with the Colonial forces (1839-41)

Balochistan, due to its strategic position, has faced a myriad of invaders such as Persians, Mughals and finally the British. British contact with Kalat was initially established in the late eighteenth century by British travelers, who were sent by the British Indian Government to gather ample information about Balochistan. By1830’s the British in India were eager to expand their borders into central Asia. Therefore, the British embarked on a strategy to install friendly governments in their northwest frontier that would provide a buffer zone to protect their Indian Empire from foreign enemies. Balochistan, lying at the frontier of British India, came under British consideration. In 1838; British Empire in India anticipated establishing relation with the state of Kalat in Balochistan. Finally, British concluded a treaty with Mehrab Khan subsequently, the ruler of Balochistan during the first Anglo-Afghan war for safe passage through its territory. In contrary, British army faced much resistance and trouble while advancing towards Afghanistan. This created anger among the British policy makers resultantly, Kalat was assaulted. Throughout Balochistan occupation of Kalat created civil resistance on an unpredicted and unprecedented scale. They revolted against British interference and fought against them, which resulted in their submission to the rule of Nasir Khan II. This paper is an attempt to continue the history of the British contact with Baloch and the events of the war which occurred betwixt 1839 to 1841.

‘Rather a Sham’: The 1931–1933 British Naval Mission to China and the Failure of Anglo-Chinese Naval Diplomacy during the ‘Nanjing Decade’

This article explores the 1931–33 British Naval Mission to the Republic of China. An undeniable failure in its stated objective of fostering the reform and reorganization of the Republic of China Navy (ROCN), this Mission has been almost entirely overlooked by both historians of the interwar Royal Navy and scholars of Anglo-Chinese relations during the ‘Nanjing Decade’ (1927–1937). Utilizing British Admiralty and Foreign Office documents, as well as the official reports and private correspondence circulated by the Mission’s head – and sole member – Captain H.T. Baillie-Grohman, this article demonstrates that British policymakers had little faith in the Mission’s ability to achieve tangible short-term reform within the ROCN. Instead, British officials understood the Mission as an expedient way to foster long-term Anglo-Chinese goodwill which could be exploited once the Republic of China had attained a true measure of political and economic stability. However, even these vague long-term diplomatic objectives were doomed to failure in the face of the Nanjing Government’s severe economic limitations and lack of interest in naval development during the early 1930s.

The Eastern Question as a Moral Question: European Order, Political Compromise, and British Policy Towards the Greek Revolution (1821–1828)

This article examines British foreign policy towards the Greek Revolution (1821–1828), with a particular focus on the policies of Lord Castlereagh and George Canning. It uses Henry Kissinger’s 1954 scheme of the ‘statesman’ and ‘prophet’ to examine the intellectual antagonism between the Greek policies of Castlereagh and Canning. While Castlereagh saw the Greek Revolution as a threat to the principles consecrated at the Congress of Vienna, Canning saw the Revolution in isolation, not in relation to other European insurrections. While Castlereagh was willing to allow the war to continue rather than risk the principles underpinning the European order, Canning was willing to compromise those principles for peace in Greece. The debate that surrounded these policies further drew the Greek cause into a broader matrix of political associations: conservatives backed the Ottoman Empire while liberals opposed it, reflecting the dispositions of both towards the political status quo in Britain and in Europe. The article argues that the dialectics that their two approaches represented—universal and systemic versus particular and contingent, and order versus peace—became recurrent themes in British policymaking throughout the Eastern Question.

Cold War and Decolonisation: The British Response to Soviet Union Anti-colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT This study examined the British response to the Soviet Union’s expansion and the rapid onset of the Cold War in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Soviet Union considered ‘The Third World’ the primary battlefield of the Cold War and took advantage of the international trend of anti-colonialism to exert pressure on the West. At the same time, the Soviet Union promised Africans economic development and improved living standards after African countries achieved independence and relentlessly disseminated anti-colonial propaganda at the United Nations and in the region. The Soviet Union’s anti-colonialist propaganda offended Britain by repudiating the liberal imperial ideas that British policymakers believed in and proclaimed at the time. As Britain faced criticism of neo-colonialism, the nation moved towards decolonisation, opting to continue with an ‘informal empire’ backed by the United States. The spread of anti-colonialism in sub-Saharan British Africa, as African nations strove for independence, and Britain’s response to this period of change should be read within a larger narrative rather than as a chapter in decolonisation history. This narrative offers clues to understanding Britain’s struggle for survival post-empire.

Back to the Future: Farming Systems in Transition

National policy levers play a central role in shaping agricultural systems. In his timely book Land Renewed: reworking the Countryside Peter Hetherington (2021) challenges British policy makers to form a far more coherent approach for land use supporting the transition towards improved national food security, seen through a lens of climate change and biodiversity loss. In the UK there are currently three separate government departments responsible for land, the environment, farming and climate change complicating policy alignment. He points out that without subsidies, in the form of area payments, over 60% of all British farms would be running at a loss. The challenge is to improve domestic crop production which currently provides just 60% of the nation's food (Lang, 2020) and hence make the food system more resilient to shocks in international food supply chains while addressing the climate emergency. Hetherington documents a number of cases where farmers, collaborating in organisations such as the Nature Friendly Farming Network, are successfully encouraging a resurgence of bird-life through reduced tillage, renewing and planting hedgerows and using lower doses of fertilisers, including on larger holdings with over 500 ha. This is perhaps the other side of the coin of the bleak future for biodiversity associated with major broad-acre crops outlined by Dewar (2021) in these pages. However, Hetherington (2021) points out that just under half of England's farms produce 2% of total agricultural output, while 8% of them account for over half of it. This implies room for landscape scale nature-friendly farming and even re-wilding, particularly in the uplands, with the caveat that local communities play a central role in plans and implementation. With heightened public interest in the climate emergency and biodiversity loss there is increasing desire for food which is local and particularly in food traceability. This is leading to increasingly sophisticated methods to track and publish farming and animal welfare standards with supermarket chains requiring producers to adhere to these (e.g., Waitrose and Partners, 2022 one of many examples). Underpinning such standards, methods of carbon accounting which may be applied to soil, whole farms or individual enterprises within the farm have been a focus of research for some time (e.g. Goglio et. al. 2015; Abram, 2020). At the most basic level regular soil organic matter tests and a soil management plan will allow British farmers signed up to the entry level of the recently announced Sustainable Farming Incentive (DEFRA, 2022) to be "paid with public funds for providing public goods". To receive payment, they will also be required to ensure 70% of the farm has a green cover through the winter from December to February and add organic matter, which can be via a green cover crop, on one third of the land each year. Currently there is no requirement to demonstrate that soil organic matter is increasing over time – this is assumed. As time goes on however it is possible to envisage more nuanced payments for increasing stored soil carbon, and even a "market" developing as is the case with woodland creation (Forestry Commission, 2022) as producers become the "carbon farmers" of tomorrow as suggested by Korres & Dayan (2020). External inputs including crop protection products will all be included in farm or enterprise carbon budgets. Policy levers are also a focus to regulate the quantity of agrochemicals used for crop protection. The European Union's "Farm to Fork" and Biodiversity strategies, aim reduce by 50% the use and potential risk of chemical pesticides by 2030 and reduce by 50% the use of the more hazardous pesticides also by 2030, although a recent assessment indicates slow and uneven progress towards targets and adoption of IPM measures (European Commission, 2020). Individual countries also take unilateral measures as seen with restrictions on use and in some cases phasing out of the use of glyphosate e.g. by 2024 in Germany (Sustainable Pulse, 2022). Glyphosate is a widely used tool for the destruction of green cover crops (e.g. Fogliato, 2020) so alternative approaches will be needed where these are used at scale as part of interventions to build soil health and store carbon.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong nexus in grassroots collective actions amid Sino-Anglo interface, 1841 to 1927

PurposeThis paper provides an analytical account detailing the historical linkages between Chinese on both sides of the Sino-Hong Kong border from 1841 onwards and examining important incidents of collective actions in the colony and Canton.Design/methodology/approachUsing annual reports published by the colonial administration in Hong Kong, especially those focusing on years that witnessed major incidents of anti-colonial agitations, this paper analyzes how British policymakers were confronted by collective actions mounted by Chinese in Canton and Hong Kong. Building on the works of prominent historians and utilizing the theoretical frameworks of analysts such as Charles Tilly (1978), the author examines if a Cantonese regional solidarity served as the foundation for popular movements, which in turn consolidated a rising Chinese nationalism when Canton and Hong Kong were the focal points of mass actions against imperialism.FindingsHong Kong Chinese workers were vanguards of the modern Chinese revolutions that transformed not just their homeland, but their lives, allegiances, and aspirations as Chinese in a domain under foreign jurisdiction on Chinese soil, as their actions were emulated by their compatriots outside of South China, thus starting a chain reaction that culminated in the establishment of the Nanjing regime.Originality/valueThis paper reveals that popular movements of Hong Kong Chinese possessed national and international importance, especially when they were supported by their Cantonese compatriots and the two leading Chinese political parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Undesirable British East African Asians. Nationality, Statelessness, and Refugeehood after Empire

ABSTRACT In 1972, upon expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin, diasporic Asians, who had settled in East Africa during colonial times, underwent a second stage of global dispersal. Many of them managed to resettle in the United Kingdom, despite anti-immigrant sentiments and increasingly restrictive immigration legislation. Other large groups arrived in India and Canada. One group, however, got scattered around the globe: the approximately 10,000 ‘Asians of undetermined origin’, who were resettled as refugees under auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This article investigates how and why this group of stateless Asians became refugees and candidates for international resettlement. It argues that all British policy makers sought to use the international community to shoulder part of the burden of winding up empire, while trying to avoid convictions for breaching newly emerging legally binding international human rights obligations. The Ugandan Asian crisis fits within the history of the creation of modern British immigration control law that took shape from 1962 onwards. This article proposes to decentralise the geographical frame beyond the UK to include developments in Kenya, Uganda, and India, where East African Asians likewise became ‘undesirables’.