Search results
5 All out of money 1976–77 There is a difference between being a charitable benefactor and host to a parasite. William Simon’s explanation of US policy towards Britain during the IMF crisis1 Introduction Allegedly suffering from the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease, Harold Wilson announced he would resign as prime minister in March 1976. As one close associate of the prime minister recalled, Wilson had simply ‘had enough’.2 A battle for the party leadership (and thus to become prime minster) ensued which the ‘champion of the moderates’ James Callaghan
commented on the Wilson–Johnson relationship, usually highlighting the undoubted strains therein. Ritchie Ovendale, for example, argues that although they were ‘initially effusive in their reciprocal praise’, the two leaders soon ‘viewed each other with some suspicion’. The President ‘thought that Wilson was too keen to cross the Atlantic to bolster his domestic position’, and believed ‘that the British Prime Minister was too
On 6 December 1964, Harold Wilson, along with an unusually large entourage, travelled to the United States to see President Johnson for discussions about a number of issues of mutual concern. These included Britain’s military role East of Suez, the preservation of which the White House urged in support of the United States’s own role in keeping the peace in Asia. For reasons of prestige and to
On 16 October 1964, Harold Wilson became Britain’s new prime minister, when the Labour Party gained power after thirteen years in opposition and by a slim margin. 1 Wilson promptly turned to President Johnson for help in the British economic crisis which occurred soon after Labour assumed power, and he gained American assistance in obtaining a major bail-out for sterling. Labour’s handling of the British economic
such an analysis, focusing on how television coverage of major disasters in the global South shaped the historical and political trajectory of humanitarian aid in Britain. The chapter does so through a case study of British television coverage of a deadly famine in Ethiopia in 1973, which despite causing a huge number of fatalities had gone unreported in the Western media. The famine was suddenly
advisers decided that it would be fitting to try to impose some sort of ‘deal’ on London – the United States would support sterling only in return for a British commitment to avoid far-reaching defence cuts. There is little direct evidence concerning Johnson’s own position on this arrangement, but it is clear nonetheless that he wanted Wilson to understand that US support for the pound would be less likely if the British began to
2 Re-assessing foreign policy 1969–72 There could be no special partnership between Britain and the United States, even if Britain wanted it. Prime Minister Heath to President Pompidou, May 19711 The jilted lover According to Henry Kissinger, Edward Heath rejected a close working partnership with Richard Nixon, which left him feeling akin to that of a ‘jilted lover’.2 Kissinger’s analysis has had an incredible impact upon the subsequent scholarly assessments of the US–UK relationship. As Heath’s official biographer Philip Ziegler has claimed, ‘Certainly it was
’s suspicions. US–Soviet negotiations concerning SALT were viewed with particular trepidation because Heath’s government believed it could result in the curtailment of US–UK nuclear cooperation. Such concerns had a direct impact on British nuclear policy and Heath’s nuclear overtures to France, and the final decision 06_Strained_partnership_210-220.indd 210 06/11/2013 13:55 Conclusion 211 to opt for the Chevaline upgrade to Polaris, were driven, in part, by a concern that SALT would limit US–UK nuclear cooperation.3 Other elements of détente, especially the CSCE and MBFR
‘special’ one, and to evaluate broader developments in the ties between Britain and the United States. The introduction examined the literature and outlined the structures of the Anglo-American relationship, gave brief biographies of Wilson and Johnson and indicated the main content of the study. In the period October–November 1964, Wilson was quick to solicit American help in the economic crisis that befell the new Labour
‘dissociated’ Britain from the US bombing of the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, which was carried out on 28–29 June. He stated that Britain still supported the general principle of the United States’s policy in Vietnam and, on a personal level, he was as committed as ever to close relations with Johnson. But Johnson failed to understand why, with Labour’s position in the Commons newly-secured, Wilson had acted as he