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Foreign & Commonwealth

Office General Services Command

FCO HISTORIANS

OCCASIONAL PAPERS

No. 14

Britishness and British Foreign Policy

Foreign and Commonwealth Office k, ,. 1997

FOREWORD

This year's FCO Annual History lecture was given on 14 May by Professor Keith Robbins. His choice of subject, `Britishness and British Foreign Policy', was especially topical. Recent debates on the future of the European Union and the constitution of the United Kingdom have raised again the question of what it means to be British. Of late, historians have turned their attention increasingly towards those developments, both internal and external, which contributed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the forging of a single British national identity.

Professor Robbins, who is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Lampeter and Senior Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, and who has previously held Chairs of Modern History at the University College of North Wales at Bangor and the University of Glasgow, has been well placed to observe these trends. He has also made his own very considerable contribution to our understanding of Britain's past. His history of modem Britain from 1870 to 1992 is a standard text on the subject, and his studies of the Munich settlement of 1938, Sir Edward Grey, John Bright, the British Peace Movement between 1914 and igig, and the First World War, have all highlighted those traits, political, moral and economic, which have helped shape British attitudes towards international relations and the conduct of foreign affairs.

We are pleased to publish Professor Robbins's lecture as the latest in the FCO Historians' series of Occasional Papers.

John Coles September 1997

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

HISTORIANS

Occasional Papers

No. 14 September 1997

THE 1997 FCO ANNUAL LECTURE

BRITISHNESS AND BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

by

Professor Keith Robbins

Copies of this pamphlet will be deposited with the National Libraries

FCO Historians, Library & Records Department,

Clive House, Petty France, London SWiH 9HD

Crown Copyright

ISBN o 903359 73 1

BRITISHNESS AND BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

A Lecture delivered at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

14 MaY 1997

It is perhaps an unusual piece of percipience on the part of a historian that when he was honoured some time ago by the invitation to give the annual lecture he should have offered to speak on this subject. I am conscious that this is a history lecture, though equally conscious that history can be a weapon in present controversy. It does now seem that political circumstances have forced upon us that institutional reconsideration of the nature of Britain which has been in the air for decades. The recent General Election campaign has been full of claim and counter-claim on the subject of Britishness. The former Prime Miniser, John Major, repeating with fresh urgency what he had claimed with some success in 1992, argued that only in Conservative hands would Britain be saved from the two threats which might destroy `a thousand years of British history': internal disintegration, on the one hand, and absorption into `Federal Europe' on the other. And there was a dynamic relationship between these two threats. In the event, Mr Major and his party suffered the comprehensive defeat whose significance we are still only beginning to grapple with. The new government now has to turn its early attention to the detail of its proposals for devolution.

My purpose, perhaps you will be relieved to hear, is not to weigh up whether politicians or sections of the press have in fact even been right in asserting that there has been `a thousand years of British history' - whether or not it is coming to an end. It has the more modest objective of exploring the relationship, largely in the twentieth century, between `British identity' and the assumptions which have underpinned British foreign policy. It so happens that my own interests as an historian have long been both in the complexities of `Britishness' - perhaps a reflection of a professional career spent in England, Scotland and Wales - and in the study of British foreign policy. It seems rare, however, for this interface to be examined, and indeed I know of no single work that does so in a substantial fashion. Yet few would contest that the foreign policy of any country must necessarily, in some sense, be a reflection of its own sense of its identity. Foreign Secretaries and their advisers must have some notion of `Britain' and `Britishness' even if they are not very explicit about it. And historians have recently been stressing the fact that a country's image of itself is often confirmed by its image of `the Other' - that Britain is emphatically different from France, Germany or the United States in particulars.

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The `national interest', as we know, is frequently evoked in defence of this or that policy. It is supposed, at least sometimes, to operate in a realm which transcends mere `sectional' interest. In his 1850 peroration, arising out of the `Don Pacifico' affair, Palmerston famously defined his understanding of the implications for foreign policy of a certain concept of Britishness. He

asked the House of Commons `as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country' to decide `whether, as the Roman in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice

and wrong'. [We may note, in passing, that Palmerston could talk with impunity about `British subjects' and `the strong arm of England]. John Bright, who heard the speech, declared it one of the best he had ever heard. He urged, however, `Let us not resemble the Roman merely in our national privileges and personal security. The Romans were great conquerors, but where they conquered, they governed wisely. ' Palmerston

and Bright were political opponents but they both, in their different ways, suggested that `Britishness' had significant content when it came to foreign

policy.

There have been innumerable occasions since the mid-nineteenth century in

which British electors and parliamentarians have been urged to `put country before party' when its welfare, even its survival, has been held to be in jeopardy. It is normally at a moment of crisis that the virtues and values of a country are elaborated and celebrated. It is the element of danger and uncertainty which gives urgency to the task of self-definition. In periods of tranquillity, such self-analysis seems often contrived and unnecessary. The

country is not perceived to be `under threat' and can safely ignore any suggestion that it is going through an `identity crisis'. Even so, it may be the case that shifts are taking place all the while, both at an elite and popular level, which disturb a national self-image and perhaps jeopardize any foreign

policy which does not take it into account. In considering these issues, the chronological locus of this lecture falls into three parts: from the i88os to the First World War, from the 1920S to the 1970s, from the 1970s to the present. In each of these periods I argue that there have been significant shifts in

understandings of `Britishness', though it is perhaps only in the last that the entity called `Great Britain' has come under critical scrutiny, a scrutiny which has had implications for the conduct of British European policy.

`It must be wonderful to be in England now... ' wrote Julian Grenfell from South Africa in August 1914 `a wonderful speech of Grey's

... And don't you

think it has been a wonderful and almost incredible rally to the Empire;

with Redmond and the Hindus and Will Crooks and the Boers and the

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South Fiji Islanders all aching to come and throw stones at the Germans. It re-inforces one's failing belief in the Old Flag and the Mother Country'.

The specific references in these few sentences provide one approach to the definition of `Britishness'. They express both relief and satisfaction that `Great Britain' has indeed rallied to the cause at the moment of danger. The countries of settlement had confirmed that they were indeed parts of `Greater Britain'. The writers who contributed to this extended notion of `Great Britain' are well-known - Sir John Seeley, Sir Charles Dilke amongst them - and they need no elaboration here. To be British was to share in the wonder of a great global enterprise, for as the Canadian writer Agnes Macher wrote in the foreword to her book Stories of the British Empire: `no one, surely, with any adequate belief in the Divine Ruler of the Universe,

can study the wonderful story of our British Empire without being impressed

with a sense of its Divine purpose, its final mission to humanity, as the end for which the shoot of Saxon freedom, planted in British soil, has grown into the greatest Empire this world has ever seen'. You will already have noted, in both quotations, a ready resort to the adjective `wonderful' to describe this spread of Britishness.

One aspect of the opposition to Gladstonian proposals for Irish Home Rule in the 188os and 18gos was the extent to which it appeared to threaten any long-term possibility of maintaining the British Empire as some kind of single system. If the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was itself on the brink of dissolution - which critics supposed `Home Rule' to entail - then there was no chance of keeping a far-flung empire together. The counter-argument was that `Home Rule' for Ireland strengthened the United Kingdom as a world power because it would allow the Irish people to substantially order their own internal government whilst sharing fully in the foreign policy of the United Kingdom and the British Empire of which they remained a part. Moreover, devolution would allow more time for the Imperial Parliament (i. e. Westminster) to give proper attention to Britain's

world role and responsibilities.

However, since Gladstonian proposals for Irish Home Rule failed, it was not possible to draw any general lesson. It could only be a matter for

speculation whether, in a United Kingdom which contained a `devolved' Ireland, foreign policy would have nonetheless have continued as though nothing had happened. Some argued that while foreign policy was still in theory to have been solely a matter for the Imperial Parliament, in practice an Irish Parliament would have developed, over time, a perspective on `British' foreign policy which would have had at least distinctive elements which would have reflected the strength of the Irish diaspora.

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Despite his youthful euphoria in 1914, you will also have noted that Grenfell also confessed to a `failing belief in the `Old Flag' and the `Mother Country' even though now happily belied, it seemed, by the global imperial response to war in Europe. The duality of `wonder' and `anxiety' runs deeply through the decades immediately before 194 both in Britain `at home' and `abroad'. It is to be found both amongst `Colonials' and the inhabitants of the `Mother Country'. In Canada, for example, studies of school textbooks in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta reveal the extent to which they continued to reinforce loyalty to and love of Britain and its Empire. It was enacted in i9o6 that all provincial schools had to fly the Union Jack during school hours. In his address on Empire Day in Toronto in agog the Governor-General, Albert, Earl Grey reminded boys that it was a festival on which `every British subject should reverently remember that the British Empire stands out before the whole world as the fearless champions of freedom, fair play and equal rights'. The celebration of Dominion Day was, by contrast, still a little muted. It was clearly not easy to explain and reconcile that dual sense of identify to non- `Anglo-Saxon' elements in the population or to Americans. That some effort of reconciliation was similarly characteristic in the new Australia that greeted the twentieth century.

Dominion nationalism', in short, was already a recognizable phenomenon but relatively few `colonials' felt a need to `stop being British' as a way of being `true nationalists'. Paradoxically, however, both in Canada and in Australia and New Zealand, settlers from different parts of the British Isles mingled together in close proximity in a fashion which did not often happen in the `Mother Country'. It was as though to be thoroughly British it was necessary to leave Britain.

It was recognition that there was such a thing as `dominion nationalism' which led men such as Alfred, Lord Milner to stress the need to be aware that it could prove a disruptive force within the great British family unless there was a continuing stress on the ties that bound. It was by no means clear that such `loyalty' could be easily reinforced, though perhaps for the moment there was no immediate danger. It is not surprising, therefore, that there was a flurry of literature on these issues in the decades before 1914 which can only be sampled here.

One figure, though admittedly a minor one, who wrestled with some of these issues was J. A. Murray Macdonald, a Scottish liberal who was MP for Tower Hamlets in the i8gos. He argued that it was vital that the great self-governing colonies should have a means of sharing and determining `the vast responsibilities involved in British rule and policy'. In practice, however, there was no widespread support for the view that the United Kingdom should become a component part, even if the most important part, of an

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imperial parliament. The South African War had been won and had even seen modest forces volunteered from the self-governing Empire. Victory was a `pan-British' achievement which augured well for the future, or so it could be argued.

In Opposition during these turn-of-the century years, Sir Edward Grey

shared a `Great British' perspective on the world. His stance was important and deliberate. He camped firmly amongst `Liberal Imperialists',

corresponded with Milner in South Africa, and generally made life difficult for Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as he struggled to maintain some sort of Liberal unity on the South African issue. He corresponded with his distant

cousin Earl Grey, though was not always in agreement with him on imperial issues. Sir Edward was not a traveller, but when he was at length persuaded to go abroad, it was to visit the British West Indies in 1897. Europe was a closed book to him. He had two brothers, both of whom were killed by wild animals in Africa: British boldness, it seemed, sometimes required such sad sacrifices.

Grey seemed to some observers to be the quintessence of an English country gentleman with his love of fishing and birds. His home was in Northumberland and his constituency was as far north in England as it was possible to be, but he had been educated in southern England and also had

a penchant for fishing on the River Itchen in Hampshire. In manner and disposition, he was classically English, though he was more intimate than was normal with R. B. Haldane, who was dearly not English. It is true that Grey visited Scotland quite frequently but normally only at a particular time of the year and to a location where not many Scots were to be seen.

The pre-1914 Liberal Cabinet as a whole, however, was distinctly British,

naturally reflecting Liberal strength outside England. Even Englishmen like the subsequent Prime Minister, Asquith, and Winston Churchill, found

themselves representing Scottish constituencies at Westminster. Lloyd George was the first Welsh-speaking Welshman to make a major mark in British politics. It might be argued, however, that it was only at this level of politics that `Britain' functioned (though the British Academy had been formed in 19o3). It is true, of course, there had been much mingling of the populations of England, Scotland and Wales but scarcely a fusion into a universal `Britishness' which obliterated all trace of regional/ national identity within Great Britain.

A kind of schizophrenia was therefore not confined to Canada but existed within Britain itself, although Englishmen were slow to recognize it. Whether the country was called Britain or England was a matter of indif'erence and they raised no objection when continental Europeans spoke

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habitually of `England', Angleterre or Inghilterra. English political forays outside England, comparatively rare though they were, did occasionally open eyes. When Grey went to speak for Lloyd George in Caernarfon in 19o4, for example, it was a distinct adventure for him. Caernarvon, he noted `appears to be on the fringe of the Celtic fringe & very remote', and, when he got there, it was clearly not England - though a glance at the castle could confirm that he was not the first Englishman to arrive there. I1oyd George, of course, had been a `pro-Boer' though not simply because, like the Welsh, they were a small people. In short, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland too was a kind of multi-national state in which it was possible to have overlapping identities.

It was obvious, in the years immediately before 1914, that there was a relationship between this reality and the state's foreign policy. Grey initially strongly favoured the third Irish Home Rule Bill when it was introduced into the Commons in April 1912. He did so on two grounds. First, that the amount of work which Parliament was now required to do was such that `one Parliament cannot do it all' and second that `There is an Irish national feeling and there is a national feeling in other parts of the United Kingdom. You cannot help it. The thing is there... '. When the different parts of Ireland had for the first time a sense of joint responsibility for the domestic running of their country all would be well - an optimism he later modified. However, he did not abandon his belief that the management of the foreign policy of the British Empire would not be jeopardized by devolution downwards. He adhered to the view, which we have already heard expressed earlier, that devolution would mean that the Imperial Parliament would be less cluttered by relatively trivial matters.

In 1912 Churchill argued that to make a federal system workable within the United Kingdom it would be necessary to divide England into perhaps a dozen self-governing areas. If England was not so divided it would dominate any federation in a manner unacceptable to its partners. However, other contemporaries were appalled at the prospect. To divide England up, was, according to a view expressed in The Spectator, `utterly repugnant to our [English] national pride'. Just at the moment when the Scots and the Welsh might gain `Home Rule' on the grounds of nationality rather than because it made economic or administrative sense to treat Scotland and Wales as single units, the English were to be deprived of recognition of their nationality.

It was also questionable, of course, whether `devolution' was in fact to be equated with `federalism'. `Devolution' rested on the assumption that the Imperial parliament was still `sovereign' and if necessary could intervene and revoke the functions which it had at a particular time `devolved'.

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Federalism, on the contrary, entailed a limitation of parliamentary sovereignty and a legally-defined attribution of responsibilities and functions. In a Federal Britain/United Kingdom a constitution would make transparent which matters were dealt with at a provincial/ regional level and which were dealt with at the federal level. However, neither then nor in subsequent decades was there great clarity on such points.

Lord Dunraven, an Anglo-Welsh-Irish peer with long interest and experience in these matters, was another contemporary to advance schemes which he believed would `delegate to localities authority sufficient to enable them to manage their own affairs without unduly encroaching upon the power of an existing central authority'. Such arrangements would enable more time and attention to be given to the imperial/foreign policy of the state as a whole than was possible under the existing structure. Other writers, however, were scathing about the possibility of reconciling and combining the `little nationalisms' of the `Celtic fringe' in a structure which would at the same time also realize, globally, `Pan-Britannic unity'. One such was the Conservative historian J. A. R. Marriott who thought that `federal home rulers' were simply `on the wrong track'. For him, federalism, as seen in Canada or Australia, for example, represented a bringing together not a parting asunder of related communities. He also wanted to know whether in a world Britannic Federation the European unit would consist of `Great Britain and Ireland' or would England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales be regarded as separate units on the same footing as New Zealand or Canada. No one rushed to answer.

In the event, it did not prove necessary to do so. The First World War altered the context of constitutional discussion dramatically in two fundamental respects. Even before 1914, the Liberal Government's Irish Home Rule proposals ran up against the buffer provided by Protestant Ulster which dung to an inconvenient concept of Britishness and resisted Irish Home Rule. And despite the optimism expressed in Julian Grenfell's praise for John Redmond [whose brother was killed fighting in the British Army] the Irish Question ran beyond the framework of its pre-1914 discussion; the 1916 Easter Rising, the growth of republicanism, the post-war anti-British campaign, the partition solution, civil war in the Free State. A constitutional restructuring which proposed `Home Rule' for a united Ireland within a United Kingdom which would pursue a common `British' foreign policy was no longer on offer.

Only in Northern Ireland was there a devolved parliament combined with modest representation at Westminster. Except in relation to what was now the foreign country to its south, the Stormont parliament had no interest in an `Ulster' foreign policy or realistic aspiration to influence UK foreign

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policy with a particular provincial perspective. It was only a rare and exceptional individual in the form of the Marquess of Londonderry who both had a role in Ulster politics and in mainstream British politics, including foreign policy. When he wrote Ourselves and Germany the `we' are the British not the men of Ulster. In the Free State, a Foreign Affairs apparatus had to be constructed and a foreign policy devised. Its central preoccupation was to escape from the British umbrella which still loomed large in relation both to the `treaty ports' and to economic issues. The new League of Nations provided a forum. Dublin was also in the van in seeking redefinition of the constitutional structure of the British Empire - of which it still remained a somewhat half-hearted part.

Of course, Irish activity alone would not have sufficed to bring about fresh constitutional statements within the British Empire. To greater or lesser degree, as is well-known, the dominions in the years after igig sought definition of their status. The First World War had a paradoxical character in terms of their own development. The display of imperial unity, so much welcomed by Grenfell in 1914, was only one part of the story. It is generally agreed, perhaps particularly in the case of Australia and New Zealand, that the experience of war strengthened `dominion nationalism' and the desire to achieve parity of status with the `mother country'. It was this desire which resulted in the definition engineered by Balfour at the 1926 Imperial Conference, subsequently codified in the 1931 Statute of Westminster. It did not represent a disavowal of `Britishness' as still a fundamental part of their own identity but it did express a firm desire for equality in an Empire /Commonwealth which remained `British' with the Crown as symbolic expression of unity.

The inter-war and then war-time relationship between British and the self- governing dominions was puzzling both to Americans and to Europeans. Were the dominions really `independent' or not? Equality of status was one thing, equality of power perhaps another? To what extent did the United Kingdom still `give a lead'? To what extent was a sense of being `kith and kin' sufficient to cause Australia or Canada, for example, to feel obliged to contemplate another European war? Was the United Kingdom still a powerful player in the Pacific? Such questions could be multiplied and received varying answers in the context of British `appeasement'. In the event, however, once again in 1939, with varying degrees of internal

enthusiasm and also with a considerable admixture of perceived national self-interest, a sense that the dominions were still in some sense British

proved sufficient to bring them to support the United Kingdom. In 1 954,, reflecting on his wartime speeches, Churchill acknowledged a remark by Attlee that the speeches expressed the will of the whole nation: `It was a

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nation and race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. '

As far as Great Britain itself was concerned, between them, the Irish `solution' on the one hand and the changing nature of the Empire/ Commonwealth on the other, brought to an end after 1922 a period of some forty years in which, as we have summarily seen, there had been

some attempt, though never very sustained nor coherent, to address simultaneously `devolution' within the United Kingdom (or `Federal Britain')

and a global `pan-Britannic' entity. The foreign policy of the new Irish Free State was certainly not designed to preserve the notion that `the British Isles' constituted some kind of reality which had to have a common political expression. Neutrality during the Second World War made the point very explicit and Dublin's increasingly marginal presence in the [still] British Commonwealth came to an end with the declaration of the republic in 1949. It remained the case, even so, that Britain continued to treat Irish immigrants as Commonwealth citizens and offer a special relationship to the Irish economy. Likewise, as has just been indicated, however resilient the links between Britain and the `old Dominions', it was evident that it would never find expression in the form of a `Commonwealth Federation'.

So, although the `Britishness' of Northern Ireland remained problematic, we can perhaps speak of a further period of roughly half a century after the early 1920S in which Britishness and British foreign policy ceased to be a complicated matter, or so it appeared. Although Scottish and Welsh liberals before 1914 had floated `Home Rule', they had done so without unanimity and urgency. The Great War arguably destroyed `Great Britain and Ireland' but it showed little sign of destabilizing `Great Britain' itself. Lloyd George had been the saviour of the British nation, taking pride in his Welshness, but

certainly not seeking to break up Britain. In peacemaking, he was arguably more sensitive than some of his colleagues to issues of ethnicity but if

anything that awareness made him more aware of the difficulties than of the glories behind the slogan `national self-determination'. Later, in 1922, no trace of `pan-Celticism' hindered his conclusion that Ireland had to be

partioned. Thereafter, of course, the Liberal Party was in decline and, arguably, with the rise of Labour, Britain was entering on an era of class- based politics. Although Keir Hardie, for example, amongst Labour's

pioneers, had favoured `Home Rule' the party was in practice centralist in

emphasis. It was necessary for the British working class to triumph and its

prominent non-English figures, from Ramsay MacDonald downwards, thought and acted in terms of the British nation.

In the event, Labour's inter-war grasp of power was brief, but even after the hammering of 1931 no significant Labour voice suggested that it was best to

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think of building Socialism in Scotland or Wales alone. The inter-war period did see the emergence of `national' parties in Scotland and Wales but they were marginal and had no significant electoral or parliamentary impact. In both countries, under the impact of the economic depression, there was a loss of confidence in the future - and a steady loss of population to England seeking work in `new' industries. Even so, in both countries, there were aspects of the political and economic scene which had a distinctive bearing on Britishness and foreign policy.

In Scotland, in particular, there was a good deal of debate about whether, qua nation, `Scotland' was `dying'. Even to contemplate the `break-up of Britain' seemed in these circumstances to be folly. Besides, there remained in the professional and commercial classes a strong commitment to the British Empire. It tended to be a Scottish conceit that Scotsmen ran the Empire, and a British Empire without Scotland-in-Britain was an impossibility. The major 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition appears in

retrospect to be a final expression of this sense of `ownership'. In Wales there was a different context: its parliamentary representation was overwhelmingly Labour, even in 1931 and 1935 (Scotland in the 193os had a clear non-Labour majority). A still powerful Nonconformity threw its weight behind the League of Nations and gave that body an esteem which it never reached in England. Voting in the 1935 Peace Ballot, for example, confirms this fact. The foundation of a Chair in International Politics at Aberystwyth

and the foundation in Cardiff of the Temple of Peace, underwritten by Lord Davies of Llandinam can be taken as indications of a modest attempt to establish a Welsh perspective on foreign policy. There was, of course, at this period still no territorial minister for Wales, no Welsh Office nor even a capital city.

Given a party system which operated on an all-British basis, it was inevitable in these circumstances that it was the preponderant voice of England (and Conservative England) which dominated British politics. Prime Minister Baldwin claimed distinction as an interpreter of England and it was under the title On England not On Britain that some of his popular occasional pieces were published. Amongst foreign secretaries in the 193os, however, it

could not be said that Lord Reading was typically English and Sir John Simon acquired whatever degree of Scottishness a boy from south of the border acquires from a schooling at Fettes College, Edinburgh, but Eden and Halifax were undoubtedly English with little knowledge of Britain outside England. In the 1920S the young Eden had once paid a visit to South Wales and his biographer records him as forming a very low opinion of the Welsh people. They seemed rather foreign and he did not hasten to come again.

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So, as much by accident as by design, British foreign policy was conducted by Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries who were English, represented English constituencies and were served by a Foreign Office and a Whitehall machine situated in a London which was simultaneously the capital of England and Britain. There was no compelling reason to probe any of the ambiguities disclosed by this state of affairs. Britain was a nation-state within the European state-system and the British people as a whole would sink or swim together in the `Battle of Britain' that lay ahead. Winston Churchill, it is apparent, was happier in speaking about `England' than about `Britain' but did his best to remember to use the right word. In practice, it did not seem to matter greatly which word he used. No more than in the First World War did Britain come apart at the seams between 1939 and 1945-

In 1945, Attlee's Labour Party governed Britain having won in England twice the number of seats obtained by the Conservatives. Only on one previous occasion, in 1929, and then only very narrowly, had Labour obtained more seats in England than the Conservatives. Since it also had majorities in Scotland and Wales the 1945 government can in this sense be said to be a truly British government. The leading ministers, however, were Englishmen who represented English constituencies. Different though their social and educational background was, both Attlee and Bevin looked at Britain through English eyes. So did Noel-Baker and Gordon Walker, Secretaries of State for Commonwealth Relations.

It could be said, however, with some though not complete justice, that there is no significance in drawing attention to such facts since neither the provenance within the British Isles of leading ministers nor their parliamentary constituencies had any bearing on the conduct of policy. Britain was Britain and that was all there was to be said. In igoi, for

example, so politically integrated had the country become that it had been thought entirely appropriate for Lord Rosebery, a former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, to unveil the statue of King Alfred in Winchester, though no one supposed that Rosebery was quintessentially Wessex man. So, half a century later, it still seemed virtually irrelevant to spend much time thinking about the past and the present of Britain.

There are various reasons why, for twenty or so years after 1945, that should be the case. A generation which believed itself to have won the war would not lightly cast `Britain' aside. Britain had fought on in lonely isolation and experience in the armed forces strengthened a sense of common Britishness: Britannia contra mundum. There had been no occupation or disruption of institutional continuity. There was no call to devise new constitutions and start afresh as had been the case in mainland Europe. It is true that during the war itself Federal Union had a temporary appeal as a possible solution

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at its conclusion to the problems of Europe and possibly of the world. Sir William Beveridge, for example, ended a pamphlet by suggesting that the future choice - where Britain and federalism was concerned - was between `Utopia and Hell'. In the Foreign Office itself the idea of a Federal Europe in which Britain would play a leading part seemed as close to hell as to utopia. Sir Orme Sargent sagely minuted that `the idea of the Federation of Europe can only make its appeal to public sentiment so long as it appears only as a vague Eldorado about the details of which we need not bother our heads at present'. And, after 194.5, such modest public sentiment as existed on the subject largely disappeared. Britain was a Great Power still, as was evidenced by being a permanent member of the new United Nations Security Council. In these circumstances, when there were so many urgent domestic issues of reconstruction and recovery to attend to, few stood back and asked themselves what meaning was to be attached to `Britishness'. It was not a topic to appeal to Bevin, Morrison or Eden. Their successors as Foreign Secretaries in the 1950s, Harold Macmillan and Selwyn Lloyd, had traces of non-English ancestry, as their names reveal, but it had no political significance for them personally and they represented English constituencies.

These were years, however, when the process of decolonization gathered momentum, beginning with the Indian sub-continent and then extending to other parts of the world where Britain ruled. The Labour government was most anxious that newly-independent India and Pakistan should both join

the Commonwealth and thus set a precedent for the future. It succeeded in this objective. Even if it seemed increasingly inappropriate to speak of the British Commonwealth, it was still hoped that the Commonwealth of Nations would continue to buttress the United Kingdom's position in the post-war world. The return of the Conservatives to power after 1951 did not signal a determination to hold on to colonial rule as a vital aspect of Britain's role in the world. It was Iain Macleod, a Scot (with an English

constituency) who gave additional impetus to decolonization after his

appointment as Colonial Secretary in 1959.

As time passed, however, whatever its merits, the Commonwealth could not be seen as a twentieth-century version of `Greater Britain'. The world of the `Old Dominions' was slowly but inexorably dissolving. The dominions had their own individual concerns in fashioning their own sense of identity. In a situation of changing immigration patterns, stress upon a common British past was no longer cohesive for them. The more it was stressed that the Commonwealth was `multi-racial' the more inappropriate it became for Britain to seem to seek to maintain a `club within a club' on the old terms. Although no precise date can be attached to this shift, and although it was manifestly still the case that there were valued aspects of a British inheritance still cherished in the `Old Dominions', an external projection of

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`Britishness' was coming to an end. Whatever Britishness was, it was something which now had to be located `at home'.

Two further developments complicated the picture. One was the arrival in Britain of populations from the West Indies, the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere who settled in urban Britain, and particularly in urban England. Clearly identifiable as `different' by colour and often by religion, immigrants

now formed, in some eyes, an `alien wedge' who had little understanding of what it meant to be British and could doubtfully ever be fully absorbed into `the British way of life'. In other eyes, however, their presence brought

welcome diversity and the prospect of `multi-cultural Britain' which would be

enlarging and enriching even if it required a redefinition of what it meant to be British. It was a debate, sometimes an acrimonious one, which was joined in the mid-ig6os.

The second development was the evidence of some kind of movement towards European integration from the formation of the Iron and Steel Community to the signature of the Treaty of Rome. There is no need to discuss here why the United Kingdom stood aloof from these developments or to express an opinion on the wisdom of the decisions taken in the i95os. Whatever the merits of the economic or other considerations involved, it does appear that British governments felt themselves under no psychological necessity to question `Britishness'. It still seemed a robust concept: everybody knew what it meant. Two all-British political parties still held stage. In 1966, for example, the Liberals only polled 9 per cent of the UK

vote and in Wales Plaid Cymru obtained only 4 per cent of the Welsh vote (and no seats) and the Scottish National Party only 5 per cent of the Scottish vote (no seats). In Wales, the Labour preponderance of seats remained massive. However, when Lord Home became Foreign Secretary in

ig6o, the Conservative and Labour share of the Scottish vote was still the same (47 per cent each). The Conservatives held 31 Scottish seats and Labour 38. In these circumstances, there seemed nothing untoward in the fact that when he disclaimed his peerage on becoming Prime Minister in

1963, Sir Alec Douglas-Home contested and won a Scottish seat. He had,

after all, been a Scottish MP before succeeding to his title. Even so, he was an English-educated Scottish aristocrat who cannot be said to have brought any strong Scottish perspective to his handling of foreign policy either as Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister.

In the Labour government of 1974 James Callaghan was appointed Foreign Secretary. Although not himself Welsh, he had represented a Cardiff

constituency for many years and long experience made him feel at home in Wales - at least -insofar as Cardiff (since 1956 officially designated as the capital) `belonged' to Wales. He was the first Foreign Secretary to sit in the

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House of Commons for a Welsh constituency. Two years later, he became Prime Minister. Three years later, his Labour government fell in the wake of the devolution fiasco. Labour had not succeeded in `restructuring' or `redefining' Britain. Indeed, in Wales as in Scotland, there were prominent Labour MPs who opposed devolution and were pleased to see its failure.

It is from the mid-i97os onwards that the internal/external incongruities of the `British question' began to reveal themselves. Internally, the post-war domination of the two parties began to crumble, at least in terms of the share of the vote. The Liberals/Liberal Democrats over the next couple of decades edged up towards around 20 per cent of the electorate and some (disproportionately small) increase in their small total of seats. `Devolution' occupied a prominent place in their platform. Even more striking was the growth in support for the SNP, to reach a peak in the second election of 1974 of ii seats and 31 per cent of the Scottish vote. Plaid Cymru never achieved such a share of the Welsh vote but its geographically-concentrated support enabled it to gain a small number of parliamentary seats. However, notwithstanding such visible indications of a new mood, the referendum votes on the devolution proposals of the Labour government in 1979 did not achieve the desired outcome. The constitutional status quo remained and, briefly, Conservative support increased or stabilised in both Scotland and Wales, only to turn down again in the ig8os. In 1987, while there were five times more Labour than Conservative MPs in Scotland, and three times more in Wales, in England there were 358 Conservative MPs to only 155 Labour. From the beginning of Conservative government in Britain in 1979, it had only been in England that there was a Conservative majority. And, with successive elections, and given the size of the Conservative majority in England, it was a situation which verged on becoming a permanent reality.

There had been occasions in the past (both elections of igio for example) when a British Liberal government had failed to gain a majority in England

-a situation which had occasioned some disgruntlement that a `Celtic' constitutional change (Irish Home Rule/revision of the powers of the House of Lords) was being imposed on the English electorate. However, it was the apparent permanence of the pattern after 1979 which contributed to non- English discontent. There was an additional paradox that the Conservative Party saw itself as the Unionist Party. Only fleetingly during the i97o government of Edward Heath had it appeared to contemplate devolution with equanimity. Conservative governments naturally had to try to draw upon their MPs from Scotland and Wales to fill the posts required in the Scottish Office and Welsh Office respectively. Two consequences flowed from this imperative. There was less scope for Scottish Conservative MPs to make their mark in major offices within British government, though it was not impossible. George Younger, for example, moved to be Secretary of

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State for Defence after a period as Secretary of State for Scotland. No Welsh Conservative MP filled a major post in the British government and indeed Prime Ministers had difficulty with the post of Secretary of State for Wales. In 1979, the Secretary of State sat for a Welsh constituency (Pembrokeshire, `Little England beyond Wales') but his successors were Englishmen and they sat for English constituencies. As individuals, they may have been men of distinction, but their evident lack of Welshness could not be other than a handicap in `representing Wales' in various contexts. The

second consequence of the paucity of non-English Conservative MPs was inevitably that British governments were increasingly perceived as being in

reality English governments - what might be described as a multiplier effect developed.

The result was that the party with the most explicit commitment to a certain concept of Britain was increasingly unable to service it adequately. The outcome of the 1992 General Election could be held to suggest, however, that this position, though not ideal, did not necessarily endanger `Britain'. John Major had campaigned vigorously `in defence of the Union' in Scotland and the Conservatives increased their share of the Scottish vote by

two percentage points (to 26 per cent) and gained one additional seat. In Wales, one percentage point was dropped and two seats were lost. It

continued to be on its English majority that the government relied for its

existence.

You may find this exposition illuminating but doubt its bearing either on the management or the content of British foreign policy. It would no doubt be

unconvincing to suppose that there was a distinctively Scottish perspective on ASEAN or a Welsh perspective on NAFTA but it is at least arguable that the `British crisis', now extending over a quarter of a century, is inextricably bound up with the `Britain and Europe' debate over the same period. Since the 1975 referendum on British membership of the European Economic Community, a firmer commitment to that membership has been discernible in Scotland and Wales, as opposed to England. Both the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru have warmed to the notion of `independence in Europe' as an objective. The role played by Dublin in Community affairs, and the benefits the Irish Republic has been perceived to gain, have been observed with increasing envy in Edinburgh and Cardiff. Pressure has grown for both the Scottish and Welsh Offices, and non- governmental bodies in both countries, to have their own channels of communication direct to `Brussels' and, in effect, to conduct an embryonic mini foreign policy. Secretaries of State have, on the whole, been chary of such developments but have not been entirely able to resist them. Influential opinion in Scotland and Wales has become well-informed on the nature of federal government in Germany, on the changes brought about

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during the decade of `regionalization' in France after 1982, on regional government in Spain and has become assertive. After 1983, during its long years in opposition, the Labour Party swung towards support for the European Community at the same time as it renewed, with greater unanimity, its commitment to some form of political devolution for Scotland and Wales.

It is the outcome of the 1997 General Election which brings these developments into sharp focus and may require us to think about Britishness and British foreign policy in a new and uncomfortable way. British government seems certain to move into uncharted waters and paradoxes, not to say contradictions, may abound. Some of them were already present in the final phase of Conservative government. Malcolm Rifkind was the first Foreign Secretary to have previously been Secretary of State for Scotland. With this background and as an Edinburgh MP and Scottish lawyer, he experienced in his own person, dare one say, some of the tensions which have just been alluded to as he sought to express a British policy towards Europe which reflected the mindset of his English Cabinet

colleagues. No other British Foreign Secretary has had to operate amidst such complexity. His defeat in the general election in 1997 and the complete elimination of the Conservative Party in Scotland from representation at Westminster would suggest that an era has come to an end. No `British' foreign secretary committed to the negative approach to European integration adopted by the Conservative Party or at least some sections of it, could be other than an English MP. The Conservative Party has, of course, also been eliminated from Welsh representation. In parliamentary terms, the most British party has become entirely English.

If a British Labour government had been formed without a majority in England or with only a small majority in England, then European policy could have run the risk of pinning up against a burgeoning English

nationalism. It is perhaps worth noting in parenthesis that the Referendum Party polled less well in Scotland and Wales than in England - its posed alternative - `Westminster or Brussels' - struck little chord with substantial sections of the electorate bent on prising power from Westminster, to greater or lesser degree, to Edinburgh and Cardiff. However, the scale of the Labour victory, with its clear English majority, means that whatever difficulties may be encountered in executing a European policy it will not be

one `forced' on the English by `Celts' as might otherwise have been the case. British foreign policy will reflect a British perspective on Europe in a way that could not happen between 1979 and 1992. Even so, some difficulties can be foreseen. It so happens that the new Foreign Secretary is also a Scot also representing a Scottish constituency (as are his colleagues the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Defence).

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However, one supposes that in Scotland there will also be a Parliament. Its brief, with or without tax-raising powers, will not extend to foreign policy. It will still be to the Westminster Parliament that this British Foreign Secretary (who happens to be a Scot) will be responsible. It so happens too that Mr Douglas Henderson is another Scot, though representing an English constituency.

No one can tell, however, how this scenario will play in practice. Particularly in regard to Europe is it in fact possible to draw a clear line between domestic and foreign policy? We know how foreign policy evolves in federal states and our own experience as a country hitherto has been of its

evolution in a unitary state, but how it evolves in a constitutional system which appears to be likely to be neither the one nor completely the other is

problematic. Speaking for `Britain' is likely to become much more complicated. Will not politicians in Edinburgh and perhaps also in Cardiff in due course push for some kind of `foreign policy' at least where Europe is

concerned? If new Labour does indeed mean new Britain then it is likely that new channels of communication in the formulation of foreign policy will also be necessary. It is also possible to believe, however, that the new constitutional structure which is likely to be put in place over the next couple of years will not be stable. It is a half-way house which cannot possibly endure and only postpones the final break-up of Britain into its

constituent countries -a development which would produce the final erosion of its surviving attributes of world status.

To enter into these realms, however, is something which even the most contemporary of contemporary historians ought not to do. This lecture has

not been designed to tell `us' where `we' should be going but it will have

served its purpose if it contributes to explaining why we British are where we are, both with our Britishness and with our foreign policy.

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PROFESSOR KEITH ROBBINS

Professor Robbins is currently Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Lampeter and Senior Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales. He has previously held Chairs of Modern History at the University College of North Wales at Bangor, and the University of Glasgow. His most recent publications include: History, Religion and Identity in Modern British History (1993); Politicians, Diplomacy and War in Modern British History (1994); and A Bibliography of British Histo y, 1914-1989 (1996). He has just completed two further studies: Great Britain; Institutions, Identities and the Idea of Britishness which will be published this year, and World History Since 1945 to be published by Oxford University Press in 1998.

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DOCUMENTS ON BRITISH POLICY OVERSEAS

This collection of documents from the archives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is published by authorisation of Her Majesty's Government. The Editors have been accorded the customary freedom in the selection and arrangement of documents.

SERIES 1 (1945-1950) Published Volume I The Conference at Potsdam, July-August 11945

Volume II Conferences and Conversations 1945: London, Washington and Moscow

Volume III Britain and America: Negotiation of the United States Loan, August December 1945

Volume IV Britain and America: Atomic Energy, Bases and Food, December 1945 JuY 1946

Volume V Germany and Western Europe, August- December 1945

Volume VI Eastern Europe, August i945 April 1946

Volume VII The United Nations: Iran, Cold War and World Organisation, January i 946 January 1947

SERIES II (x950- i955) Published Volume I The Schuman Plan, the Council of Europe and

- Western European Integration, May 1950-

HISTORIANS

OCCASIONAL PAPERS

No. 2 Meeting of Editors of Diplomatic Documents

Tsarisrn to Stalinism

No. 7 y Changes in British and Russian Records Policy

No. 8