Beyond Britain
Foreign policy would prove to be one of Greenwood’s more mixed legacies in government and one of the areas upon which Maudling’s Conservative Party was able to lay popular and effective criticism.
Upon coming to power in 1964, Greenwood appointed Michael Stewart as Foreign Secretary and Denis Healey as Defence Minister. The pair, both right-wingers within the party and opposed to quite a few of Greenwood’s “peacenik” ideals, appeared frequently on British televisions throughout the 1960s as they announced military, material and political retreats from Britain’s former role as “policeman of the world”. The first instance of retreat was in the situation of the Aden Insurgency. The Labour government called for an immediate ceasefire and sent the new Colonial Secretary, James Callaghan, to treat with the leaders of the left-wing insurgency against the Federation of South Arabia. The official government policy was to seek a peace accord and accommodate the interests of the socialist rebels into the state based on “sound principles of democracy and respect for human rights”. The loftiness of this ideal was, however, rather undermined by the fact that Callaghan had been briefed by the Prime Minister to work out a strategy of handing over control of South Arabia to the Aden Trade Union Congress leader, Abdullah al Asnag, at the same time as Britain evacuated its bases in the colony. Callaghan was displeased at the government’s real intentions towards the South Arabian people, but found himself dropping his protestations once he met Asnag. The two men bonded, their trade unionism and respective patriotisms obviously aiding this, and Callaghan was determined to see Asnag in power so as to keep the Marxist “National Liberation Front” from seizing power as the British abandoned the emirs of the Federation. The old polity of South Arabia was suspended and a new “Union of South Arabia” was created in 1965 under the leadership of Abdullah al Asnag, who was made President of the Union in the free elections of that year. Parts of the NLF joined Asnag’s government, but the more doctrinaire Marxists continued to push for revolution. The various minor monarchs of South Arabia either fled the new country or stayed and fought personal insurgencies to retake power.
Asnag was an organiser, however, and these problems were effectively staved off by concessions to the old emirs and to the Marxists in a balancing act that would keep him in power for years to come. Greenwood’s retreat appeared to be working, though the Conservative Party and their allies in print media lambasted the contraction of British power and Callaghan’s “spineless betrayal” of the South Arabian people.
At the same time, Britain was dealing with the tense situation in Rhodesia. The white minority government of Southern Rhodesia had felt prepared for independence since the beginning of the decade and yet successive governments were unwilling to give independence due to Rhodesia’s “middle course between apartheid and black nationalist government”. Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, was headed towards a unilateral declaration of independence if consultation with the Greenwood government brought Rhodesia no closer to full sovereignty. The firm statement of the British against the possibility of Rhodesia declaring independence without the consent of the majority of the Rhodesian people, including threats of severing all political and economic ties with the southern African colony, led Smith to take the initiative and consult the country in a referendum for independence under the 1961 constitution on the 15th November 1964. “Yes” to independence won 90% of the vote and Smith promptly wrote to Greenwood asking him to send a representative, preferably the Colonial Secretary, to Salisbury, Rhodesia for talks on a new independence settlement. Greenwood resisted at first, asking Smith to come to London due to the engagement of James Callaghan in Aden. Only in January 1965, during Winston Churchill’s funeral, did Greenwood and Smith finally agree to meet.
Greenwood laid out, plainly and simply, the fact that he needed Smith’s government to agree to the principle of majority rule in Rhodesia. There would be no compromise on this issue, especially considering that Greenwood had been a vocal campaigner against apartheid in South Africa for decades. The dialogue created by the January talks broke down once again when Smith refused to commit his cabinet to agreeing to majority rule, even with the caveat that no majority (Rhodesian blacks) could force its will upon a minority (Rhodesian whites). Greenwood refused to budge on the issue and, in September 1965, he sent Callaghan to Salisbury to speak directly to the Rhodesian government and ask them for understanding on the racial issue. The situation had deteriorated so far that black nationalist guerrillas were beginning to make their presence felt in the country and a state of emergency was declared in October 1965 – the first step towards the UDI. The next month, with the country gripped by fears of an African Marxist rebellion, the Rhodesian government crafted a declaration of independence with a new constitution. On the 11th November 1965, Rhodesia became its own nation under the sovereignty of the “Rhodesian Crown” (Elizabeth II became “Queen of Rhodesia”) and the executive power of Ian Smith. The reaction in London was one of outrage, which then led to harsh economic sanctions being placed upon the insurgent white settler state and a call for international condemnation of the rogue Smith government. America was slow to support the sanctions, given the fact that Britain was seemingly moving away from American influence under the anti-imperialist Labour government. But, with Greenwood’s sanctions supported by the United Nations in 1966 and enforced by the international body, no Western nation with pretences towards democracy and civil rights could give even the slightest measure of support to the independent Rhodesians.
However, America’s relationship with Britain was changing radically for the first time since the Second World War.
Lyndon B. Johnson, the successor to JFK, found Britain’s new direction to be a frustrating display of weakness. Britain’s cuts to defence expenditure, mandated by Barbara Castle (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and implemented by Denis Healey, particularly rankled the “leader of the free world” as he proposed to trade economic aid for military and political support in Vietnam. His escalation of the war in Indochina was, in principle, anathema to Greenwood and his allies in cabinet. Britain’s refusal to meet its commitments east of Aden and severe cuts to its defence budget made the option of joining in America’s war in Vietnam practically impossible even if Greenwood’s party and the nation as a whole were opposed to intervention in Southeast Asia. But, this wasn’t the only worry for the Johnson Administration’s foreign and defence policies.
Polaris was endangered by Greenwood’s Labour Party, which had every intention of scrapping it since Greenwood had Gaitskell’s overturning of the Scarborough vote overturned once more to commit the party to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Of all the legacies of the Greenwood government, this was the one that caused such a distinct split between the Left and Right of the Labour Party. Appointing Michael Foot, the grey-haired eminence of the unilateralist Left, as Minister of Disarmament in 1964 signalled to the world that Britain was on the verge of becoming nuclear-free. 270 million pounds had been spent on Polaris by the time of the 1964 general election and there was reluctance amongst quite a few Labour MPs to scrap it altogether, with the Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary trying to convince Greenwood of its benefits in cabinet whilst putting questions from the Americans regarding the continued development of the Polaris project.
Further development of Polaris would be halted in the summer of 1965, with a Parliamentary vote on the proposal to scrap it entirely expected to be held by 1967. These predictions would come true in June 1967, when the scrapping of Polaris was passed by the House of Commons after a series of amendments and compromises between all parties involved led to the passing of a watered-down disarmament agreement. Polaris would be scrapped within eight years, with the materials and facilities for nuclear proliferation retained by the Ministry of Defence and the remaining funds reallocated to conventional forces.
Britain, by the end of 1967, was becoming a true island nation. Although far from becoming part of the Non-Aligned Movement, Britain was on the verge of completely losing its supposed “special relationship” with the USA for the first time since the war. Imperilled by Greenwood’s anti-imperialism and “suspect” socialist domestic policy, America’s ties to Britain had grown weaker with each passing year. With elections coming up in 1968 for both nations, the world’s main bloc against the Soviet Union was at a crucial juncture in the history of the Cold War.
