Bevin assassinated

According to an August 1946 MI5 document declassified in 2003, the Stern Gang had trained people to send to London and assassinate the anti-Zionist British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin. The operation was called off because it was decided to focus on Palestine. WI it had been carried through successfully?
 
According to an August 1946 MI5 document declassified in 2003, the Stern Gang had trained people to send to London and assassinate the anti-Zionist British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin. The operation was called off because it was decided to focus on Palestine. WI it had been carried through successfully?

Mmm, British Foreign Policy is going to be changed a great deal without Bevin, especially over the issue of a Jewish Homeland, Bevin was defiantly not an anti-Semite, but much he did was responsible for the current situation we have in the region today. I'm unsure what would happen to Palestine, you would perhaps have a proper two-state solution agreed to by whoever replaces him (most likely Cripps) if one butterflies away the Arab-Israeli War.

In addition, because Bevin was also the leading voice behind the British atomic bomb project, we may not see a British controlled nuclear project, it may instead be leased from the Americans if at all. That would lessen some of the pressure on the Treasury during the post-war period, maybe even resulting in a more powerful Royal Navy to compensate for the reduced military prestige (something I would not be complaining about).
 
Didn't the Stern Gang include many of Israel's future bigwigs? I'd say a few MI6 hitmen we be roving Tel Aviv in 1945.

I think some of the biggest butterflies will be back in Britain. The Atomic Bomb project as mentioned for one, but if Cripps goes to the Foreign Office god knows how Britain's response to Soviets will change. One good however is butterflies will certainly save Hugh Dalton's career as Chancellor and he wont implement even harsher rationing as Cripps did (he was something of a bureaucratic sadist) which will give Labour a better chance in the 1950 elections, again butterflying away the Westminster system cock-up of 1951. After that I dare say the 1950s may be a Labour decade, much of Eden and SuperMac's support came from economic improvements built on Labour's post-war groundwork, and with Gaitskell at the Exchequer instead of Butler there wont be a great deal of change, save a few private building firms losing out to councils for house construction.

What will happen with Suez is intriguing in such a climate. Post-War Labour, partly due to the more obvious Welfare programmes and future pacifist trends in the Party seem to be forgotten as very pro-military, with the right of the party all for Imperial Retrenchment (Attlee had quite a few military bases built in Kenya in the late 40s, and Im assuming he intended British troops to be staying). At the same time Bevin was central to this current of thought, his fight for the atomic bomb the obvious example.

Then you have Europe. Labour believed in a large, conventional European military force as the prime bulwark to the Soviet
 
But at the time the Labour Party was largely against any further integration into a European Community, and I'm pretty sure that they were opposed to Eden's campaign for the European Defence Community.
 
Eden's campaign for the EDC? Eden's government refused to enter any such plan I believe.

Again this is speculation because the original proposal for a common European defence force was set out in 1950 by Rene Pleven, and Attlee's government was pretty busy at the time prior to their defeat in 1951, however Bevin as Foriegn Secretary and Labour's general strategy on Europe leans towards at least in principle supporting it. Sure I can't see Labour in 1950 being anymore pro a Common Market than in the 1970s but an EDC was something Bevinites looked to, partly because the idea of long-term American garrisons seemed fanicful at the time.

Also I'm not totally sure on the EDC but Eden worked quite hard to foil the proto-EU, desperately offering the Belgians and others cushy trade deals simply to not to give France an economic advantage, while at the same time clinging to the fading dreams of a Commonwealth trade area, which gave Gaullists plenty of ammunition and reason to block British involvement in the European Community in 1960.

How much a Labour Government would have changed this is debateable as you said the economic elements might have put them off, however from my reading Attlee in the mid-1950s would have pushed for an EDC, as the Pleven Plan did intrigue his government who were in their middle-road social democratic way fearful of Russian aggression and less than keen on American domination.

Also had Britain pushed for the Pleven Plan, and presented Truman/Eisenhower with a viable European Defence Force (remembering into the 1950s Britain was giving by far the largest ground troop contingent in Germany) NATO may never have come about at least in OTL's conception, which was the reason the 1954 amended Plan never passed the French Parliament.
 
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According to Eden's memoirs (The Eden Memoirs: Full Circle) he seemed quite in favour of it but was hampered by the French stalling and changing their minds all the time as governments in Paris came and went. However Eden had his bets hedged and always kept the possibility of NATO ongoing should the EDC fail (which it inevitabily did) and worked with the US again.
 
Hugh Dalton had expected to be appointed Foreign Secretary when Attlee became Prime Minister in July 1945. He had been a junior minister at the Foreign Office in the 1929-1931 Labour government. So if Bevin was assassinated in August 1946, Dalton becoming Foreign Secretary is very plausible, with Cripps going to the Exchequer.
 
Dalton at the FO? Well Britain wont be staying quiet over West German rearmament thats for sure.

And the idea of Cripps getting even more time at the Exchequer makes me want to shout Oy Vay
 
Eden's campaign for the EDC? Eden's government refused to enter any such plan I believe.

The Tories made some very, very pro-European noises in the 1945-1951 period, and generally consistently criticised Labour when it passed up on opportunities for integration. Once in government, however, they followed more or less the same path, and there’s little reason to believe either party approached the issue in anything other than a vague spirit of political opportunism up to Suez, after which it became more of a serious issue. Eden, unsurprisingly enough, went extremely pro-European post-Suez, after having being a dedicated obstructionist in government; the only genuinely pro-European politician (by the standards of the day) of any stature, from either party that I can think of in the period is probably David Maxwell-Fyfe. Out of the Conservative ‘big four’ of the 50s (Eden, Churchill, Butler and Macmillan) Macmillan was probably the most inherently favourable to some form of integration, but considering the attitudes of the others, that is not saying a great deal.

I am not entirely sure what it is that Lord Brisbane is referring to, as if the failure of the EDC can be laid at any individual door, Eden’s would be one of the prime candidates. (Political memoirs and autobiographies are, in any case, merely a branch of literary fiction, so I wouldn‘t set too much store on them)

pipsme is right in that Dalton expected to get the foreign office in 1945 (indeed, Atlee expected to appoint him to that role and to send Bevin to the treasury until very late in the game) and he had the background, (both political and personal) so he would be the obvious candidate should a vacancy come up. I wouldn’t say it was a dead cert, though - Morrison going to the FO several years earlier than OTL is a possibility. As Jape suggests, Dalton was riotously anti-German, so if he does get it expect Britain to be even more hostile to European integration than OTL. Morrison was IIRC more open minded on it, but suffered from a lack of imagination; his general judgement could hardly be considered worse than Dalton’s, though, who was politically pretty cack-handed.

There are all sorts of butterflies here - what happens to India without Cripps? (Assuming he gets saddled down with a big job) Does Atlee suffer from more political troubles with Cripps and Dalton in attendance and without Bevin to shield “our Clem”? (My instinct would be that Atlee would have big problems on his hands here - Cripps dabbled in a slightly bizarre attempt to depose him in OTL, but it didn‘t come off because Bevin refused to participate; Dalton was another mischief-maker who worked quite well with C in this regard in this period, despite being previously one of his staunchest critics) Also, I think people are underestimating the fact that Palestine will jump from being a relatively minor issue to being high on the radar - people will demand action, and very tough action at that - after an assassination like this, and British involvement - at least political involvement - will probably be deeper. Not my area of expertise, though, but I could see a significant impact there. I can't see the same exasperated abandonment of the mandate of OTL.

One thing I forgot - you might also have Chuter-Ede resigning here to take the flak for the security breach. In which case, two vacanacies, which makes things very interesting.
 
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