Churchill defeats Attlee - How much more Marshal Plan Aid does the UK receive?

Have read the US initially held back on loaning the UK Marshall Plan aid as result of Attlee being elected, with the UK in desperation sending Churchill over to plead the UK's case and coming back with a few Billion. Only for the Attlee government to subsequently sit on the Billions for months, while the exchange rate changed and promptly lost half its value.

How much more Marshall Plan aid would the UK have potentially received had Churchill been elected instead of Attlee? Would it have been enough for the UK to recover from the war much quicker compared to OTL?
 
Idk how Churchill could win the 45 election, even without the gestapo stuff Atlee won for a reason. Churchill was terrible at domestic related affairs.
 
It is not about whether Churchill was capable of winning the election or not, the issue of whether the UK would have received more Marshall Plan aid and thus recovered from the war quicker had Churchill managed to defeat Attlee compared to the OTL.
 
I don’t think the UK would have recovered quicker under Churchill unless there was a huge amount more of aid from the US. He just wasn’t that good on economic affairs
 
I’m don’t think Churchill could beat Attlee in 45. Britain had been governed for 14 years at that point by a Conservative government one that many blamed for the failure to deal with the depression which was still fresh in the memories of many. The conservatives were also blamed for allowing Germany to get too strong and associated with appeasement. These ‘guilty men’ tainted the image of the party and were blamed for no rearming Britain sooner and helped contribute to the parties defeat. The British people had also just been through 5 years of war and wanted peace a better life which Attlee and Labour offered by accepting the Beveridge report and that Churchill did not by stating reforms must wait till after the war. The services men returning home wanted homes and healthcare and Labour offered that. Churchill calling Labour the Gestapo and saying that he wouldn’t accept this Beveridge didn’t win him any friends there. This combination of distrust of the Conservatives due to their pre war activities and Churchill’s domestic blunders made Labour all but assured of victory. You would need a POD before the war to stop the Labour winning in 1945 imo.
But if you’re interested how a Conservative government would deal with the Marshall aid post war. I don’t think they would have used it to build the welfare state in the Same way Labour do for better or for worse. This means it could either go into the economy or the forces imo. I’m not sure which one as Churchill isn’t exactly known for his economic skills and was an ardent imperialist so it’s likely some could go to towards that. I think Churchill would have got a larger loan though due to pre existing relationship with the USA even though Truman was fairly new still.
 
Have read the US initially held back on loaning the UK Marshall Plan aid as result of Attlee being elected, with the UK in desperation sending Churchill over to plead the UK's case and coming back with a few Billion. Only for the Attlee government to subsequently sit on the Billions for months, while the exchange rate changed and promptly lost half its value.

How much more Marshall Plan aid would the UK have potentially received had Churchill been elected instead of Attlee? Would it have been enough for the UK to recover from the war much quicker compared to OTL?

Actually, what is striking is the US willingness to give aid to a government determined on nationalizations:

"Not least, a key article of the original draft Agreement required Britain to 'undertake' all policies that would ensure the efficient and practical use of its economic resources, and it was felt that this might provide US policymakers with sufficient grounds to obstruct the Government's nationalization plans. However, after British negotiators raised objections to this part of the Agreement it was watered down so that the UK would only need to use its 'best endeavours' to achieve these ends.

"Similarly, a clause within the same article which obliged the UK to balance its Governmental budget was greatly softened by an interpretative minute after protests that this might lead to restrictions being placed on Labour's spending plans. The minute, added to the end of the Agreement, stated that the UK's budget need only be balanced in the long run. In effect, this caveat was left so ill defined that the purpose of the original sentence was rendered almost meaningless and British policymakers were able to interpret for themselves a favourable definition of the phrase 'long run'.

"These instances helped to set an important precedent that would resonate throughout the history of the Marshall Plan. They indicated not only the determination of Attlee's government to resist any possibility that the conditions of Marshall Aid might inhibit their attempts to reconstruct the UK along socialist lines, but also the willingness of American negotiators to acknowledge and act upon these concerns. The Economist magazine grasped this point when it reported that:
... whatever suggestions of American
dictation or even intrusion may have
been contained in earlier drafts have
been swept away [and that] ... the
Americans have clearly gone almost
all the way to meet legitimate British
objections.

"...The understanding shown by the London Mission and the ECA generally towards the British government was a central theme of the Marshall Plan story in the UK. There were obvious diplomatic reasons for the US to tread carefully in all negotiations with its closest ally as the strategic usefulness of the Commonwealth ensured that the UK continued to be a friend worth having. Furthermore, with the emergence of the Eastern Bloc of Soviet satellite states, Attlee's democratically elected government represented the acceptable face of socialism and a bastion from which the US could seek to thwart the growth of Communism in the rest of Europe. It would have been imprudent, therefore, for the US to jeopardize friendly relations with the UK by imposing its will with the same forcefulness that was brought to bear elsewhere.

"Additionally, the State Department repeatedly declared, in private as well as in public, that it was not the business of the US to become embroiled in political and economic decisions taken by the UK. Though this outlook, which was echoed by the ECA, was informed by strategic reasons it also reflected a genuinely held belief that democratically elected governments, where the leadership was considered to be responsible, should be left, to the largest possible extent, to guide national policy as they saw fit. While many were not deemed sufficiently dependable, Attlee's government consistently demonstrated that they were prepared to put the needs of reconstruction ahead of other priorities. For example, the austerity and wage restraint imposed by Labour to safeguard the UK's limited dollar reserves and hold down inflation were applauded in the US and such parsimony was contrasted favourably with the perceived excesses of European neighbours. Even the strident free-marketer Republican Senator, Robert Taft, was said to have acknowledged that the record of Attlee's government permitted the conclusion that socialism was not necessarily inefficient.

"Clearly the ECA did not inherently view socialism as an insurmountable obstacle to recovery. On the contrary, rather than an uncompromising antipathy towards Labour's polices, there was a general recognition within the ECA and among other key US policymakers that Labour's methods could be successful, and on occasion they were even deemed entirely appropriate.

"In April 1951, Harold Wilson, the President of the Board of Trade, and Nye Bevan resigned from the Cabinet protesting that the US was dictating the Government's budgetary policy as it sought European rearmament following the outbreak of the Korean War. But writing in the leftwing Tribune, free from the ties of collective ministerial responsibility, Wilson did not accuse the US of such strong-arm tactics when it came to the European Recovery Programme. In fact, Wilson stated that there had been no strings attached to Labour's receipt of Marshall Aid.

"To a large extent, Labour had benefited from the willingness of the United States to respect the independence of its closest and most important ally. There was also an acceptance among senior US officials and politicians that it was the UK, under responsible stewardship, that was in the best position to decide for itself what its own social and economic organization should be, and that socialist policies, far from necessarily hindering reconstruction, could complement and further the aims of the Marshall Plan. With this level of understanding in mind, it is difficult to disagree with the opinion of E.A. Berthoud, an official within the Foreign Office, that 'What the United States did was really unparalleled--so much contribution with so few conditions.' "

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/British+socialism+and+the+Marshall+Plan:+James+Williamson,+who+was...-a0174639392

Were some conservative Republicans in Congress leery of helping a Socialist Government? Yes. Did they represent the position of the Truman administration? No. No doubt the US intended the Marshall Plan to be for its own benefit as well as that of Europe. And no doubt the British Labour Government could find some grounds for dissatisfaction--but so could, for example, the Christian Democratic government of Italy.

In short, your whole assumption that the US government didn't want to help Britain because Attlee rather than Churchill won does not seem to be supported by the evidence. (Truman had no particular antipathy toward democratic socialist regimes if they took the US side in the Cold War. After all, Truman himself and his "Fair Deal" policies were often derided as "socialistic" by Republicans.)
 
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But if you’re interested how a Conservative government would deal with the Marshall aid post war. I don’t think they would have used it to build the welfare state in the Same way Labour do for better or for worse. This means it could either go into the economy or the forces imo. I’m not sure which one as Churchill isn’t exactly known for his economic skills and was an ardent imperialist so it’s likely some could go to towards that. I think Churchill would have got a larger loan though due to pre existing relationship with the USA even though Truman was fairly new still.

This is what am specifically interested in exploring.

The Attlee government managed to wipe out half of the value from the few Billion they were able to get from the US thanks to Churchill's pleading.

A post-war Conservative government under Churchill / etc could have gotten a significantly higher amount of Marshall Plan aid, which could have helped the UK recover from WW2 quicker compared to OTL and even gone towards various unrealised infrastructure projects such as Abercrombie's Greater London Plan.
 
This is what am specifically interested in exploring.

The Attlee government managed to wipe out half of the value from the few Billion they were able to get from the US thanks to Churchill's pleading.

Could you please state your source for the business about "Churchill's pleading"? Do you mean his support for the American loan in 1946? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-American_loan That was something quite apart from the Marshall Plan which came years later. And anyway, Churchill's influence was not decisive in bringing about the loan--though he did lobby his friend Bernard Baruch not to testify against it. https://books.google.com/books?id=AgK6BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA704 The loan's problems in 1946 were with Congress, not with the administration. (One of the problems was Congressional dissatisfaction with British policy in Palestine.)

AFAIK, after 1946 Churchill did not again visit the US until 1949, when Marshall Plan aid to Britain and other countries had already been agreed on. And neither in 1946 nor 1949 was Churchill "sent" to the US by Attlee to "plead" with US policy makers.
 
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The same

Marshall aid was not given to countries in return for how much they agreed with the US, and it was not given on a bilateral basis. A common plan was drawn up by the recipients (to prevent duplication and ensure coordination) and the US then provided the dollars needed to cover the ensuing deficit. The UK received the largest amount of assistance, about a quarter of the total. So the only way the UK would be provided more assistance is if it managed to get the US to sign off on a plan that gave the UK a larger deficit with the US. If the UK were not to introduce the NHS or the welfare state then if this results in a smaller trade deficit (plausible but definitely not certain) then the UK would receive less assistance not more.

As for the idea that Attlee government sat on the billions while the exchange rate plummeted, this is just not true, look at the data. The Attlee government basically spent most of the dollar loan of 1946 trying to defend the exchange rate and this wasn't enough. The exchange rate plummeted because during the war the UK had paid countries in the sterling area in £s for goods and sevices (so sterling area foreign countries were sitting on a cash pile of about £3.5bn by the end of the war). The creditor countries (India, Egypt, etc) wanted to spend it but the recovering British economy was unable to provide sufficient goods so they wanted to change the £s into $s and buy from America (who could provide enough actual goods). As the US urged, the obvious thing for the UK to do was to default on the debts, but the creditors were generally very low income countries that Britain wanted to maintain good relations with, so that was out. Alternatives included blocking the creditors from spending the money outside the UK (tried but lead to continual friction and impeded trade more generally by complicating the payment system) or devaluing the currency, which was what happened in the end. If you add together the US loan and Marshall aid, you only get to around $6.5bn or £1.5bn, nowhere near enough to cover the sterling balances.
 
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I'd just like to repeat the earlier sentiment - Churchill could not beat Attlee in 1945.

To get a Conservative victory, you need a much quicker and more favourable War - but in that scenario, you wouldn't need Marshall Plan aid.
 
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