Would the technology be available? I would not think so.
https://petrowiki.org/History_of_offshore_drilling_units
But Britain could have plenty of access to oil if it had played its cards right in the Middle East.
Would the technology be available? I would not think so.
https://petrowiki.org/History_of_offshore_drilling_units
But Britain could have plenty of access to oil if it had played its cards right in the Middle East.
The Korean War derailed the UK economy. If this had not happened, then the UK’s subsequent economic performance would have been much better.
Potentially this could be a huge change, though I'm not sure how you'd achieve it...
Could it be as simple as no Suez crisis or Britain winning the Suez crisis?
But if it can be done, then more major oil producers would remain in the sterling denominated trade zone. This leads to less dollar domination, and sterling maintains itself as only slightly junior to the US dollar as a hard currency. This means British dollar shortages are much less severe, as Britain can basically borrow money from its own banks to buy as much oil as it wants while also having more of an export market in the middle east.
Retaining her position in the middle east was also key to Britain's strategy to retain her empire, so we may see a much closer-knit Commonwealth in TTL (since Britain has more economic surplus to invest in the empire and Dominions and former colonies would want to remain in the sterling zone in order to have cheaper access to oil imports). Of course, that strategy may still fail elsewhere.
Howso? I've not heard of this before and you've made me curious.
fasquardon
Since I am coming at this from a vastly different departure and one earlier in time, a cold peace Great War, I can only add a tangential alternative, but bear with me. Post-Great War the leadership and financial heads all could not see a world without gold, but the biggest hurdle was that the USA held vastly more gold than did the other economic powers and the European economy as badly unbalanced but the attempt at sinking the German economy and fragmenting that of A-H. The USA had to go on an import binge and settle in gold to return enough parity that the gold standard could return to functional, otherwise we get the Dollar as king currency when the USA sterilizes the gold, simply keeping gold a myth as exchange. Into this stood the Sterling zone, letting that collapse may have done more to subjugate the British to the USA than anything else. I have no convincing way to truly head off the economic doldrums that I think were structurally embedded post-war or keep Britain and the City from diving into gold, that toxic love affair seems destined to cripple the British economy alongside that of the USA through the 1930s. However, in my own ATL the Depression is not as severe or as global gold flows are slightly better, the British begin to lean back on Sterling as the alternative to gold (which both France and the USA proved was too sticky to rely upon as a medium of exchange), and there is focus on inter Empire trade in the face of a trade barrier paradigm. Although I am trending away from anything as destructive as WW2 I think there are still PODs that later to steer the British at the Sterling zone. The hurdle is that the USA post-wW2 possessed so much gold that it could impose the gold standard and thereby make the Dollar as good as gold. I have no good answers for breaking that monopoly.
But in tinkering with the end of war and the fate of the Ottomans I can still see the British getting a stake in the middle eastern oil, first Iraqi fields and later the gulf oil. For me it puts the British on a track more akin to the USA, Sterling is a serious trading currency, n oil trading currency, a medium of exchange and leveraging financial activity back into the City. With Sterling stronger the Commonwealth remains more coherent and there is some skim to get wealth back to the UK. The USA oil majors still want in and have the strong Dollar to back them, the USA has the wealth to develop oil on the scale we saw, perhaps in an ATL like mine oil is retarded as not just the investments are less but the political division is deeper, competing national (i.e. great power) interests slow the pace as we saw occur over the Iraqi oil and the German railway to tap it. What is needed here is a more visionary set that sees India as no longer the center piece of the Empire but instead the Arabian Gulf and redirect East of Suez to "West of India." That is what I am toying with, a bigger British footprint in the middle east, a drawback from the far east to there, some abandonment in Africa and elsewhere, but a British double down on retaining its position in the emerging global oil race. For this discussion it might take a retrenching USA post-war to lean more on the British to secure the middle east, that seemed to be the American position, so there might lie some fertile ground to break the British free.
As an aside, does anyone have a good inventory of BOAC and BEA aircraft fleets roughly 1950s to 1960s? Bonus if someone has an idea how Imperial might have grown without the war and how may flying boats it likely needed. I am trying to get an idea of how large the domestic market might be to keep the British aircraft makers in the race. Thank you in advance.
But in tinkering with the end of war and the fate of the Ottomans I can still see the British getting a stake in the middle eastern oil, first Iraqi fields and later the gulf oil. For me it puts the British on a track more akin to the USA, Sterling is a serious trading currency, n oil trading currency, a medium of exchange and leveraging financial activity back into the City. With Sterling stronger the Commonwealth remains more coherent and there is some skim to get wealth back to the UK. The USA oil majors still want in and have the strong Dollar to back them, the USA has the wealth to develop oil on the scale we saw, perhaps in an ATL like mine oil is retarded as not just the investments are less but the political division is deeper, competing national (i.e. great power) interests slow the pace as we saw occur over the Iraqi oil and the German railway to tap it. What is needed here is a more visionary set that sees India as no longer the center piece of the Empire but instead the Arabian Gulf and redirect East of Suez to "West of India." That is what I am toying with, a bigger British footprint in the middle east, a drawback from the far east to there, some abandonment in Africa and elsewhere, but a British double down on retaining its position in the emerging global oil race. For this discussion it might take a retrenching USA post-war to lean more on the British to secure the middle east, that seemed to be the American position, so there might lie some fertile ground to break the British free.
As an aside, does anyone have a good inventory of BOAC and BEA aircraft fleets roughly 1950s to 1960s? Bonus if someone has an idea how Imperial might have grown without the war and how may flying boats it likely needed. I am trying to get an idea of how large the domestic market might be to keep the British aircraft makers in the race. Thank you in advance.
No that would be the worst possible thing happening to U.K. in fact I would say a major reason for the continued decline of British manufacturing are the influx of money from North Sea oil, which have allowed the British to not reform their manufacturing sector.
Hmm. I have vague memories that this led to Britain sticking with propeller fighters for longer... What else did this do?
....
This is exactly what Britain did OTL. They controlled the oil of Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Oman, the Emirates (then the Trucial states), were starting to develop the oil of Saudi Arabia... They were pushed out because the US wanted the oil too.
That's exactly what the British figured in the mid 1930s. Of course, Churchill came along and mucked it up, since he didn't want to let any of the empire go. And then the Americans came along and mucked up the middle east part, because they didn't see any reason why they shouldn't dominate the region themselves.
Going back onto gold wasn't the worst idea. Churchill went back on too early and at too high a rate. Getting rid of the egotistical vandal during the Boer war might actually be a good PoD for a much more enduring British power... Of course, if Britain avoids Gallipoli and avoids or goes onto the gold standard later and better, then the much stronger Britain may quash Germany well before a WW2 even happens, which means it's not a great answer to this challenge...
And better British economic policy in the 20s and 30s can lead to a MUCH stronger UK. The country basically stagnated for a generation. The interwar period was a disaster for Britain.
fasquardon
The 1951 Rearmament Programme was a 3-year expansion and re-equipment programme of the British armed forces, which was part of the Korean War mobilisation.
AFAIK sticking to piston engine fighters was probably due to the Austerity Era of the second half of the 1940s which included the 1949 defence cuts. The British Government thought that the UK could only afford to re-arm once. Therefore it cancelled everything under development that would be obsolete by 1957 - The Year of Maximum Danger - and concentrated the limited resources it did have on developing the best weapons that could be made available on that date. In the meantime HM Forces had to make do with what was in production when the war ended.
What the 1951 Rearmament Programme it did do on the aircraft front was lead to the production of more "interim" aircraft like the Gloster Meteors and De Havilland Venoms in their day and night fighter versions because the aircraft under development for 1957 weren't ready. It might have also contributed to the Supermarine Swift debacle because it was rushed into service before the prototypes had been properly tested.
I'm not an expert on the economic consequences, but the impression that I get is that it undid the good work that the Atlee Government did on the economic front. That is it turned the balance of payments surplus that the UK was running by the end of the 1940s due to the Export Drive back into a deficit and created demand pull inflation by diverting manufacturing resources from civilian production. It may have other economic consequences that I am unaware of.
The money spent by the British Government on the armed forces was money that could have been spent on something else. The British Railways Modernisation Plan and the motorway building programme both began in 1955. IIRC 1955 was also the year than rationing finally ended. It may be significant that this is the year after the 1954 defence cuts.
Thomas1195
Banned
It is more market-based than dirigisme France and than pre-Thatcher Britain.
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Rearmament acted as a brake on the UK’s recovery from WW2. The export drive was interrupted and investment in the industrial sector was reduced.
That might actually do more harm than good. I've seen it suggested that North Sea oil and gas made sterling be viewed as a petro-currency leading to it becoming largely overvalued, making it harder on exporters since their goods became more expensive. Now there were also other factors in the 1980s that didn't help like the policies taken against inflation but even without that it's going to be a problem. There's also the question of what you class as 'much earlier', and whether the technology is there to exploit it.
I have wondered what the consequences might have been if the government had done something similar to what the Swiss central bank did a few years back and actively intervened in the currency markets in the early 1980s to keep sterling from appreciating due to oil production and interest rates.
Since they would still need to pay the local governments other than the profits from British companies potentially exploiting the fields I'm unclear how it would benefit the UK.
I think that's heavily overreaching. IIRC the switch to dollars began with Saudi Arabia and spread out to other countries in the region and OPEC members; it started as closer relations due to security concerns and America being the new military superpower, then became part of a quid pro quo of their wanting to sell oil to the US–the world's largest economy–and have special treatment buying American Treasury securities, and part simple recognition of the US being the richest and most powerful country in the world.
Oil has always been a real problem in society, yes it does bring in large sums of money but its pricing goes up and down. When its up countries tend to increase spending and when the price drops the citizens refuse to drop their living standards.
have a read here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Personally I think they would have been better served if instead of writing off everything east of Suez in 1968 they wrote off everything east of Gibraltar in 1947. Once India was gone and everywhere else was heading with them there seems little point in trying to cling on to a few scraps of empire with most of the costs.
The delusion of being a first-rate power despite a second-rate economy has caused the UK untold amounts of grief and humiliations over the last 70 years.
Although I would tend to agree I am not so sure that is the only solution, indeed I am looking for structural flaws in the British economy that despite altered circumstance will still drag the UK behind In 1914 she had one of the highest per capita GDPs and was in the top tier despite having less population. Both Germany and Japan were effectively removed from the "power" race, both focused on the economy, but Germany still had at least some sizable defense spending, likewise France spent heavily and did not falter, Japan though leapt to the next best thing until its economy stagnated. So merely cutting defense spending may not solve the riddle.
Post-Great War the USA held far too much gold to allow anything like the old system to return unless the USA went on a buying binge. Pre-war each of the major economies held almost equal amounts, i.e. the USA, UK, Germany, France and Russia, with Japan being less fortunate but its economy still growing well. Gold facilitated the concept of "free" trade globally, little gold actually moved, yet it balanced the flows of trade and leveled the playing field. Post-war that was never going to return to normal and as Bretton Woods confirmed, it just made the USA and the Dollar a default currency, boosting USA trade for a time. The UK needed to rebuild around Sterling, gold was a cross to bear not a savior, unless you were a monied City banker The Empire held far more potential for trade and benefit, even without India, but /India was the raison d'etre for Empire and the defense establishment. It is the reason half the world's merchant bottoms are British and the mightiest shipbuilding industry was British. The UK thrived on global trade and financing and serving the same. WW2 sucked the capital out of Britain and destroyed its market, removed the Pound as a true global currency and shackled the UK to American gold i.e. the Dollar. Getting past that is hard even if the UK spent every last farthing to nationalize its jobs and dole out a comfy subsistence. It may well venture into alien intervention to get a Britain strong enough to be more than the regional power she truly is, in the bipolar post-WW2 era none of the former powers were much more than that unless opposing a runt state in a local dust up.
As I see it the British under invested, too little genuine capital investment in modern plant or machinery, an early deindustrialization to further favor the white collar boom in London, with too little to export to support more than bespoke industry. Nationalization simply shifted the problem and strangled competition. Without the Empire the UK was barely a peer to Germany pre-war and post-war in any but a Versailles peace on track to become an also ran, the USA, Russia and Germany were at top with Japan likely to join them. So despite all that was done to them, Germany and Japan are economic powerhouses. While the UK is no third-world economy, it would seem that somewhere a flaw is watering down its performance. Until that is fixed the British indeed must accept they are not even big enough to sit equal in European affairs.
Some parts of the Empire were still profitable. I think Malaya was. Also having client states in the oil rich statelets of the Middle East was not harmful, although little was made of it. The Saudis bought Lightnings, and some arms sales were made to other states.
The UK economy does have some first rate bits; the City of London being one. The problem is getting the other bits, especially manufacturing up to world class standards.
WI Britain managed a more succesful jet airliner and also computers became dominated by Lyones (from the Lyon electronic office, perhaps with Turing playing a part)
So long as the British are in a position to initiate various post-war infrastructure projects like the Greater London Plan (including the London Ringways plus precursors and other road projects, additional Airports at Cublington, Maplin Sands / Foulness and Willingale, limited-to-no Metropolitan Green Belt, UK Disneyland, the many unbuilt London projects and elsewhere, etc).
Together with improved modernized manufacturing / etc for post-war British industries to thrive (Cars, Motorcycles, Railways - Advanced Passenger Train / APT, etc), an earlier British analogue of France's Messmer Plan and greater British success in sports particularly the World Cup / UEFA (beyond 1966).
It would be worth having the above in favor of the British giving up the delusions of Empire compared to the current Declinism of the UK since post-WW2 (if not prior) up to the present.
Together with improved modernized manufacturing / etc for post-war British industries to thrive (Cars, Motorcycles, Railways - Advanced Passenger Train / APT, etc), an earlier British analogue of France's Messmer Plan and greater British success in sports particularly the World Cup / UEFA (beyond 1966).
It would be worth having the above in favor of the British giving up the delusions of Empire compared to the current Declinism of the UK since post-WW2 (if not prior) up to the present.
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And there it comes, the rationalisation for the clinging. Anyone with half a brain could see that Malaysia was going to become independent, as it indeed did in 1957. So how much profit did the UK make from that extra decade of ownership? Especially after deducting the costs of the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Confrontation, and all the other expenditures that basically related to defending the USAs newly acquired south-eastern empire from communism.
How much did the UK economy benefit from selling weapons to tinpot regimes compared to eg West Germany’s benefiting from selling VWs to the entire world? Basing not only your entire foreign policy but consequently your defence policy and armed forces structure around “but we need to keep the sheiks on board so we can sell them shiny toys” also seems rather counterproductive.
Again, after WW2 the UK was broke. It could not afford the costs of empire, especially since any remaining benefits of empire were effectively going to the US anyway. But instead of questioning every expenditure on the basis of “what direct benefit does this bring the UK” it seemed to fall by sheer force of habit into “this is what the imperial power does so we should do it” even though the imperial powers were now the US and USSR. Consequently IIRC UK defence spending was a higher % after WW2 than it was in 1913 during the “arms race” and most of UK Marshall Aid went on supporting the US in wars on the other side of the planet, at a time when the economy was desperately fragile and lacking in investment since before WW1. All money pulled out of the civilian economy and pissed away.
I mean, we have just had a big discussion in this thread on the impact of the Korean War. IMO the UK should have taken a policy decision that NATO was its sole comittment and sent only whatever token forces it could easily scrape up.