Most recent POD for US-led pop culture not to dominate UK? / UK in EEC at launch?

Hi all, long-time lurker, first-time poster ...

I've considered several PODs for something *close* to the scenario in this thread's title: January 1963 (de Gaulle says oui and Gaitskell lives, the psychological *need* for the Beatles to cheer people up isn't there, Macmillan wins a spring election and Profumo can be hushed up, and quite possibly the lack of a British Invasion means that rock music ends up a short-term fad in the US), and for lesser versions February 1974 (that was a great Hugo Young article posted here - Heath is vindicated, and without Thatcherism the aggressive-individualist social attitudes of much 80s-and-onwards pop music don't develop) or even May 1994 (John Smith lives, pop culture isn't institutionalised and bound up with the state, the specific context of Britpop doesn't fatally compromise the punk-and-onwards counterculture).

But I wonder whether even the 1963 scenario would be sufficient. Everything we take for granted now has its roots in the romanticisation of all things American that took root in Britain in the years between Suez and Beatlemania - that's when modern-day mass culture was born. So a TL where rock'n'roll - and, very importantly at the beginning, skiffle - don't strike an instinctive, romantic chord among British youth would have to be a TL where the humiliation of Suez hasn't happened - and thus the old British establishment culture hasn't been so dramatically discredited that there is a huge, insatiable demand for something else. The other important thing about Suez is that it left the plans for Franco-British union, or at least closer collaboration, permanently tainted, and separated Britain from continental Europe just at the time when a wave of pop culture was pointing it the other way.

So how about this as an "American pop culture plays a lesser role" TL (I'm well aware that it's ASB to write it out altogether, I'm thinking of something closer to the role Hollywood movies and the popular music of that time had in the 1930s):

- Churchill steps down after losing in 1945, accepting that the electorate have chosen a different kind of future and leaving it to others to fight back, and feeling that his role as war leader was beyond party politics and that he would compromise that by trying to come back in peacetime.

- Eden replaces Churchill and eventually becomes PM in 1951 or even 1950 (but I'm saying 1951 because I want the Festival of Britain to still happen as in OTL). He oversees a steady increase in prosperity and the end of rationing, but not consumerism yet. The Coronation is a key unifying event, based around the idea that British traditions can remain strong even in the post-war world. All this is basically the same as in OTL only with a different PM (and even in OTL Churchill was running the country in name only by the end).

- Eden's health is going by 1955, as in OTL. Macmillan replaces Eden at about the same time Eden replaced Churchill in OTL, and wins an election with an increased majority. As he is more realistic about Britain's place in the post-war world, and less keen to rattle international cages, he doesn't go into Suez, and manages to talk the French out of it by warning that it would seriously damage the talks (as in OTL) on Franco-British union, or at least closer collaboration. The US approves of the British restraint, and praises Macmillan for avoiding a major international crisis.

- While formal Franco-British union does not go ahead, because it is feared it would not play well with the electorate in either country (but especially not in Britain), the relationship between the two countries is, shall we say, infinitely more *cordial* than it became in OTL, and Britain is an initial signatory to the treaty of Rome. The role of cheering the British people up and making them feel better about themselves, which in OTL was played entirely by US-influenced nascent consumerism, is ITTL played by full involvement in what become "The Seven" founder members of the EEC.

- As in OTL, Macmillan wins a landslide circa 1959, but rather than doing so entirely off the back of increased affluence and the Eisenhower visit of August 1959 (the latter is an amazingly little-known event considering its profile at the time and its importance in the political creation of modern Britain) does so in large part off the back of delivering Britain to a European future which gives it a secure position in the world which helps it to offset the loss of its colonies, and most importantly gives it a definite buffer in between the two great powers created by WW2 (the US has broadly encouraged Britain into the EEC in the hope that it will make "the West" stronger and work against any crypto-communist tendencies it might fear in some of the other six nations, but it still ensures that Britain is much more than simply an aircraft carrier). Pop-cultural influences from continental Europe make a considerably more widespread impact in the UK. The Blue Streak missile is developed as a pan-European defence project (in OTL, the French were showing an interest in it only a few months before it was cancelled), rather than cancelled in April 1960 under US pressure as in OTL.

Is this plausible? Is it just wishful thinking on my part as a Europhile, considering the "island mentality" of so many of the British at the time ... also, were the British so grateful to the US for "saving" them in the war that they would still have embraced the consumerist influences *every bit* as joyously as they did in OTL? I should state at this point that I'm not talking about continued austerity, but rather a different *kind* of consumerism, where the influences are broader and not just skewed one way. I must admit to not having read as much as I should about Macmillan's role in Suez, and I wonder whether his later "managing decline" position was only adopted after and as a response to that humiliation ... note that this is at least as much a *cultural* AH as a political one, but its long-term political effects are worth discussing, especially on the form the EEC and its successors take (and specifically the French response in the long term).

(re. pop culture, it would also help for the brutal Soviet repression in Hungary at the same time as Suez not to happen, because that created a strong disillusionment with the Soviet Union among the children of many committed British Communists, many of whom then chose to romanticise the *other* great power created by WW2 as a substitute.)
 
I think you vastly overstate Macmillan's starting level of europeanism, as well as his initial strategic realism. He was, after all, 'the first in favour of intervention in Suez, and the first in favour of pulling out.' And then his main concern afterwards was patching up with the Americans. Coming around to a position of entry was only a very gradual process after that.

I completely disagree with your underlying assumption actually: IMO, the earlier you have a Suez-like event, and the more destructive it is (in terms of prestige), the more you're likely to encourage a re-orientation towards a European position. Macmillan could serve as the figure who makes that re-orientation happen, but you need to put the background in first.
 
I think you vastly overstate Macmillan's starting level of europeanism, as well as his initial strategic realism.

I did suspect so as I was writing my initial post (which, as a newcomer to this forum, sprawled in directions I wasn't initially intending to take it and opened up whole new questions).

I completely disagree with your underlying assumption actually: IMO, the earlier you have a Suez-like event, and the more destructive it is (in terms of prestige), the more you're likely to encourage a re-orientation towards a European position. Macmillan could serve as the figure who makes that re-orientation happen, but you need to put the background in first.

I suspect you're right, but what do you think the most likely background would be?

It is interesting, I think, to speculate on the effects of Britain as founder member of the EEC - perhaps it expands earlier, with Ireland's application under Lemass (which was contemporaneous with the UK's first under Macmillan, i.e. the early 60s) being accepted, and Scandinavian countries also getting involved earlier. Of course an advantage of Britain being a founder member would be that it could have got in before de Gaulle was brought back, initially as a figure of national unity - might Suez not happening at that particular time also prevent the fall of the Fourth Republic, or would that have happened anyway as a result of Algeria and an imperial disengagement so much nastier than Britain's in the same era? At any rate, Britain as a comparable power would have prevented de Gaulle having quite the same power to attempt to shape the EEC as a kind of "greater France" ... perhaps you get to 1966, ten years on from Suez in OTL, without the same wave of pop culture spreading from the UK (which was a factor in de Gaulle's introduction of the first major linguistic protectionist measures that year), and at the same time, because the two countries are closer friends, France not withdrawing from NATO and breaking the Suez-era ties with Israel.

But I agree with you that this might be a bit ASB if you don't have a credible background. What would you suggest? (I really should know more about the immediately post-war "lost decade" than I do.)
 
Top