WI Britain gets involved in Vietnam

To be honest I can't see it having any noticable effect. The Australians used British COIN tactics by and large and had no real effect.
Besides, the only things that Borneo and Malaya had in common were jungles and Communist backed guerillas, the level of organisation among the groups varied wildly with the North Vietnamese being a recognisable nation, and therefore having a national support base, unlike the Mau Mau or Chinese backed guerillas in the jungly bits, who were minority groups and thus did not have a national base to work from.
 
I agree that a Conservative Government would almost certainly be needed, and not led by Heath. A point which has now been more or less forgotten is that much of the establishment was in favour of intervention in Vietnam in the mid-60s - the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Tories all supported military deployment. The reason for this is simple. LBJ promised Wilson that the US government would write the UK a blank cheque - to maintain the value of sterling on the exchange markets and Britain's military presence East of Suez - in return for British military intervention. To a lot of people at the time this looked like a very attractive offer, bearing in mind that Britain was going through repeated balance of payments crises in the 60s. Even some on the Labour right were not unfavourable.

The PoD you might need is fairly simple - have Khruschev's fall be announced earlier on in the day, which was coincidentally polling day for the UK 1964 general election. The Tories under Sir Alec Douglas-Home had campaigned hard upon their ability to maintain Britain's stature in the world and provide a bulwark against Communism - if there is greater uncertainty about what is going on behind the Iron Curtain then the Tories should get the pathetically small number of votes that actually lay between them and victory in 1964 IRL. This means that Douglas-Home remains Tory Leader and PM, thus butterflying away Heath's ascension.
 
Remember that Wilson walked from the Cabinet after Korea, a war which had more justitifcation than Vietnam (although still a pointless waste of life). Maybe if Hume hangs on for longer, although if it's an American style involvement it will be the end of the Conservative Party.
 
I agree that a Conservative Government would almost certainly be needed, and not led by Heath. A point which has now been more or less forgotten is that much of the establishment was in favour of intervention in Vietnam in the mid-60s - the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Tories all supported military deployment. The reason for this is simple. LBJ promised Wilson that the US government would write the UK a blank cheque - to maintain the value of sterling on the exchange markets and Britain's military presence East of Suez - in return for British military intervention. To a lot of people at the time this looked like a very attractive offer, bearing in mind that Britain was going through repeated balance of payments crises in the 60s. Even some on the Labour right were not unfavourable.

The PoD you might need is fairly simple - have Khruschev's fall be announced earlier on in the day, which was coincidentally polling day for the UK 1964 general election. The Tories under Sir Alec Douglas-Home had campaigned hard upon their ability to maintain Britain's stature in the world and provide a bulwark against Communism - if there is greater uncertainty about what is going on behind the Iron Curtain then the Tories should get the pathetically small number of votes that actually lay between them and victory in 1964 IRL. This means that Douglas-Home remains Tory Leader and PM, thus butterflying away Heath's ascension.

An excellent PoD, maybe have the Chinese get the bomb a few days earlier as well?
 
Remember that Wilson walked from the Cabinet after Korea, a war which had more justitifcation than Vietnam (although still a pointless waste of life). Maybe if Hume hangs on for longer, although if it's an American style involvement it will be the end of the Conservative Party.
Wilson didn't resign because of British involvement in Korea per se, the cause was the imposition of prescription charges on the NHS to pay for the war. Actually it was really an opportunistic resignation to shore up Wilson's position with the Bevanite left, but that's by the by.

If British involvement is on the same scale as that of the Americans I do agree the Tories would go down to a crashing defeat, but I can't see HMG providing more than a brigade or two. Also Britain was a country where memories of Empire were strong - the argument that the UK needed soldiers East of Suez to maintain prestige was far stronger amongst the electorate and opinion-formers then than it would be today, and I can see a similar argument being used to justify British intervention in Vietnam.
 
Frankly I don't think that Britain can fight both the Indonesian Confrontation and Vietnam. A Tory government would, IMVHO, choose to protect a member of the Commonwealth over South Vietnam.
We had to commit pretty serious air, naval and ground forces to Malaysia. I don't see that we have much to spare from our other commitments.
 
The 1964 Soviet coup is a POD in the post war Britain AH I'm working up. Basically Macmillan names Butler as his successor who is able to persuade MacLeod and Powell to stay in the Cabinet in exchange for the introduction of an elected party leader and a private commitment to stand down by the middle of the next Parliament, therefore MacLeod becomes PM in 1966.

I don't think Hume gets credit for making 1964 such a close run election, the Tories looked dead and buried after Profumo and the controversy over Hume's succession. For Hume to bring them back to within a whisker of a 4th consecutive victory was a great achievement. However you can't help but think that a leader without the baggage of Hume's succession, something that Wilson played on, "The 14th Earl Hume," could have performed even better.
 

Thande

Donor
An excellent PoD, maybe have the Chinese get the bomb a few days earlier as well?

I agree, regardless of anything to do with Vietnam that POD should be explored in its own right. Does Wilson fall from the Labour leadership and who takes his place? Fascinating effects on British politics. 1964 could be like 1992 was to people of my generation--a sort of disbelief that this stiff and uncharismatic Tory leader had somehow managed to beat all the predictions and extend 13 years of Conservative rule to 18. Of course it could also be like 1992 in other ways--afterwards Douglas-Home has a hellish second term and Labour then wins in a landslide in 1969. But by 1969 the Sixties counter-culture period that Wilson tried to capitalise on is already fading away...
 
Whatever way, this will end badly for Britain. British ideas on COIN operations will most likely be ignored by the Americans and the war will play out pretty much as it did otl. The end of the Vietnam war was a big blow for America.
Britain would share that blow at a time when British confidence was at an all time low. The timing couldn't have been worse.
 

abc123

Banned
A potentially cataclysmic butterfly for British and world politics is the entrance of Britain and her armed forces into the American-led war in Vietnam. It's also one I know very little about.

What would it have taken for Wilson to have done it? If not him, who else in Labour, or from the Tories, could have? In which year would Britain have joined? What level of involvement would there be, and how much of an impact on the war itself would they have had? Would the American level of commitment (the draft) spread to the UK? What would the knock-on effects be - I get the impression the Britain of today would be politically unrecognisable.

If there's any good TLs about this already, please direct me to some.


Well, IMO, the only way to see that is US support for UK intervention in Suez in 1956.
;)
 

Ramp-Rat

Monthly Donor
Gentlemen, just one small point, Britain was involved in the Vietnam War. American officers were sent to British jungle warfare centers for training in Malaya. The British Embassy in North Vietnam was a center for intelligence gathering. In what I believe was a unique occurrence, the Ambassador was a MI6 officer. What Britain didn’t do was give direct support on the ground in South Vietnam.
 
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