Part 16
We have seen that Aneurin Bevan and other politicians of the extreme left are wedded to the idea that successive Labor and Conservative governments have danced to Washington's tune. There are many who would deny undue political or diplomatic influence by the United States on Britain; indeed, many in America would say the shoe was on the other foot. But no one could discount the growing influence of American customs and ways of living upon the people of Britain. Part of this is the direct result of the popularity of American movies and the continued presence of American troops. Part comes from the fact that British manufacturers are rather belatedly turning out the household devices which have revolutionized living in the United States. This and the ability of the new working class and the new middle class to buy in abundance has led to a change in the living conditions of millions.
Ignorance of the political system and international objectives of the United States is still fairly widespread. In some important respects, however, there is today among the people of England a greater knowledge about the people of the United States than there ever was in the past.
Before the entry of the United States into World War II, for instance, there was a strong conviction in Britain that ethnically we were the same people. The mass of Britons expected us to be as British in our background and national outlook as the people of Australia or New Zealand. The war corrected that impression. The army that came to Britain was composed of men of diverse ethnic stocks, and the people among whom they lived learned that Americans could have names like Magliaro, Martinez, or Mannheim and still be good Americans. This shocked both the Americanophobes who thought of us as "Anglo-Saxons" unchanged since the administration of Thomas Jefferson and their political representatives who envisaged us as openhearted and openhanded former colonials only too eager to help out the "mother country." But in the long run this clearer, more realistic view of modern America has had a good effect on relations between the two countries.
Similarly, the presence among Britons of several million young men representing the United States removed some illusions built up by years of steady attendance at the local movie house. We were not all rich, we were not all gangsters or cowboys, we did not all chew gum. Americans worked just as hard, worried just as much, and had the same hopes and dreams as Britons did. The period of the big buildup in 1943 and 1944 before the Normandy invasion was marred by saloon brawls between Americans and British and by friction on both sides. But this is outweighed, I believe, by the fact that the same period contributed greatly to the two peoples' knowledge of each other.
When the United States Air Force sent forces to Britain at the peak of the cold war, it was assumed by many that this process would continue. But the present contingent is minute compared to the millions of Americans who moved through Britain during World War II. Moreover, its members are more professional. They do not have the opportunity or the inclination for close contact with British homes. They want what professional soldiers want the world over: a bellyful of beer and a girl. They get both.
The senior officers of the United States Air Force units in Britain and well-intentioned Britons, zealous for the improvement of relations between the countries, spend a great deal of time worrying about the behavior of the airmen and their treatment by British civilians. The time is ill spent. It is the nature of young men far from home, in or out of uniform, to drink, to wench, and to fight. Here and there they may encounter tradesmen eager to make an extra shilling out of the foreigner. But such profiteering does not seem to be on the same scale as that practiced by the good people of Florida or Texas or Kansas upon their own countrymen in uniform during World War II.
In many superficial respects Britain is more Americanized than before the war. There are hamburger joints near Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, and the American tourist can buy a Coke in most big towns. A pedestrian in London sees windows full of "Hollywood models" and "Broadway styles." In the years immediately after the war, working-class youth copied the kaleidoscopic ties and broad-shouldered, double-breasted plumage of the American male. Today, still following styles set in America, he is adopting the more sober appearance of the Ivy League, and the button-down shirt has made its appearance in High Holborn. This is a curious example of styles traveling west and then east across the Atlantic, for the Ivy League dresses as it believes--or, rather, as its tailors believe--English gentlemen dress. Now the working-class young man in Britain is imitating "new" American styles that are themselves an imitation of the styles followed by his own upper class. Whatever the fashion in the United States, this class clings manfully to the dark suit, the starched collar, and the derby in London, and to tweeds in the country.
Obviously the movies made in America have had an enormous effect on the British way of life. For a number of reasons the effect has not been altogether good. Accuracy in portraying the American scene is not one of Hollywood's strong points. A couple of generations of young Britons matured nursing an idealistic view of the United States as a wonderland where hippy stenographers lived in high-ceilinged houses, wore luxurious clothes, drove big, powerful cars, and loved big, powerful men. There was almost invariably a happy ending to the minor difficulties that beset hero and heroine of an American film.
Realism was restored to some extent by the advent of the American soldier. Very few of the GI's resembled Mr. Robert Taylor, and their backgrounds were quite different from those portrayed on the screen. There were, of course, some fast talkers who could and did make a pig farm in Secaucus sound like a ranch in California, but, on the whole, the American soldiers came from civilian surroundings no more exciting than Leeds or Bristol. The movie-going public now views pictures about home life in America with a more skeptical eye.
The series of American films about juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, dipsomania, and other social evils created a problem for those interested in presenting a balanced view of the United States to Britons. Great efforts were made by the United States Information Service to demonstrate that the ordinary American did not begin the day with a shot of heroin or send his boy to a school that would make Dotheboys Hall seem like a kindergarten.
These efforts were inspired to some extent by the manner in which the Communists exploited such films as genuine reflections of life in the United States. Both the comrades and the USIS were wasting their time. The British public can be agonizingly apathetic, but it is not stupid. I never met anyone who thought these films represented the real America or who believed the Communist contention that they did. The fact is that the ability of the United States to make and show such pictures testifies to the strength of America. When the Russians produce an epic about the slave labor that built the White Sea-Baltic canal or an exposé of the corruption that riddled Soviet industry in the war and immediate post-war years, we can begin to worry.
The theater since the war has exercised an important influence in bringing America to Britain. Starting with _Oklahoma_, a series of Broadway musical shows dominated the London stage for a decade. One of the minor occupations of British critics is grumbling about the shortage of "real" British musicals. But even the grumpiest have been won over by the music of Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin and the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II.
British taste is not always in accord with our own. _South Pacific_ was not the critical success in London that it was in New York. The British loved _Guys and Dolls_--they had lost their hearts to the late Damon Runyon in the thirties--but they did not like _Pal Joey_, in which John O'Hara gave a much more realistic picture of the seamy side of American life.
But the accent has been on musicals. Very few serious American plays have successfully invaded London. In this field the traffic seems to be the other way.
The comics, invariably described in left-wing publications as "American Horror Comics," have been another medium for the spread of American culture in Britain. Like the movies, they have their critics, and, like some movies, they are used by the Communists to demonstrate what fearful people the Americans are.
The reader will notice that British Communism, although of almost negligible importance as a political party, is active in promoting differences between the two nations. The Communists know very well that the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is the strongest link in the Western chain; if they can break it, the rest will be easy.
I have been at pains to point out the issues over which governments and peoples on both sides of the alliance differ and those aspects of our national behavior which occasionally worry and concern the British. It should be emphasized that the areas of ignorance in the British attitude toward the United States are of minor importance compared to the ignorance of the average Frenchman or the average Indian. British misconceptions about the United States can be corrected and Communist attempts to exploit these misconceptions defeated because the British public does know something about the United States. This knowledge may be slight, but it is enough to build on.
Over the years there has been a change in attitude on the part of young people which I find disturbing. When I first came to England in the late thirties I encountered a good deal of curiosity about the political and social aspects of the American system. Young people wanted to know about American opportunities for education, about technical schools, about the absence of a class system. Today such interest as is displayed centers mainly upon the material factors in the United States.
Perhaps what I encountered nearly twenty years ago was the lingering afterglow of that period in our history when we stood as a promise and a hope to the peoples of the world. Certainly many of the egalitarian aspects of American society admired in pre-war Britain have been slowly introduced into British society. A cynic might even suggest that they know us better now. At any rate, I meet fewer young people who are sure they would like to live in America and be Americans.
Ignorance of the United States lies at the root of many of the criticisms of our country one hears in Britain. This is being overcome to some extent by the work of the USIS, but the task is a serious one. Beyond such obvious difficulties as the shortage of newsprint which limits the amount that responsible newspapers can print about the United States, there is another important obstacle to better relations. This is the fact, that although Americans travel to Britain each year in tens of thousands, the prospect of the average Briton seeing our country is remote. The British treasury doles out dollars with a sharp eye on the gold and dollar reserves, and a large percentage of the transatlantic travelers are businessmen selling British exports to the United States. This is something, but it is not enough.
The industrial working class is the most numerous and politically important in Britain. It is also the least informed about the United States. Scholarships for Oxford and Cambridge students at Harvard or Princeton and visiting professorships for English dons do not, as a rule, help this class. The ideal would be an exchange system under which hundreds of working-class men and women from Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, and the back streets of London were given the opportunity to see America plain. The English Speaking Union in the United States and the United Kingdom is attempting to bring this about.
Only through such contact, I believe, could the picture of the United States built up by some Labor Party politicians be erased. There remains a dangerous lack of understanding not only of our political system but of what mass production and greater productivity in the United States have done for the average workingman here. Newspaper articles, television series, books help, but it is a thing that must be felt as well as seen. It can be felt only in the United States.
The attention paid to differences and difficulties should not obscure the value that Britons place on their relationship with Americans. Materially, Britain's interest in maintaining the relationship is much the greater; undoubtedly they need us more than we need them. But here we must remember the national character of Britain. The British have been an independent people for a thousand years. Even when the fortunes of the nation have been at their lowest ebb, the people have been outspoken in defense of what they considered their rights. The earliest Continentals who traveled to England lamented the blunt independence of the yeomen and the absence of subservience among the noisy city crowds.
Some sociologists have concluded that all this has changed and that the industrial revolution and other social changes have transformed the British from the rowdiest and most belligerent of nations into law-abiding conformists. The national boiling-point, they report, is high.
Certainly a superficial view of the British working class in its high noon of full employment, security, high wages, and new housing would seem to confirm this conclusion. Personally, I doubt that the turbulent passions which sent Britons out to singe the beard of the King of Spain and to make rude noises when Hitler proposed peace in 1940 are spent.
Phlegmatic, often apathetic, sentimental but not emotional, they are a people capable of great outbursts of political action. They should not therefore be considered a people prepared to follow docilely and blindly where the United States leads. The failure to recognize the presence in British character of this fundamental, unruly independence even when it was flourished in their faces is one of the principal reasons why President Eisenhower and his administration were surprised by Britain's intervention in Egypt in the autumn of 1956. Granted that the President was involved in the election campaign, it is mystifying that a man of his experience in dealing with the British failed to see the signs pointing toward independent action.
As early as August of that year letters in _The Times_ urged an independent course for Britain and France in the Middle East. One letter signed by Julian Amery, then a Conservative back-bench Member of Parliament, ended with the reflection that if the two countries followed such a course and took action independently of the United States, it would not be for the first time. That _The Times_ would give space to letters of this sort was a sign that the Establishment recognized the ideas they contained. In September, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer visited Washington, he made it clear to the most important of his hosts that Britain would not take the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal lying down--that if this was to be a struggle for Britain's existence, his country would prefer to go down with the guns firing and the flags flying. During that same month Sir Anthony Eden had written to President Eisenhower in terms which to anyone familiar with British official phraseology said that if Britain did not get a satisfactory settlement of its difficulties over the Canal through the United Nations, other action would be necessary. In speech after speech, especially at the Conservative Party Conference on October 13, the leaders of the government carefully stated that they did not exclude the use of force as a means of settling the Suez problem.
The British government badly miscalculated the Eisenhower administration's reaction to intervention in Egypt. It expected benevolent neutrality from a trusted ally. It got pressure and criticism. But this miscalculation may have been natural under the circumstances, for it can be argued that Britain did not expect the United States administration to be surprised. It had, after all, given abundant direct and indirect warnings that force might be used as a last resort. How much of the administration's anger, one wonders, was based in the realization that it had been told what was going to happen--if only it had stopped to read again and think?
British diversions from co-operation in policy over Suez or anywhere else are, to a considerable extent, the result of the circumstances governing the existence of the United Kingdom--circumstances that are as different from our own as could be imagined. Here is an island absolutely dependent on world trade. Westward lies the continental United States, with a continent's natural resources at its disposal--an almost completely self-sufficient power. The difference is inescapable and permanent. We must expect the British to react sharply whenever a vital part of their trade is endangered. In 1956 the harsh equation was "Suez equals oil, oil equals British production, British production equals the existence of the United Kingdom." Likewise, we must expect the British to expand, within agreed limits of strategic restrictions, their world trade. This is particularly true of trade with Communist China.
In this connection we might remember that, to the British, diplomatic recognition is not a mark of approval, and that if there is a possibility of dividing the Soviet Union and the Peiping regime, it can be exploited only through diplomatic channels. Diplomatic attempts to wean China away from Russia may fail. But they are worth trying. Can they be tried successfully without the co-operation of both the United States and the United Kingdom? I think not. In any case, the task this generation faces of preserving Western freedom in defiance of the Communist colossi is difficult enough without discarding this diplomatic weapon.
An alliance flourishes when it is based on realism. Realism involves knowing your ally and understanding his motives. In war the strategic reasons for an alliance are laid bare; the motives are there for all to see. In peace, when international relations are infinitely more complex, the task of maintaining an alliance is consequently more difficult. In this chapter I have cited salient aspects of American political life and government policy which have irritated and angered the British. The differences over the Suez crisis were the last and most important of these. That issue generated a great deal of anger, and some harsh and brutal truths were spoken on both sides. I think that from the standpoint of the future of the alliance this was a good thing. It forced the British, I believe, to adopt a more realistic attitude toward the United States and United States policy, and it will lead them to take more, not less, diplomatic initiative in the future.
There will be other differences in foreign policy between the two countries, for differences are inevitable in the relationship between two parliamentary democracies. Indeed, they are a strength. It is because the British are an independent, outspoken, hard-headed people that they are good allies. It is because British governments think for themselves and enjoy the services of an experienced, incorruptible, intelligent civil service that their support is welcome and necessary in the contest with the East.
And we know--at least, we should know--that if the worst comes the British are stout fighters, ready, once every effort to preserve peace has failed, to fight with all they have and are.
I carry with me as a talisman the memory of a conversation at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, during the darkest days of the war in Korea. An American general officer, a man of the highest professional qualifications, suggested to a small, intimate group that, with more and more American power diverted to the Far East, the Russians might jump in Europe.
"It will be pretty tough for you people," he told a British lieutenant colonel, an amiable, rather rakish character. "They'll offer you a chance of getting out. If you don't take it, they'll tell you they'll blow London and half a dozen other cities off the map. They'll probably tell the French the same sort of thing. What do you think your people will do?"
"What do you think we'll do?" the lieutenant colonel answered. "We'll tell them to go to hell."
Beneath the political bickering, the unrelenting self-criticism, the pessimism there exists now, as there did in 1940, a fiery spirit. The British will never be vassals. Nor will they ever be easy allies. But if this alliance fails, there is little left on which an enduring peace can be built.
X. _The British Economy and Its Problems_
_Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery._
CHARLES DICKENS
_It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy._
HAROLD LASKI
We must now take a closer look at the British economy as it is today. This is a big subject, one well worth a long book. It is my purpose in this informal estimate of our ally to sketch the fundamentals of the present economic situation and to deal briefly with some of the factors in it. Earlier we have encountered the Trades Union Congress and the emergence of a new working class. We have seen that Britain is changing behind the mask of tradition. In this chapter we will see that the change in the national economy is progressing perhaps even more rapidly than the change in the structure of society and politics. And, of course, all three changes are closely related and interdependent.
The British Empire, which half a century ago stood at the apex of its economic power, was built on coal. Largely because of the extent of her coal resources, Britain got a head start in the industrial revolution, which originated in England. An organized coal-mining industry has existed in Britain for over three hundred years, or three hundred years longer than in any European country. Not only was there enough coal to make Britain the world's workshop, but until about 1910 British exports dominated the world export market. In the peak production year of 1913 the industry produced 287,000,000 tons, exported 94,000,000 tons, and employed 1,107,000 workers. Contrast these figures with those for 1955: 221,600,000 tons produced, 14,200,000 tons exported, 704,100 workers.
Three centuries of mining means that the majority of the best seams are worked out. Each year coal has to be mined from deeper and thinner seams. Each year the struggle to raise productivity becomes harsher. There are huge workable reserves; one estimate is 43,000,000,000 tons, which, at the present rate of consumption, is more than enough to last another two hundred years. But this coal will be increasingly difficult to mine. Moreover, certain types, such as high-quality coking coal, will be exhausted long before 2157.