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Britain, Europe, and the Atlantic Community

  • Max Beloff
Extract

It would be difficult to imagine a more inappropriate moment for trying to assess the British role in the evolution of the Atlantic Community. Writing in May 1963, one is all too aware of the importance of the decisions that will still have to be taken to meet the situation that has arisen from the failure of Britain's application to join the Common Market. Both the protagonists of Britain's entry and the opponents of this move, however, drew closer together on at least one point as the long debate over the negotiations went on. Both sides agreed that the decision—one way or the other—would be a major turning point in Britain's history. Indeed, if we omit the crises of two world wars, it would be difficult to think of an adequate parallel. Even the bitterly contested repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840's— the event which is usually taken as signifying the triumph of industrial over agrarian Britain—was less far-reaching in its implications.

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COPYRIGHT: © The IO Foundation 1963
References
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1 On the American view of Britain's role in Europe, see Beloff, Max, The United States and the Unity of Europe (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1963).

2 The present writer, under the aegis of the International Relations Program of the Rockefeller Foundation, is beginning a study of some of these problems in the hope of producing an account of developments since the 1890's, provisionally entitled “The Twentieth Century Transformation in Britain's World Outlook.”

3 Speech at Manchester, November 15, 1898, quoted in Garvin, J. L., Life of Joseph Chamberlain, Vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1937), p. 304.

4 Speech at Birmingham, May 13, 1898, in ibid., pp. 301–302.

5 Speech of June io, 1898, in ibid., p. 303.

6 See “Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire,” in Beloff, Max, The Great Powers (London: Macmillan, 1959).

7 See, for instance, Allen's, H. C. history of Anglo-American relations entitled Great Britain and the United States(London: Odhams, 1954), for a working out of this view in detail.

8 Quoted from the diary of Mackenzie King in Pickersgill, J. W., The Mackenzie King Record, Vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960), p. 253.

9 Ibid., pp. 672–673.

10 See Pelling, Henry, America and the British Left (London: New York University Press, 1956).

11 See Beloff, Max, New Dimensions in Foreign Policy (London: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 14–22, 46–50.

12 Ward, Barbara, “Britain's Interest in Atlantic Union” (Friends of Atlantic Union), p. 20. This pamphlet is undated but would appear to have been published at the turn of the years 1952–1953.

13 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Defence in the Cold War (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1950), p. 121.

14 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Atlantic Alliance (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1952), pp. 105–106.

15 Robbins, Lionel (Lord Robbins), “Towards the Atlantic Community,” Lloyds Bank Review, July 1950, pp. 23–24.

16 Allen, H. C., “The Anglo-American Relationship in the Sixties,” International Affairs (London), 01 1963 (Vol. 38, No. I), pp. 37–48.

1 Max Beloff is Gladstone Professor of Government and Public Administration at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College

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International Organization
  • ISSN: 0020-8183
  • EISSN: 1531-5088
  • URL: /core/journals/international-organization
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