May Peace Her Power Extend: A Timeline-191 Post-War Britain List.
Harold Macmillan (Independent Non-Partisan [de facto Unionist]) 1945-1947
"The Opportunist-in-Chief"
The superbombs destroyed the last hopes of the old regime. The Government surrendered, and Britain was placed under German occupation. Harold Macmillan was chosen by the German occupation force as a suitably non-partisan leader despite his known previous Mosleyite affiliation. He had a tough task ahead of him, to both satisfy the German forces and to reconstruct Britain. To his credit, he managed to balance the two reasonably well.
Then of course, the Tresckow Declaration ruined all of that. Macmillan's government was relying on promised reconstruction funds from Germany as long as the loans were signed upon, and once new Chancellor Henning von Tresckow turned against that promise, Macmillan lost support and resigned.
Duff Cooper (Independent Non-Partisan [de facto Unionist]) 1947-1950
"The Intemperate"
The German forces struggled to find anyone in the old Unionist circles [aka the circles they most trusted] that weren't instinctually anti-German for the sunbombs and the Tresckow Declaration. In the end, they chose a former junior minister most notable for managing communication. Cooper would return Britain to independent diplomacy under the table, both with France and in a limited extent, America. As Germany struggled to hold control...
His alcoholism would prove his fall, but before then he managed to negotiate for many ex-Unionist people out of execution in the Birmingham Trials which would lead to quite a few of them entering government in future decades. He was found dead in his office one warm summer day in 1950.
Horace Wilson (Independent Non-Partisan) 1950-1951
"The Most Unpopular Man in Britain"
With Cooper dead, the dwindling German forces finally returned to the caretaker Prime Minister they rashly removed. Wilson's government was focused on rebuilding, but with the Tresckow Declaration and Wilson's hesitance at going against Germany's diplomatic power, he sought to take out loans from German banks and up the taxation levels to pay for it all. This led to his government collapsing rapidly. Germany's finances was struggling [and the SPD was getting louder about "making a peace fit for heroes"] so they withdrew from Britain. Wilson resigned the next day.
T. E. Lawrence (Independent Non-Partisan, then National Democratic majority) 1951-1957
1954: def. Stafford Cripps (Socialist Labour)
"Lawrence the Vote"
With the Germans no longer "advising" the Queen, she finally appointed General Lawrence, the most high-ranking member of the Armed Forces not yet purged, due to being retired in the wartime years due to a motorcycle accident that drastically weakened his body. But his mind was strong, and he kept writing extensively, keeping him in the public memory. Seen as safely non-political, he was a clear choice for the Queen.
Lawrence set out to form a new, democratic, structure for the country. There was no election since 1935! That was intolerable. He gathered together democratic thinkers and worked out a new system, including the first Basic Charter defining human rights. There was to be no more of the old Blackshirt crimes, not in Lawrence's Britain. Federalists managed to shove through the convention a "home rule all round" provision as well.
While this was going on, Lawrence sought to reconstruct both Britain's domestic and foreign situations. The two were unseparatable. Those loans from German banks Wilson took out, those were on very unfavourable agreements. The only way to ever repay those was to intensely rebuild, and even then it would drive Britain further into debt. Lawrence realised that he had to rebuild Britain's diplomatic clout to pressure the banks to accept renegotiation.
The solution would come from Lyon, as Prime Minister Guy Mollet [a noted Anglophile] proposed to renew the old Anglo-French cooperation for mutual benefit. France took out similar loans under a former German-placed Prime Minister, and Mollet wished to coordinate a diplomatic response. The loans were declared to be "common Anglo-French loans", and pressure was put on the banks to renegotiate. They gave in, to many observers' surprise.
The reason they did was because Germany was having a bank run, and the German economy was in freefall. The renegotiation was seen as the only way out of the United Kingdom and France just calling their bluff. They were weaker than Germany, but unlike Germany, the British and French economies were slowly on the up and up. The British and French governments would cooperate a lot more after this, both seeing only common interest in cooperation. Any hint of working more with Germany or America was to be booed down as comparable to the appeasers Wilson and Laval.
The first election in close to twenty years was held in 1954, and it was to nobody's surprise a landslide for Lawrence's National Democratic Union. The success at getting the German banks to back down was the first real permanent success Britain tasted in oh so long. Lawrence was hailed as the hero Britain needed, no, deserved. Turnout was extremely high, and even Stafford Cripps' criticism was muted against the popular war hero.
After the election, Lawrence signed a renewal of the Entente Cordiale with France, and agreed to economic cooperation to strengthen both countries' recovery. This was the seeds for the later and tighter economic cooperation. The windfall for the promised surge in reconstruction was to come in 1956 as the Socialist Party returned to power in America. Despite their strong German-American base, the Socialist Party was by the 50s increasingly distrustful of Germany, especially when it consistently denied the SPD power [which was by then getting extremely unviable].
President Lovecraft was a known Anglophile who wrote bitterly of Germany's nuking of a city he adored. The nuking wiped away the last of his beliefs that the British and Germans were "brother nations". Hamburg was nothing compared to London! While he was still a firm supporter of German-Americans, he grew to truly at a base level despise Germany's current regime. While the tag-team "world police" would survive, Britain [and upon the Foreign Secretary's insistence due to the growing economic ties, France] would receive the long-awaited money for reconstruction.
One thing that got more notice in later administrations but that Lawrence started, was a strong anti-colonial foreign policy. Britain lost all its colonies due to the Great Wars, and France even lost Algeria in the Second, so it was in their interest to turn anti-colonial in their foreign policy. Sustained Anglo-French support of Syrian rebels would pester the Ottoman Empire for two decades until the Syrian Republic finally achieved independence.
It is the cruelest of fates that after so long of labouring for a new Britain out of the ashes, its greatest post-war Prime Minister would not see the glories ahead, as he died suddenly in 1957. "Lawrence Hall" was named after him in his honour, and it remains today the official residence of the Prime Minister.
Harold Nicolson (National Democratic majority) 1957-1962
1959: def. Aneurin Bevan (Socialist Labour)
"The Man on the Telly"
After haggling, it was agreed by the NDU inner circle that Nicolson the Foreign Secretary would succeed Lawrence, much to Chancellor Butler's displeasure. Nicolson had a past as a minor part of the Unionists [and was indeed one of the people Cooper got out of the trial], but his success at rebranding himself meant that he could move beyond that. Nicolson was on the NDU Left, and in his time as Prime Minister, he sought to shift the party further towards a strong interventionist approach to the economy, backed up by Butler who kept his job as Chancellor to stave off any challenges.
Lawrence's work would be built on. Infrastructure was something Britain had an abundance of, but those needed to be modernised. And with the Morrell Plan finally negotiated for Britain and France, they could finally properly afford to revamp those, build new houses, create new factories, and end the "Decade of Ruin" that was the late 1940s and early 1950s. As the Prime Minister declared in 1957 - "Things can only get better!".
And indeed, he was correct. As Germany struggled with labour strikes and minor states giving in and letting the SPD into regional government much to Berlin's condemnation, businesses grew to look at the Anglo-French economies as more promising ones to invest in. Lawrence's landslide couldn't be perfectly replicated, but Nicolson got a comfortable victory over Bevan's Socialist Labour all the same.
The European Economic Cooperation continued, and in 1960, Nicolson and Mollet [by then aiming to retire] pulled off a coup by negotiating Italy's entry. Italy's economy was respectable, and it promised surplus technology it could sell to Britain and France at a low price. This got Germany's hackles up, and as Austria-Hungary was breathing its last, Germany accused the EEC of plotting a Third Great War.
The American Secretary of State phoned Germany, and made it clear that America was not backing Germany in this confrontation, deeming it as unneeded. This led to another run on the banks and that was to prove the end of Henning von Tresckow as Chancellor. Germany would have another period of internal crisis leading to the rise of the considerably-more liberal Gustav Heinemann, who was believed to be amenable enough for the SPD.
The Profumo affair led to more scrutiny towards what was before then overlooked in the heady daze - the Prime Minister's own relationships with many men. With his wife dying of abdominal cancer and more questions being asked of him of his past, he chose to resign in early 1962.
Alec Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home (National Democratic majority) 1962-1969
1964: def. Harold Wilson (Socialist Labour)
"The Fourteenth Mr. Home"
With the polling all suggesting a comfortable SLP lead, the Earl of Home had a high mountain to climb. Rolling up his sleeves, he got on it. Known as a keen man on foreign policy but with very little understanding of economics, he just entrusted his Chancellor, Tony Crosland, to keep the machine purring along and ensuring British reconstruction and renewal continued.
And this Crosland did. His priorities as Chancellor was the end of poverty, which he did by expanding welfare services and together with the SLP, managed to pass universal healthcare over the NDU Right's objections. Home himself was considered a moderate, relatively, of the NDU, due to his disinterest in domestic matters, but this led to grumblings, increasingly louder grumblings, from the Party's Right.
In foreign affairs, Home was keenly interested in Lawrence and Nicolson's anticolonial policies. He sought to fund the more moderate aspects of the anticolonial movements in German [no longer also Italian] colonies, and headed the first diplomatic visit to the Indian Federation since it got independence at the end of GW2. This was considered a high call, since Churchill's war crimes cast a large shadow over British-Indian relations. But as Home shook hands with Nehru and pledged a warmer, more cooperative future between Britain and India, this was a diplomatic coup for the ages.
And it had its benefit outside India of course. It removed India as a reason anticolonial movements distrusted Anglo-French support, and most crucially, endeared the Euro-Entente [as the EEC was increasingly informally referred to in the Anglophone world] to an American audience keen on reconciliation of former enemies after almost twenty decades of reintegrating the South.
With Crosland's policies placing the tanks of anti-poverty campaigns on the SLP's lawn and Home returning to Britain in triumph, the 1964 election turned out to be an upset and the SLP only took another 10 seats from the NDU. Not enough to bring down the NDU. Not yet.
That was the zenith of Home's government of course. It could only go downhill from here.
The NDU Right gave an ultimatum to Home, pick a less "leftist" Chancellor, or face a party split. Home chose to replace Crosland with Edward Heath, who was more of a moderate figure, but he gave Crosland Education to appease the Left. This would create issues down the line.
With the Anglophile Lovecraft replaced by a more pro-German figure in Democrat John Kennedy, the previous windfall that was the Morrell Plan was turned off in Kennedy's quest to make good with Germany and re-establish the "world police" double team. This necessited a response. Britain and France was by the 60s much more stable economically, but as much as the remaining autarks on the left and right hated admitting it, the two countries were extremely dependent on each other. The Euro-Entente needed strengthening in those lean years ahead.
Two nations were top of the list for addition according to France. Spain and Portugal. The former was under a firmly anti-monarchist form of fascism under José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and the later was led by António de Oliveira Salazar, a man who rejected his country's monarchists because he believed they went against Catholic social teaching. With the German-dominated European order so favouring monarchies, it benefited Britain to lean into the fact the Euro-Entente was non-ideological and welcomed republics, according to France.
Two nations were top of the list for addition according to Britain. Belgium and the Netherlands. The former, despite the sunbomb incident, was always dominated by people who regarded the Entente as the faction more aligned to their interests, and the German occupation of 1945-50 only worsened their opinions of Germany. The Netherlands was pro-German once, yes, but a new generation of Dutch people has grown up resenting German economic domination of their country. The Euro-Entente had as one of its selling points that it was one of "equals", unlike the German-dominated Mitteleuropa, and hence this would win over a formerly pro-German country, according to Britain.
Home and new French President Jacques Delmas ended up agreeing to aim for them all in an aggressive diplomatic push. In what would prove to be the last of the luck for Prime Minister Home, this push came at the same time as Germany was in a shouting match with Russia fuelled by the military yearning for yet another fight. This created the sense of urgency that proved crucial for the rapid growth of the Euro-Entente.
However, it came with issues. Portugal was the only one of the GW2 Entente to keep its colonies [even France lost theirs, and that was helluva messy] and this did not gel well with the Entente's anticolonialist reputation. Salazar refused to budge, and in the end, a quiet deal between Britain and France meant that de facto Portugal's colonies did not get the same protection as the Portuguese mainland.
Meanwhile, on domestic matters, Crosland was determined to "modernise" education by getting rid of the old grammar school system. The Comprehensive System was set in place by Nicolson's government (which he staved off a right-wing rebellion by making it clear it only applied to new schools) and now Crosland [a firm follower of Nicolson's ideas] wished to complete the process. He issued a department circular instructing the provincial governments and local governments to begin converting grammar schools to comprehensive.
The NDU Right exploded with fury and Home came back from Paris to a party in civil war.
Being a man of the old school, Home was opposed to this, but knew he had to keep the Left and Right on side. So in one of his few forays into domestic policy, Home amended the circular to devolve the decision itself to the provincial governments, and explicitly earmarked several schools to be protected from "comprehensivation", including his own Eton College. This wasn't enough for the Right, so he also moved Crosland to Foreign Secretary.
This was in many ways putting Crosland into an irrelevant position, as everyone knew that de facto the Prime Minister was his own Foreign Secretary. The Left was sated with some liberalisation of society and the Right received some immigration restriction as well. With the party no longer burning, and rather just seething at a constant, Home turned his attention back to his favourite aspect of governing.
This time, it was Ireland. Ireland was always a running sore. And with an Irish president in America, it behoved Britain to brush over all troubles with Ireland. Unlike other countries, there was to be no lucky coincidence of an amenable leader. While President Erskine Childers was amenable to a reconciliation, Taoiseach Dan Breen certainly was not. A dedicated Irish republican who believed that British anti-colonial rhetoric was false and any reconciliation would be merely a disastrous mistake for Ireland, he sought to frustrate British efforts.
The futile negotiations would engulf Home's diplomatic efforts and lead to France taking the lead in the Euro-Entente for the rest of his time in power. There seemed to be some light at the end of the tunnel in early 1969 with a possible Liverpool meeting then... bang.
Geoffrey Rippon (National Democratic majority) 1969-1974
1969: def. Barbara Castle (Socialist Labour)
"Entente Formidable"
The Prime Minister's body laid on the ground, head bleeding out, life gone from the eyes. A nation shocked. A government wanting answers. And answers it would find, but those would shock the world. The gun was tracked to its purchaser, who squealed on who paid him off, and that man named the woman who hired him to do so. The woman in question, after intensive interrogation, admitted who ordered her to do it all.
Taoiseach of the Irish Republic Dan Breen. New Prime Minister Geoffrey Rippon, shoved in the role after the NDU Right got their way, demanded justice for Home. Anglo-Irish relations cratered as a result of the information coming out, and despite an attempt to remove him, Breen held on through the dissolving of the Dail and vocally declared in an infamous speech "The English is and shall always be the mortal enemy of the Irish".
A harrowed President Kennedy was forced to condemn Breen's regime, saying in a firm tone "As an Irishman, Dan Breen does not speak for me, and he does not speak for any Irishman but his own twisted vision. My condolences goes to Prime Minister Home's family". Shortly after that, he declared his intention to resign from office, commonly attested to a collapse in his health.
The 1969 election was always going to be a NDU victory after Home's death. He may have been a distanced aristocrat who was much more interested in foreign policy than Britain, but facts didn't matter after he was shot. He was now a martyr for human rights, for reconciliation and for what he commonly called "a certain idea of Britain". 53 seats switched from SLP to NDU off that martyrdom, and the SLP suffered a fourth loss.
Rippon held no love of the Irish, but he was a firm Euro-federalist, even more so than the general "pro-Euro-Entente" feeling of the average Briton. And with Home's death, Rippon's belief was solid. Britain needed to improve its diplomatic clout even more to prevent another assassination. The only way was Euro-Entente. Breen's regime was a constant threat to Britain, and it aggravated near everyone in British society despite Germany declaring Ireland was still under their protection. Rippon started negotiation with the rest of the Euro-Entente for further cooperation.
This would dominate his five years as Prime Minister, however the marked shift of domestic policy from the old "Butler-Crosland" policies to a more right-wing one would create controversy, and give ammo to the Opposition to use with the moderate voters. With Rippon, he had his own balancing to do. The broader NDU Right wasn't entirely on board the idea of further integration, in fact they were quite opposed and he was very much the exception. However, they could be sated, for now, with more right-wing fiscal policy.
Spending was reduced, tax levels were cut, and "slim government" was the word of the day. That and the negotiations. Which even for the Euro-Entente, proved a nightmare as national interests started to clash. France doubted many of Rippon's more out-there proposals, preferring the "association" model. In the end, the negotiations concluded in early 1974 with an agreement to consolidate the various economic organisations into one European organisation, the European Association, or EA for short, albeit not much changed in the end.
By then, the economy was getting sluggish. The years of using up the last of the Morrell Plan's money was at an end. And turns out cutting spending leads to less people spending. The British people was ready for a change.
Peter Shore (Socialist Labour majority) 1974-pres.
1974: def. Geoffrey Rippon (National Democratic)
"Shepherd's Warning"
The newest Prime Minister, Peter Shore, walks as a contradiction upon himself. A firm British nationalist who jealously guards economic powers, he nevertheless champions European trade, the Euro-Entente and the EA. Perhaps that's just reflective of how British society has shifted and how comprehensively the old dreams of Empire or Commonwealth has died. Britain is truly a small island amidst the territory of giants.
Heading Britain's first left-wing government in its entire history, his party is one of idealists, trade unionists [emphasis on trade] and the odd defector. Or to sum it up, inexperienced people. The only people who knew how to govern, out of his lot, were the ones who came from provincial politics in the North. And provincial politics, to be charitable, is very little like Parliament politics...
The Socialist Labour Party nevertheless has grand plans for the country. Crosland's brief anti-poverty campaign was restarted and focused intensely on more poor regions such as the North or Wales, using tax-and-spend methods to improve opportunities, welfare and labour rights. More controversially was the centralisation of power to Parliament, reducing provincial powers considerably. It was justified on efficiency grounds, but it would lead to a backlash way after the ending of this list. But it does come.
Industrial policy was since the Lawrence years focused on developing domestic industry, but under Shore it amped up. He established a Department of Industrial Development, and emphasised its importance in every speech. Trade unions would find that their would get a warmer reception with Shore than with any other Prime Minister, which was to be expected, but it was nice to see.
As part of the growing clout of the Anglo-French partnership, the Concorde was first flew in the air in the first few months of Shore's ministry. This was symbolic of the post-war generations of British and French's intense hopes and dreams for a better future. If that future is to be realised, Shore thought, the hand of the superbomb would have to be ended. Acutely aware of the old promises American President Dewey proclaimed after his election victory, and how easily those promises were mislaid, he realised that it had to take an international treaty to force the issue. No mere words would.
As fortune has it his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, was himself similarly opposed to superbombs and agreed to participate in Shore's possible conference. They also discussed the fate of Austria-Hungary, and how it would weaken Mitteleuropa and benefit the Euro-Entente. They disagreed on a lot, but recognised the common interest both countries had in this conference going well.
The United States' President, Joshua Blackford, accepted the invitation to the conference, and pledged to renew Dewey's pledges with a goal to end superbombs and sunbombs around the world. It would require negotiations on the details, indeed, but he was cooperative. After all, haven't Britain and France been rather cooperative with America, and the idea fit very well within American "world police" thinking.
The German Chancellor at first refused. But hearing of President Blackford accepting, he rushed to do the same. German internal politics was almost bursting at the seams. The SPD was increasingly more and more radical by the day, some of their controlled Kingdoms barely pay attention to Berlin, while their erstwhile ally in Austria-Hungary was falling apart. Mitteleuropa was on a clock. Germany was on a clock.
Tick, Tock...
Shore and Chirac prepared for the conference meticulously. Even as news come in of Japan's horrific collapse [don't ask where the Koreans got those guns stamped 'MADE IN EA' from], of growing decolonialisation [with even Portugal giving in in 1975] and more pro-EE states in the world, the two were focused firmly on the conference. Even as Ireland fell into a civil war between Breenites and liberals, or the Ottoman Empire finally releasing Syria as part of a peace deal, the two were very focused on making sure it went well.
Tick, Tock...
And it did. They managed to convince most of the world leaders to accept dismantling of superbombs and sunbombs, highlighting that they brought nothing but horror in the past, and if everyone was to mutually disarm, this piling would cease. The treaty was then ready for signing.
Tick, Tock...
The German Chancellor refused of course. Jealously protective of his country's sunbombs, he brought out the old Tresckowite accusation that this whole conference was nothing but plotting to undermine Germany, he declared "we won the wars! Two of them!" and left with his delegation.
Tick, Tock...
Fifteen minutes later, the fate of Europe was sealed with a flick of President Blackford's wrist as he left his name on the treaty, and then shook the hands of both Prime Minister Shore and President Chirac, thanking them for setting the conference up, and firmly deploring Germany's "belligerent" actions.
BONG!
And history would say that Germany won the war, but Britain and France won the peace.