Postwar Britain's Downward Swing

Britain's energy might have been running on fumes after WW1, but the final decline from global status happened in the post war era.

It’s not exactly ground-breaking history to look at the decline of Britain after world war 2. Indeed, a simple look at the vanishing of the pink bits of the map¹ year on year in that era gives it a rather graphic representation. On the other hand though, Britain suffered fewer casualties than many of its European neighbours and had suffered nearly three times as many casualties in WW1. Britain’s rebuilding bill, although no doubt large, was dwarfed by the tasks facing most continental European countries; rebuilding Coventry was not the same as rebuilding Berlin, Warsaw or Leningrad. Aside from the obvious explanations, we need to look for other reasons why Britain ceased to be a major player on the world scene.

The first arguments are purely academic and not particularly interesting. It can be argued that either Britain didn’t decline in this period, or that any decline was simply a regression to the mean for a small Atlantic island and requires no further explanation. The first of these is rather unrealistic, and even the most ardent nationalists would struggle to argue that today’s Britain enjoys a similar status to the British empire of the 1930s. The second argument may have merit, but it’s hardly interesting and even if a trajectory can be expected its triggers can still be investigated.

The 60s decline came from the devastation of WW2, the US being relatively unscathed by WW2 so moving massively ahead compared to others, Britain's poor deal with the US for war loans compared to others, the end of Empire and general inefficiency caused by outdated and unionised industries.

The terms Britain negotiated to repay war loans were a major bone of contention in British politics and economics for a long time. I somehow doubt they were in America - indeed the reason that the terms weren’t as favourable as Britain had hoped is that the American gaze was now looking at the Iron Curtain and trying to outmanoeuvre Communism. It’s noteworthy that the rebounding of the British economy in the 1980s coincided with these war loans being inflated away to a much more manageable amount.

The trouble with having been the innovator for so long was that other nations learnt from British mistakes so had more advanced versions of things like railways and chemicals industries. Additionally, lots of British industries were struggling in the new global market place of post-WW2, proving expensive and mediocre in the face of more open competition.

Britain certainly suffered in comparison to the relatively unscathed United States. It’s an interesting point that each of the US’ leaps forward as a world power has come through war - the Civil War allowed US manufacturing to break free of European strangleholds, WW1 broke the European hegemony and WW2 left the USA as one of the two major powers.

Ironically Britain in the 60s did manage to invent itself out of some of the problems and this was probably the last big era of capital investment in solid things. There were quite low barriers to making new products and a fairly strong supply of good engineers, technicians and so on. This wasn't an answer to all problems, but where a lot of iconic British brands and products from the era succeeded. This 60s fillip didn’t last though, and by the late 70s many British products were barely superior to their much derided Eastern bloc counterparts. British Leyland anyone?

Britain had also only just woken up to the fact it was basically a US vassal state and that wasn't a particularly strong relationship. The Suez crisis was in 1956 and was basically the nail in the coffin for even the most ardent believer that Britain in the 50s was a world power like it had been 20 years earlier. The US wasn't particularly trustful of Britain as a reliable partner in this period, partly because of communist infiltration of the British secret service (proven) and state (strongly believed).

Britain had spent over two centuries as an Imperial power by the end of WW2, although this of course depends who you’re asking. It’s fairly common to see the advent of the British Empire as being Clive establishing British rule in India in the 1750s, though I doubt many Irishmen agree with that. This Imperial nature meant the economy had been geared towards adding value to the products of various colonies and as that relationship changed the economy stuttered and stumbled. The attempt to replace the Empire with the Commonwealth never stood on the same economic footing and the organisation itself has never really stood out on the world stage.

It’s also worth remembering that from the British perspective there was resentment towards America for joining the war too late, not acknowledging British contributions and the one way transfer of (admittedly imperfect) technology like the Tube Alloys project (both the UK and US projects were riddled with communists). The bad feeling over this didn't diminish during people's lifetimes - in particular over the US treating "enemy" communist states in Europe more preferably than they treated allied Britain. Food rationing ended in 1954 and coal rationing in 1958, whilst we had American films showing how wonderful life was when you weren't rebuilding and paying off the Anglo-American war loan.

Post war rebuilding all across Europe was horrifically ugly. Brutalism and concrete were popular. The real trick was having the balls and money to tear it down and do it properly again in the 80s and 90s, something done very haphazardly here and made much worse under Thatcherism when cashing in on assets was more important than improving them. Post-war Britain was famously home to a broad political consensus - in other words no opposition or critique of some plans. This gradually fell apart, but the kind of things built then were expensive and perhaps better suited to eras with less global competition.

In time we might begin to see the period of 1979-2008 as being a brief reverse in the overall decline of British fortunes, perhaps not quite the economists’ “dead cat bounce” but something that many ultimately turn out to have had little longer impact. When politicians of all stripes simply spout doom, decline and decay then it’s hard to think otherwise.

1. The British empire was traditionally coloured pink on world maps. Although associated with the colour red, that made black writing too hard to read so a lighter shade was used.