Foreign Policy of the Douglas-Home Government

This book provides an important study of the foreign policy of the short-lived Douglas-Home Government, which arrived at a crucial juncture on a number of international issues and in the shadow of an impending general election. During its existence, Anglo-American relations were strained by US opposition to the sale of buses to Castro's Cuba and concern about independence for British Guiana, whilst American promotion of a scheme to pool nuclear weapons within NATO threatened to undermine Britain's own independent deterrent. Further, in Commonwealth matters, the Government faced international criticism for its relationship with apartheid South Africa. It also worked to prevent a white minority government in Rhodesia from declaring independence unilaterally. East of Suez, there was nationalist violence in Aden, Britain's only Crown Colony in the Middle East, and the confrontation between Indonesia and the British-backed federation of Malaysia. Finally, Cyprus, already independent but home to British bases, nearly descended into civil war in December 1963 and remained tense thereafter. Holt examines these issues, and analyses how policy-making was complicated by the division of responsibility between the Foreign Secretary, R. A. Butler, and the Commonwealth and Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, and by the imminence of the forthcoming general election.