ABSTRACT
Britain was Clement Attlee and the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, who appeared at the resumed Potsdam Conference at the end of July 1945 no doubt to the surprise of Stalin and the new American President, Harry Truman. There were those who had hopes of a change in foreign policy to something more 'socialist', but neither Attlee nor Bevin were the men to bring this about. The former was the product of that most imperialist of public schools, Haileybury, while Bevin, as a trade unionist, had developed an almost pathological hatred of communists. Both were determined that Britain would show that it was still capable of being a 'great power'. In spite of the fact that Suez marked the symbolic end of British power in a world sense, Harold Macmillan was determined to reassert Britain's role alongside the United States. Relations with the United States were helped by the fact that, under Macmillan, the Empire was shed with some speed.
