ABSTRACT
Labour Governments since 1945, regardless of some traditional Party shibboleths, or even the Party’s actual policies while in opposition, have tended to pursue an essentially bipartisan foreign policy, not least because they were unable – even presuming that they were willing – radically to alter the external and internal environment in which foreign policy was made for the 50 or so years after the war. The first feature of this environment, of course, was the cold war between the West and the communist world. The second was the decline in the size of the colonial Empire and the relaxing of links with the Commonwealth. The third was the psychological ambivalence of the British towards Europe brought about primarily by the fact that in the second world war most of continental Europe was occupied and therefore, perhaps, less inclined to worry about giving up sovereignty; Britain still lives on a mythology that tells of how we stood alone, and this sort of mythology – or psychology – runs much deeper than mere trade patterns.
