ABSTRACT
The latter half of the 1970s is most frequently portrayed in the literature as the moment when British decline reached its nadir, marked by further retreat from existing commitments under the pressure of intractable domestic political and economic difficulties. Britain’s defining characteristic in this period was a profound lack of confidence as a major power, dependent on its nuclear deterrent for residual status and influence. However, an examination of the policies and events of the second half of the 1970s reveals that this image owes more to the back-projection of Conservative Party hagiography than it does to the policies of the Wilson and Callaghan Governments.1 Although the predominant impression is that Labour was necessarily preoccupied with domestic issues during this period, the avowal of Britain’s diminished power and status provided them with the opportunity for the first time to impose a fresh vision of British interaction with the outside world which was rooted in the principles of socialist internationalism tempered by pragmatic recognition of the realities of world affairs. That they were able to do so was due, it is argued here, to the experimentation with the Cold War system in which the superpowers had been engaged during this transitory decade. Far from being the end of an era in British decline, this period marked the first hesitant beginnings of a renewed British engagement with the rest of the world, albeit defined within more modern parameters. As such, Labour under Wilson and Callaghan was in many respects ahead of its time.
