ABSTRACT
After the Second World War the military objections to the tunnel became progressively weaker. 1 Initially, however, opposition in Whitehall was still entrenched. Thus, when in May 1949 the Cabinet agreed to define its present attitude ‘in case the matter should be raised by European Governments, either in the Council of Europe or otherwise’, the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, asked the interested departments to submit their views in writing. The exercise, reviewed by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Hugh Dalton, revealed not only that ministers were unanimous in opposing the early construction of a tunnel, but also that many of them opposed it in the longer-term. Sir Stafford Cripps, the Chancellor, was particularly hostile: ‘This seems a vast waste of time’, he noted. 2 The Chiefs of Staff noted that developments in military technology, for example the atomic bomb, more effective bombing by aircraft and rockets, advances in mining and submarine warfare, the use of aircraft for moving troops, and the increased weight of military equipment, strengthened the case for a tunnel, though they continued to argue that the military advantages were outweighed by the military disadvantages. 3 And inside the Foreign Office, the archives revealed that ‘opinion … both official and ministerial, has always been heavily against the tunnel’. There were dangers: ‘It is quite on the cards that France may fail to recover spiritually, economically, politically and militarily; and that she will succumb to Communism’. Lord Balfour’s observation was repeated – ‘As long as the ocean remains our friend, do not let us deliberately destroy its power to help us’. Finally, those familiar ‘psychological’ objections resurfaced. ‘There is still an obvious significance, for the British people, in inhabiting an island having no land communication with its neighbours’, the memorandum to Cabinet observed. ‘An important element in the character of our national life would be altered by the creation of a land connection … one effect might for example be the weakening of that unquestioning sense of superiority over the peoples of the continent which forms an essential element in British self-confidence.’ 4
