Labour in Charge: Reassessing Defence Priorities

Abstract

On the eve of the General Election in October 1964, Britain was discharging three major defence roles: the defence of Western Europe through NATO, the defence of the region East of Suez, and that of a ‘nuclear power’.¹ In so doing, Britain was spending about 7 per cent of its GNP on defence, and its armed forces of about 400,000 men were deployed all over the world, including some 54,000 troops in Southeast Asia.² In October, the Foreign Office produced a paper entitled ‘Britain’s obligations abroad’, which listed 24 formal defence commitments, including its membership of collective security organisations such as NATO. Thus, there were nearly 100 countries and dependent territories to whose defence Britain was committed.³ However, Britain’s economic standing in the world was causing grave concern to its political and financial leadership. Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England, warned Alec Douglas-Home in July 1964 that the cost of Britain’s overseas commitments ‘has been rising very rapidly over the past decade … it looks as if it will go on rising’. In August, the Cabinet was informed of the worsening of the balance of payments deficit, and nearly three weeks before the General Election, Cromer told the Prime Minister that while the ‘short-term position was under control… very early in the life of the new Government major decisions would need to be taken in relation to public expenditure, particularly overseas expenditure’.⁴