Introduction

Abstract

Did the Marshall Plan push a socialist British government off course? To what extent was it a mechanism of American hegemony in the post-war world? Did it undermine the power of the recipient states? These questions are at the heart of this study. The implementation of the Marshall Plan is seen as a key moment in the establishment of an American hegemony in the postwar order in which the United States not only gained dominance over the shaping of the institutions of the international order, but also imposed a particular form of politics on the domestic order in Europe. This was based on anti-communism, mass production, mass consumption and economic growth. This is an issue that has attracted particular attention in the UK because of claims that the radical programme of the Attlee government was knocked off course as a result of American influence, in part exercized through the institutions of the Marshall Plan. In contrast, this work argues that the British government was able to manage relations with the US, in terms of limiting unwanted US influence, while managing or manipulating relations with its domestic support base, thus entrenching its power at a time of changing expectations. It argues that the government and the leadership of the trade union movement used the Marshall Plan to restructure the unions and establish their hegemony over the labour movement. The leadership of the Labour government, with the support of the bulk of the trade union leadership, sought to control not only industrial relations, but also wider aspects of trade union opinion through a process of modernization. The Labour government was able to convert these short-term advantages into a longer term gain through the appropriation of notions of progress and growth generated by the implementation of the European Recovery Programme, what Maier has termed the ‘politics of productivity’,¹ thus avoiding challenges to the Labour leadership and the state. A new discourse developed for labour, based on compromise, the national interest, economic reconstruction, and modernity. In this way, the Marshall Plan was used to create a more entrenched pattern of relationships within the labour movement, and between the labour movement and the state, that were thought to be enduring. This was done at both the domestic and international level. Thus, this study focuses on how the relationship between external political pressures and domestic political groupings can create change. These questions are of vital importance in an era of globalization, and there is much to be learnt from a study of the Marshall Plan and the immediate postwar period.