But how did the NHS come to be? Let us look back to the creation of the National Health Service and how the government of the day led by Prime Minister Clement Attlee set about introducing this transformative reform.
The Second World War led to an immense loss of life and induced considerable hardships. Britons endured rationing (which continued after the war was over), evacuation, destruction or damage to millions of homes and workplaces, air raids as well as the mass pivoting of the nation’s people and resources to meet the vast war effort. The period between the First and Second World Wars had also left its mark. The interwar years were a time of economic depression and social deprivation, there had been no great development of state provision. Attlee and his Cabinet had lived through (and in many cases fought in) both wars and recognised the need for reconstruction and expansion – a comprehensive welfare system was at the heart of this.
During the Second World War, the coalition government led by Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Leader of the Labour Party Clement Attlee (Deputy Prime Minister from 1942) seized on the need for post war reconstruction. Despite the preoccupation with fighting a world war, the government prioritised planning for this. In June 1941, Labour minister Arthur Greenwood announced to the House of Commons that a new committee had been formed to survey existing social security provision and allied services under the chairmanship of Sir William Beveridge.[2] This became the totemic 1942 Beveridge Report, which identified ‘Five Giants’ that needed to be tackled in order for Britain to succeed economically and socially. The five giants were Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Influential economist and civil servant John Maynard Keynes was also consulted by Beveridge during the making of the report. At his suggestion Beveridge modified some recommendations, thus Keynes believed the plan to be broadly affordable.[3]
The report was published on 2nd December 1942 and immediately became a best-seller at home and abroad (costing 2 shillings).[4] Some 256,000 copies of the full report, 369,000 copies of an abridged version and 40,000 copies of an American edition were sold in twelve months.[5] The proposals received widespread support across the political spectrum. The recommendations of the Beveridge Report widened the scope set by Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act (1911). Beveridge offered a blueprint for a comprehensive welfare state. In the years after publication, the coalition government worked on plans for turning the recommendations into reality, including producing a White Paper. Full implementation was however not guaranteed. In March 1943, Churchill warned against imposing significant new expenditures without knowing the full post war economic picture; yet he also advocated a ‘national compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave.’[6]
On 5th July 1945 the Labour Party led by Clement Attlee won a landslide victory at the polls, with a majority of 146 seats.[7] After winning the General Election, the Attlee government set about creating a comprehensive welfare state, at the heart of which was the NHS. Indeed Labour had entered the election offering ‘the full Beveridge’.[8] Attlee’s ‘executive efficiency’ would be integral to introducing and implementing such a huge programme.[9] Though Britain and its allies had emerged victorious, the strain of total war had left the country in a desperate state. Yet Attlee reflected:
We had not been elected to try to patch up an old system but to make something new ... I therefore determined that we would go ahead as fast as possible with our programme.[10]
Attlee’s social and political work in the East End of London shaped his view of the role of the state. By the time he was in government, ideas that had seemed very much his own were now part of an emerging consensus. Attlee wrote, ‘I have witnessed now the acceptance by all leading politicians in this country and all the economists of any account of the conception of the utilisation of abundance.’[11] In 1918 as a soldier in the First World War Attlee expounded his sense of purpose, ‘We live in a state of society where the vast majority live stunted lives – we endeavour to give them a freer life.’[12]
On arrival in Downing Street, Attlee faced a challenging economic picture. A month into office it got gloomier with the abrupt end of the US Lend-Lease scheme. Subsequently the US made a further loan agreement with Britain however Hugh Dalton, Attlee’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (1945-47) noted that the situation remained ‘desperately difficult’.[13] US Marshall Aid from 1948 until 1951 would also provide critical support for the British economy. Attlee, in assembling his Cabinet, appointed the political firebrand, South Wales miner and trade unionist Aneurin Bevan as Minister of Health. The King’s Speech on 15th August 1945 outlined an ambitious legislative programme including nationalisation of the fuel and power industries, civil aviation, Bank of England as well as establishing a National Health Service.[14] Chancellor Hugh Dalton worked closely with Bevan to establish the financial foundation for the introduction of the NHS. Dalton found Bevan’s vitality and drive impressive, and Bevan’s biographer credits Dalton as ‘after Bevan … the chief architect’ of the NHS.[15]
During the Second World War, the scope of health insurance had been extended but it covered just half of the population and did not include hospital and specialist services, dental, optical, or hearing services.[16] Universal provision regardless of ability to pay was at the core of the Attlee government’s new reforms. Minster of Health, Bevan set about building on the Beveridge Report and the coalition government’s White Paper. In October 1945, Bevan outlined his vision for a National Health Service. In December, he explained to Cabinet that this was ‘an opportunity, which may not recur for years, for a thorough overhaul and reconstruction of the country’s health position.’[17] Prime Minister Attlee drew on a cricket metaphor to express his approval, Bevan had done well “on a pretty sticky wicket”.[18] Provisions would include hospital care, ambulance services, GP services, maternity care, prescriptions as well as optical care and dentistry.[19]
Turning the NHS from principle to policy required significant structural change and thus extensive negotiations with the medical profession, local authorities, committees, Parliament and with other Cabinet ministers. It was an arduous process to say the least. What’s more, the NHS was one of a series of reforms which formed the welfare state. How the state would pay for these reforms was a huge matter for the government of the day. Keynes had told the War Cabinet in May 1945 that Britain faced a ‘financial Dunkirk’.[20] The 1946 National Insurance Act[21] extended the contributions of working age people (except married women) in order to contribute to funding the provisions of the welfare state.
Given its foundational status for the whole welfare programme, Attlee focused his attention on ensuring the passage of the National Insurance Bill. In the House of Commons during the first and second readings, Attlee reflected on the historical battle for social reform and credited earlier pioneers.[22] The Prime Minister also acknowledged the significant financial cost:
The question is asked – can we afford it? … Supposing the answer is “No”, what does that mean? It really means that the sum total of the goods produced and the services rendered by the people of this country is not sufficient to provide for all our people at all times, in sickness, in health, in youth and in age ... I cannot believe … that we can submit to the world that the masses of our people must be condemned to penury.[23]
The National Health Service Act received Royal Assent on 6th November 1946. This however marked the beginning of a deeper, more protracted phase of negotiations in the run up to so-called “Appointed Day” on 5th July 1948 – when NHS provision would begin. As such 1,143 voluntary hospitals (90,000 beds) and 1,545 municipal hospitals (390,000 beds) were taken over by the NHS in England and Wales.[24]
Historian Pauline Gregg recounted how nail-bitingly close it got:
Six months before the Appointed Day it looked as though the whole edifice might crash through lack of support from the medical profession; but a near-last-minute agreement saved the structure.[25]
Up to this point the medical profession exercised a significant degree of autonomy and so the creation of a National Health Service would lead to some loss of freedom as well as increased bureaucratic demands. Bevan recognised this and stated:
Any health service which hopes to win the consent of the doctors must allay these fears. … There is no alternative to self-government by the medical profession in all matters affecting the content of its academic life. … It is for the community to provide the apparatus of medicine for the doctor. It is for him to use it freely in accordance with the standards of his profession.[26]
The Minister of Health however was also determined to deliver his mission:
No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.[27]
Bevan secured the support of Cabinet to table a debate in the Commons on 9th February 1948, which confirmed the government’s determination to begin NHS provision on Appointed Day.[28] In the February debate, Bevan detailed the ‘wholesale resistance to the implementation’ the NHS Act from the professional bodies.[29] Over the proceeding months, Bevan made concessions and gave assurances to the medical profession on clinical freedom.[30] By Appointed Day, a majority of GPs had applied to enter the NHS and three quarters of the population had registered with the NHS.[31] As the river of NHS provision began to flow, Bevan turned to his Parliamentary Private Secretary Barbara Castle and said:
Barbara, if you want to know what all this is for, look in the perambulators [prams].[32]
Dr Michelle Clement is Lecturer and researcher on government reform and delivery at The Strand Group, King’s College London and Researcher in Residence at No.10 Downing Street. @MLClem @TheStrandGroup
[1] R. Klein, The New Politics of the NHS (Radcliffe Publishing, 2006), p.1.
[2] P. Gregg, The Welfare State (George G. Harrap & Co, 1967), p.18.
[3] J. Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography (OUP, 1977), p.412.
[4] P. Gregg, The Welfare State (George G. Harrap & Co, 1967), p.19.
[5] P. Gregg, The Welfare State (George G. Harrap & Co, 1967), p.19.
[6] M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-45 (Heinemann, 1986), p.367.
[7] The first overall majority for the Labour Party.
[8] P. Hennessy, A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid (Penguin, 2022), p.5.
[9] R. Burridge, Clement Attlee (Cape, 1985), p.204
[10] C. Attlee, As It Happened (Sharpe Books, 2019), p.165.
[11] J. Bew, Citizen Clem (Kindle edition, riverrun, 2016), p.578.
[12] J. Bew, Citizen Clem (Kindle edition, riverrun, 2016), p.579.
[13] H. Dalton, High Tide and After: Memoirs 1945-1960 (Muller, 1962), p.xi.
[14] The King’s Speech, Hansard, Vol. 137, 15 August 1945.
[15] B. Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (Papermac, 1986), p.495.
[16] P. Gregg, The Welfare State (George G. Harrap & Co, 1967), p.49.
[17] CAB/129/5 ‘Proposals for a National Health Service’, 13 December 1945, The National Archives,
http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-129-5-cp-45-339-39.pdf
[18] J. Bew, Citizen Clem (Kindle edition, riverrun, 2016), p.567.
[19] In 1951, under the Attlee government, charges for dentistry and optical care were introduced. The following year the Churchill government brought in prescription charges.
[20] P. Hennessy, A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid (Penguin, 2022), p.7.
[21] Which built on the 1911 National Insurance Act.
[22] J. Bew, Citizen Clem (Kindle edition, riverrun, 2016), p.573.
[23] P. Hennessy, Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (Cape, 1992), p.119.
[24] G. Rivett, “1948-1957: Establishing the National Health Service”, Nuffield Trust, 2014,
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chapter/1948-1957-establishing-the-national-health-service
[25] P. Gregg, The Welfare State (George G. Harrap & Co, 1967), p.51.
[26] A. Bevan, In Place of Fear (Kindle edition, Lume Books, 2020), Loc 1605-1630.
[27] A. Bevan, In Place of Fear (Kindle edition, Lume Books, 2020), Loc 1353.
[28] K. Harris, Attlee (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p.423.
[29] House of Commons ‘National Health Service’ Debate, 9 February 1948,
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1948/feb/09/national-health-service
[30] R. Lowe, The Welfare State in Britain since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p.179
[31] P. Gregg, The Welfare State (George G. Harrap & Co, 1967), pp.62-63.
[32] P. Hennessy, Distilling the Frenzy: Writing the History of One’s Own Times (Biteback, 2012), p.10.
]]>Yet, for all the interest they may have in this clandestine world, many of those who have taken office have lacked experience of intelligence first hand. While some have juggled a series of complex briefs across government, others were relative novices. Few, like Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, have had the intelligence apprenticeship they need.
Having entered office, Prime Ministers are briefed on what the UK’s intelligence agencies can, and cannot, do. They also receive the Weekly Survey of Intelligence, or ‘Red Book’, from the assessment body, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), with secret material from SIS, MI5 and GCHQ provided by alternative means.
Briefings on intelligence are just one form of introduction to the secret state machinery. Visits are another. While there are gaps, released files do allow an insight into Margaret Thatcher’s visits to the UK intelligence machinery. After Churchill, she comes a close second for her passion for the secret world. One senior official recalled, ‘Mrs Thatcher was a devotee of intelligence. She liked it, she respected it she believed it gave her the truth’.
On 29 February 1980, Margaret Thatcher became the first ever Prime Minister to attend a meeting of the JIC. Then committee chair, Antony Acland, noted that the JIC was ‘gratified and encouraged by the Prime Minister’s interest in intelligence, and her attendance at this meeting would be a stimulus to its work’. Thatcher herself later acknowledged the importance of the visit. “I found the occasion both thoroughly enjoyable in its own right and of value in the longer term”, she wrote to Acland: "The work of the Committee is of considerable importance."
The visit to the JIC was just the beginning. On 10 April 1980, Margaret Thatcher also became the first Prime Minister since Churchill to visit the UK’s signals intelligence agency. Arriving at GCHQ’s Oakley site in Cheltenham, she began the visit by being briefed on GCHQ’s work by its Director, Sir Brian Tovey. The visit was broken down into 3 sessions.[1] The first focused on non-Soviet Bloc collection and the work of GCHQ’s K Division. Other topics included cryptanalysis, translation, traffic analysis, and the distribution of reporting, followed by lunch with the GCHQ Directorate. Michael Herman, then Head of J Division (Soviet Bloc Production area), ran a second session on Soviet Bloc traffic, with the third, and final, session led by GCHQ’s Chief Scientist Ralph Benjamin. It was in the final briefing that Thatcher was told for the first time about Zircon, GCHQ’s ill-fated top-secret satellite project, later cancelled due to rising costs.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister remained an enthusiastic supporter of the project. Tovey maintained an excellent relationship with her, and GCHQ’s intelligence was to have an important influence on the Falklands conflict in 1982.
Margaret Thatcher’s diplomatic private secretary, Michael Alexander (himself the son of legendary wartime cryptanalyst Hugh Alexander), later wrote the Prime Minister ‘enjoyed’ the visit. In a letter to senior staff, Tovey reflected that ‘the visit was an outstanding success which can only reflect credit upon GCHQ as a whole. My warmest congratulations to you all.’
In September 1984, the SIS’s Chief Colin Figures asked Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, whether the Prime Minister would visit SIS’s headquarters in Century House.[2] In a draft itinerary, Figures suggested up to an hour and a half briefing on ‘current problems, including, perhaps, the Afghan scene and one or two of our most important agent cases’.[3] The visit would also include lunch with ‘medium-grade and junior staff-members’ plus a ‘walk-about’ including the communications department, registry and card index. Writing to the Prime Minister’s private secretary, Armstrong wrote there was ‘an element of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ about this’, citing an earlier (and undated) visit by Mrs Thatcher to MI5, yet suggested the trip would be ‘interesting and useful’.
Margaret Thatcher's appointments diary records that this trip took place on 25 September 1984, and like the earlier GCHQ visit, it went exceptionally well. In a letter to Figures, Thatcher wrote:
Thank you very much for your hospitality and for the excellent arrangements made for my visit today. I found the various briefings and demonstrations of the greatest possible interest. I was much impressed by the knowledge, dedication and professionalism of those whom I met. Please thank them all.
On a visit of this sort, I am inevitably unable to meet more than a few people. I would therefore like to take this opportunity of saying a word of thanks to all members of your service. I know that a great deal of their work goes unrecognised and unsung. In the nature of things, very few people can know the full extent of their contribution to preserving our liberty and helping others secure theirs. I should like all members of the service to know that they have my full support and my warm appreciation of their work.
Margaret Thatcher’s understanding of intelligence went far beyond her reading of reports. Visits to the intelligence agencies were part of a wider effort to develop understanding of departments, personalities and processes, and a valuable opportunity for the Prime Minister to show her appreciation of the intelligence she received. For the agencies, showing the Prime Minister what they did was vital and part of an effort to maintain budgets. Mrs Thatcher’s determined support for Zircon in the face of wider opposition on cost grounds is testament to her advocacy of intelligence, something perhaps reinforced by her visits. With a new Prime Minister, the need for close intelligence-policy relations is important, and visits can be important in cementing the bond with the occupants of Number 10.
[1] The GCHQ Historical Team assisted the author by providing details of the visit.
[2] Details of the visit can be found at The National Archives in file PREM 19/1635.
[3] One of the ‘important’ agent cases Mrs Thatcher is likely to have been briefed on was that of Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB officer posted to the Soviet Embassy in London, who had been recruited by SIS in 1974.
]]>The episode was not only a huge commercial loss and a humiliating blow to British prestige but also exposed weaknesses both in Middle Eastern policy and in crisis management. Butler identified a range of factors responsible for the debacle including a weakened Labour government and complacent thinking by company and government officials. He also highlighted an inability to project military power following the loss of India, and a lack of support, as well as adverse interference, from the United States government.
Butler expressed disappointment that, due the confidential nature of the topic, his work would never see the light of day and be published. After 60 years, this has been remedied. A new publication by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) Historians reproduces the full report along with associated documents and contextual essays by contemporary historians.
This prompted discussion as to whether British diplomacy needed ‘a new look’ in the post-imperial age, one based more on national self-interest, like that of the French. Sir Harold Caccia, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, posed this question to British ambassadors in February 1963. Coming just after the rejection of Britain’s first application to join the European Economic Community (EEC), it prompted plenty of response.
Butler was asked to analyse and synthesise the replies, which he completed in May 1963 as ‘A New Perspective for British Diplomacy.’ He made several recommendations: increased public relations at home in mobilising support for British foreign policy, ‘sharper thinking and plainer speaking’ in its execution; the strengthening and modernisation of representation abroad. He also suggested establishing a high-level ‘Positive Planning Committee’ to review possibilities for imparting ‘extra thrust’ into diplomatic effort. This latter recommendation was to lead to the formation of the Foreign Office Planning Staff (today the FCDO Strategy Unit). This fulfilled Butler’s wish that his study might make a ‘small but constructive’ contribution towards strengthening British foreign policy ‘for the great tasks and great opportunities’ which lay ahead.
Even today the report’s penetrating analysis and recommendations for improved policy implementation remain relevant. In the words of former FCO chief historian Gill Bennett, it stands as ‘a singular testament to the potential influence, on both policy and administration, of an historical case study’.
Britain and the Abadan Crisis, 1950-51, is freely available online, and you can buy a printed copy.
]]>Of all the treaties negotiated in the wake of World War 1, the Treaty of Lausanne has usually been seen as the most successful. Or perhaps more accurately, as the least worst. Thrashed out a century ago this year, it was, after all, the second attempt by Britain and her former Allies to reach a lasting peace in the Balkans and Middle East. The first attempt to settle the fate of the defeated Ottoman Empire had been worked out 3 years earlier, in Paris. Like their German allies, so the Ottoman representatives in Paris were hardly consulted, being simply presented with a treaty and told to sign it.
This treaty was signed in August 1920 in the renowned former French state porcelain factory at Sèvres. The treaty called for the partition of the vast Ottoman Empire among the victorious British, French and Italians, with substantial territories promised to the Greeks, Armenians and (vaguely) the Kurds. This vision of a once-mighty Empire reduced to an Anatolian rump would prove as fragile as the exquisite coffee services for which Sèvres was famous. So would the 'Megali Idea', the vision of an enlarged Greek state straddling the Aegean. Even before this humiliating diktat was signed, in May 1919 Greek armies landed at Izmir and occupied the territory assigned to them.
A new Turkish nationalist movement established its own representative assembly in April 1920, in Ankara rather than Istanbul, where the Sultan's government was based. The movement's leader, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, led a successful military campaign that stopped the Greek advance in September 1921. Within a year the invaders were pushed back to Izmir. Meanwhile, to the north, Kemal's forces came toe-to-toe with British forces occupying the Dardanelles Straits. The resulting Chanak Crisis of September 1922 led Conservative backbench MPs to revolt, toppling the coalition government and ending the spectacular career of the 'Welsh Wizard', David Lloyd George.
The Swiss city of Lausanne was selected as venue for a new round of Near East peace talks. British Foreign Secretary George Nathaniel Curzon probably thought his moment had come. Whereas Lloyd George had sidelined Curzon in Paris in 1919 (leaving him in London), now Curzon had the diplomatic field to himself. Experience of travelling across the Ottoman and Persian empires decades before, followed by a stint as Viceroy of India led Curzon to claim particular expertise in the region, adding to a somewhat inflated sense of his own importance. Although he was careful to limit the Americans' role at Lausanne to that of observers, otherwise he welcomed the opportunity to give that new world power a master-class in how to bargain with 'orientals'.
It was not to be. Within months Curzon had left Lausanne in disgust, passing the baton to Sir Horace
Rumbold, former British High Commissioner at Istanbul. Though inexperienced in diplomacy, the Turkish delegation's leader Ismet (İnönü) proved to be far from inept, using promises of Mosul's oil to widen the cracks that already divided the British, French and American delegations. As Curzon noted, the former Allies were negotiating with a former enemy who still had an army in the field. Any idea of imposing reparations (as had been imposed on the Ottoman Empire's German allies) was quickly dropped, as was any talk of compensation (in whatever form) for Armenian victims of the 1915 to 1916 genocide.
Unable to imagine a return to a multi-ethnic state, Turkish and Greek delegations agreed to a population exchange that forcibly relocated 1.6 million people. Though the exchange helped earn the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen his Nobel Prize, since the 1990s we have come to recognize that, of all people, it was Curzon who got it right. Forced population exchange was “a thoroughly bad and vicious solution, for which the world would pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come.”
From Armenian hopes of homecoming through the violent legacy of Partition in India (itself modelled on Lausanne) to the internal power structures of the British Conservative Party, the legacies of 1922 to 1923 are all around us. This is certainly the case in the Republic of Turkey, where perceptions of Lausanne have shifted remarkably. Hailed for decades as a victory, as 'the birth certificate of the Republic', Lausanne has now come to be viewed (by the Erdogan regime at least), as a defeat thanks to fictional 'secret clauses'; these will, so the myth runs, 'elapse' on 24 July 2023.
In the 100 years since 1923, 'Lausanne' has become variously a 'syndrome', 'ethnic cleansing' and much besides. My colleague Ozan Ozavci and I founded the Lausanne Project in 2017 concerned that the Lausanne centenary might nonetheless fail to receive as much attention as the centenaries of the other postwar settlements. Our website provides a space for scholars to share the latest research, as well as being a clearing-house for journalists and others interested in informed discussion. Alongside an edited volume to be published by Gingko in July 2023 we plan to publish a graphic novel, in which the worldly-wise heroes of Near Eastern shadow-puppet theatre, Hacivat and Karagöz, will give their own perspective on doings at Lausanne in 1922-3.
Curzon, we suspect, would not be amused.
To watch Lausanne unfold through the words and images of a century ago, follow The Lausanne Project's 'Lausanne Diary' @LausanneProject
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My name is Dr Michelle Clement and I am Researcher in Residence at No.10 Downing Street. This role forms part of a partnership between No.10 Downing Street and The Strand Group, which is based in The Policy Institute at King’s College London. The Researcher in Residence programme aims to investigate and explain the history of No.10 and the role of Prime Minister.
This blog post examines the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit 2001 to 2005, which was created during Tony Blair’s premiership. The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit acted as a nexus of power between No.10 and Whitehall.
The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit was set up in 2001 to monitor and accelerate the implementation of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s public service reform priorities in health, education, transport, crime and asylum. It was designed and led by Michael Barber who developed a methodology, which then Treasury official Nicholas (now Lord) Macpherson called ‘deliverology’.
But why was a unit like this needed? To answer this, I will provide some background context on the then Prime Minister and his government.
When a newly elected Prime Minister arrives at No.10 Downing Street, the workplace and often home of the British Prime Minister, they quickly find out that the levers of power they expect to pull must in fact be adapted to meet their objectives and style of working. As Prime Minister Harold Wilson reflected in 1965, one year into his premiership:
'No.10 is what the prime minister of the day makes it. The levers of power are all here in No.10 […] The ability of the prime minister to use them depends on the prime minister being in touch with what is going on – and not going on.'1
In 1997, New Labour under Tony Blair won the biggest majority since the Second World War. Nevertheless, two years later Blair had become frustrated with the lack of progress on public service reform, a priority for his government.
Speaking to the Venture Capital Association in 1999, he complained of having ‘scars on my back’ as a result of trying to reform public services. Blair’s rhetoric was a reflection of his own frustration at the challenge of learning how to govern, having never been in government before, but also at the many resistances he found. During his first couple of years as Prime Minister, Blair was still deciding how to make his public service reform agenda more radical yet practical.
From 1998, the New Labour government began to significantly increase investment in public services, but resources alone would not lead to the successful delivery of reforms. Within Whitehall, the Prime Minister told his officials and aides that 1999 should be the ‘Year of Delivery.’2
The implementation of reform agendas had long been an issue for prime ministers and many had set up their own units to promote particular priorities. For example, Edward Heath formed the Central Policy Review Staff, Harold Wilson established the Policy Unit, and Margaret Thatcher created the Efficiency Unit. Yet responsibility for delivering specific public service outcomes had historically not been viewed as a traditional role for senior civil servants. The Delivery Unit was the first unit to establish a robust framework, which pursued measurable improvements in public services and began to alter Whitehall’s culture towards delivery.
Ahead of the 2001 General Election, Blair advanced his vision for a bold domestic agenda. With New Labour confidently expecting to win a second term, Blair’s advisers and civil servants in No.10 and the Cabinet Office began to consider how the centre of government could be reformed. One of the gaps identified was the need for a clear delivery operation at the heart of government.
Towards the end of the first term, Blair and his advisers were increasingly impressed by the progress being made in education reform, and particularly by the key person working to deliver this change – Michael Barber. Prior to 1997, Barber had a varied and established career in the education sector, including as a secondary school teacher in London and Zimbabwe, a policy official at the National Union of Teachers (NUT), Chair of Education for Hackney, and as a Professor of Education at Keele University and then at the Institute of Education. After Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party, Barber began advising on and planning New Labour’s education policy.
In 1997, on taking up his position in the (then) Department for Education and Employment under Secretary of State David Blunkett, Barber set up and headed the Standards and Effectiveness Unit. The aim of the unit was to ‘change the culture of the department as well as implement the schools reforms.'3 His reforms and approach to implementing them won respect and built good relations with many ministers and civil servants. He had entered government in 1997 as a special adviser but by 2001 he had made the transition to become a civil servant.
New Labour resoundingly won the General Election in June 2001. They had fought the election campaign under the banner of ‘a lot done and a lot more to do’ with a focus on ‘radical’ public service reform, alongside huge investment. Much of the first term had been spent in perpetual campaigning mode to ensure a second victory at the polls and allow for a ‘quantum leap’ during a second term.
Shortly after the election, Barber was asked by Blair to set up a Delivery Unit. The new unit would be based on a proposal which Barber had drafted with the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, and Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Jeremy Heywood, in the weeks before the election. The Delivery Unit would primarily work with four ‘delivery departments’: the Department for Education and Skills, the Department of Health, the Department for Transport and the Home Office.
Three key elements of Barber’s original design brief proved useful.
First, that there would be ‘rigorous and relentless focus on a relatively small number of the Prime Minister’s key priorities.'4 This meant that Blair and his government were required to identify and adhere to a clear set of domestic objectives.
Second, Barber decided to keep the Delivery Unit small (around 40 members of staff) which allowed it be agile when developing a delivery framework. He was also keen to avoid the Delivery Unit becoming a large bureaucratic unit overseeing an even larger bureaucracy.
Third, the initial design tied in the Prime Minister’s time, the most valued resource in Whitehall, to the delivery of priorities by installing stocktake meetings. The Prime Minister would meet with the relevant Cabinet minister, Permanent Secretary, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Treasury officials and the Delivery Unit team led by Barber, to discuss the status of each target, every two-to-three months for each policy area.
This ensured that the Prime Minister was regularly engaged with the work of the Delivery Unit and consistently investing political capital in his domestic agenda. The stocktake meetings proved to be an effective forum for collective discussion and accountability, chaired by the Prime Minister.
The Delivery Unit and wider government approach to targets and delivery was seen as controversial by some who thought it contributed to an inflexible target-led culture of top-down policymaking, from No.10 to departments. The new performance measurement framework certainly put more pressure on departments and the frontline to be accountable for delivering targets linked to major taxpayer-funded investment.
During the course of Barber’s tenure as Head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit 2001-05, the unit faced many challenges in forming resilient working relationships with secretaries of state, permanent secretaries and special advisers. The Prime Minister’s attention on domestic delivery was also challenged by unforeseen events, most notably 9/11.
Throughout Blair’s government, there was a second centre of power to the Prime Minister – the Treasury under the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. The ensuing rivalry between the two leaders and institutions became legendary in the history of British government.
To be effective, the Delivery Unit had therefore to skilfully develop good relations with No.10 and the Treasury as well as Cabinet ministers, civil servants and special advisers in delivery departments. Under Barber’s leadership, the Delivery Unit was broadly able to do this. Barber secured an office in No.10 Downing Street, and the Delivery Unit was institutionally part of No.10 and the Cabinet Office but physically based within the Treasury (from 2003). This allowed the Delivery Unit to act as a nexus between these bases of power, on matters of public service delivery.
Over time, the Delivery Unit began working in collaboration with Treasury officials to align the Prime Minister’s targets with the Treasury’s own performance measurement framework for departments – Public Service Agreements (PSAs). During the 2002 and 2004 spending reviews, the Delivery Unit became closely involved and then integrated into assessing the ‘deliverability’ of departments’ new plans for funding and their associated PSA targets.
Blair’s planning for his second term was irrevocably changed on 11th September 2001 by the terrorist attacks in the United States. In the aftermath of 9/11, Blair created a ‘war cabinet’ which held daily meetings for a month and, by November 2001, Britain had deployed troops in Afghanistan as part of a US-led coalition.
Barber quickly recognised that the new foreign focus for the Prime Minister could be overwhelming in the next few months and beyond. The Delivery Unit was however able to adapt and continue its work with departments, keeping a determined domestic focus. The first Delivery Report was produced which detailed the planning and progress of the Prime Minister’s priorities.
Prime ministers and their governments typically spend a great deal of time on policy – developing ideas, building support and then securing the passage of reforms through Parliament. This process is a massive task.
But governments often spend less time monitoring the implementation of reforms and problem-solving where gaps in capacity to deliver emerge within departments. The disparity between a focus on generating policy rather than pursuing outcomes can become a problem for a prime minister yet the UK lacked a framework for delivery until 2001. Indeed the UK’s Delivery Unit was the first of its kind in the world, and other countries would soon be influenced by its approach.
The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit did manage to assist Blair’s government in improving performance in the vast majority of target areas. By the summer of 2005, there was progress in all priority areas in health, with key targets on Accident & Emergency waiting times and GP appointments met. In education, there had been progress on the majority of priority areas, though targets on literacy and numeracy had been missed. In the Home Office, there had been improvements in every target area. On transport, the rail punctuality target had been hit but the road congestion target had been missed.
The Delivery Unit kept Blair focused on his short to medium term priorities throughout war and an ever-evolving ambitious domestic reform programme. When his time and attention was directed on these other aspects of governing, the Delivery Unit continued to work in his name, to maintain momentum.
Relationships were the lynchpin of the Delivery Unit. The Unit and its Head had to simultaneously:
Simon Rea, who worked for the Delivery Unit under Barber reflected, ‘With the right relationships we could achieve almost anything (and often did) and without it we could achieve nothing.'5
As Head of the Delivery Unit, Barber’s ability to form such relationships was critical to the ‘art of delivery’, without which the ‘science of delivery’ could not have been fully operationalised. To be effective, this alchemy had to be continuously cultivated to create the conditions for successful delivery in government.
Though it was created fundamentally as a lever of power for the Prime Minister, the Delivery Unit also became a valuable tool for Cabinet ministers and their departments, including Gordon Brown and the Treasury. It improved their capacity to deliver and offered consistent access to the Prime Minister to collectively discuss public service reform, based on agreed performance data.
Speaking to the Strand Group at King’s College London in 2015, Blair explained that Barber’s delivery approach with the PMDU was ‘quite revolutionary, more so than we realised at the time.’6. A former Cabinet minister in charge of a delivery department during Blair’s second term reflected that, ‘It was probably the biggest single contributor’ to the delivery of public service reform.
The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit was in many ways a distinctly new invention. Though its lineage can be linked to various prime ministerial units which were created in the twentieth century, with the aim of improving the effectiveness of British government.
Previous blog by Dr Michelle Clement: ‘The Queen and her Prime Ministers’
Dr Michelle Clement is Lecturer and researcher on government reform and delivery at The Strand Group, King’s College London and Researcher in Residence at No.10 Downing Street. @MLClem
]]>By Dr Michelle Clement, Researcher in Residence at No.10 Downing Street
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, celebrates her Platinum Jubilee this week. Festivities will be held across the country to mark the Queen’s incredible 70 years on the throne. During the last seven decades, fourteen individuals from Winston Churchill to current Prime Minister Boris Johnson have 'kissed hands' with the Queen and thus become prime minister.
The relationship between the Queen and her prime ministers is underpinned by a quietly pivotal meeting, known as the audience, whereby the head of state and her prime minister meet each week for a private conversation to discuss the affairs of state.
Successive prime ministers have remarked on how much they valued this convention. Harold Macmillan noted in his diary that at his first audience, he had warned the Queen "half in joke, half in earnest, that I could not answer for the new government lasting more than 6 weeks. She smilingly reminded me of this at an audience 6 years later"’[1] Macmillan found that "the Queen was a great support, because she is the one person you can talk to."[2] Similarly Edward Heath found his weekly audience with the Queen to be an occasion that he "looked forward to … It was always a relief to be able to discuss everything with someone, knowing full well that there was not the slightest danger of any information leaking. I could confide in Her Majesty absolutely."[3]
Let us look back at highlights of the Queen’s visits to No.10 Downing Street, some of which marked earlier Jubilee celebrations.
Some 67 years ago in April 1955, the Queen was invited to dine in No.10’s State Dining Room with outgoing Prime Minister Winston Churchill. On that watershed evening, the day before he resigned, the great wartime leader toasted Her Majesty and recalled that he had relished drinking to the same toast as a cavalry subaltern "in the reign of Your Majesty’s great-great-grandmother", Queen Victoria.[4] Churchill’s Private Secretary, John Colville recalled the dinner of fifty or so Cabinet ministers, grandees and officials: "It was a splendid occasion. … Lady Churchill took special pains about the food and 10 Downing Street can seldom if ever have looked so gay or its floorboards have groaned under such a weight of jewels and decorations."[5]
Harold Wilson became the Queen’s first Labour Prime Minister in 1964. Though they came from differing social backgrounds a warm relationship developed. Wilson said, "I have great respect for tradition. … I like the real ceremonies of the Monarchy."[6] He would often remark that a prime minister had to do their homework ahead of an audience with the Queen, or she was likely to catch them out.[7] Wilson and the Queen got on very well, their audiences became lengthier with one reportedly lasting 2 hours.[8] In the mid-1970s Wilson returned as Prime Minister for 2 years. Upon tendering his resignation in 1976, he chose to invite Her Majesty to No.10 for a farewell dinner. This took place 21 years on from the Queen’s last visit to No.10, when Churchill had marked his own departure with a royal banquet.
As Prime Minister in the early 1970s, Edward Heath convened a dazzling musical gathering to celebrate composer William Walton’s 70th birthday. Heath invited the Queen and the Queen Mother along with a selection of some of the greatest musicians at the time including Sir Arthur Bliss, Master of the Queen’s Music and actor, Laurence Olivier.[9] After dinner the guests moved to the Pillared Room in No.10, where they were treated to a performance of Schubert’s B Flat Trio by Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, John Georgiadis, Douglas Cummings, its first cello and acclaimed pianist, John Lill.[10]
On the advent of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, then Prime Minister James Callaghan reflected:
The Throne, as the summit of our institutions, provides a unifying influence for our people, and no nation is better served by the summit of its institutions. But it is not to the Throne as an institution that you will deliver our Address tomorrow, Mr. Speaker; it is to Her Majesty the Queen as a person that we ask you to render our thanks.[11]
Then Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, also thanked the Queen and quoting John Colville, said: "In an age of melting convictions and questionable needs the Queen's unassuming virtues and faultless example have stood out like a rock in a sea of troubles."[12]
James Callaghan’s Cabinet marked the Queen’s Silver Jubilee by presenting her with a silver coffee pot. On giving this gift to Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace, the Queen said to Callaghan: "Oh! I’m so glad you haven’t repeated (former Prime Minister) Mr Disraeli’s gift to Queen Victoria. He gave her a painting of himself. "[13]
Callaghan recalled a range of events during the summer of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee from conferences with the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth, of NATO powers and a Downing Street Summit with G7 members. He reflected: "The Queen, in addition to her other heavy duties … also agreed to entertain those attending this rapid succession of meetings. … She seemed to thrive on the constant procession of visitors and never once did I see her less than sparkling and vivacious at her many public engagements."[14]
Though there was no Jubilee to celebrate during Margaret Thatcher’s eleven-year premiership, 1985 marked the 250th anniversary of Robert Walpole’s occupancy of No.10. Walpole is regarded as the first British Prime Minister.[15] Thatcher took great delight in being able to mark the occasion with a grand dinner in the State Dining Room, to which the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were invited as well as former prime ministers Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and James Callaghan. Her Majesty gave a speech in which she remarked that by that point in her father King George VI’s tenure, he had visited No.10 more frequently. In jest she said, "I was beginning to wonder what I’d done wrong!"[16]
The Queen’s Golden Jubilee came in 2002, then Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed Her Majesty to Downing Street where a dinner was hosted in her honour. Blair was born in the same year as the Queen’s coronation, and as Her Majesty remarked in their first audience: "You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born."[17] The Golden Jubilee dinner at Downing Street was attended by former prime ministers Edward Heath, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. It was an enjoyable occasion for all. The Queen noted, "Isn’t it wonderful not to have to be introduced to anyone?"[18] Her Majesty received a silver gilt plate from her Cabinet ministers, which was engraved with their signatures.[19]
To mark her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 the Queen attended a Cabinet meeting in No.10 Downing Street. This was the first time she had done so during her reign, though Her Majesty receives a copy of the confidential Cabinet minutes each week. She sat in the Prime Minister’s chair, the only seat with arms. The Cabinet presented Her Majesty with 60 placemats in honour of her 6 decades on the throne, and a section of British Antarctic Territory was named Queen Elizabeth Land.
As these selected highlights illustrate Her Majesty’s reign has provided a beacon of continuity over an extraordinary breadth of change. Though the Queen’s visits to No.10 Downing Street have been somewhat infrequent, the discreet advice which she has offered to 14 prime ministers throughout the last 70 years, based on her unrivalled institutional memory, has been invaluable, and far more regular. In Her Majesty’s own words:
They unburden themselves or they tell me what’s going on or if they’ve got problems and sometimes one can help in that way too. They know one can be impartial … I think it’s rather nice to feel that one’s a sort of sponge and everybody can come and tell me things. … And occasionally you can be able to put one’s point of view which, perhaps they hadn’t seen it from that angle.[20]
Dr Michelle Clement is Lecturer and researcher on government reform and delivery at The Strand Group, King’s College London and Researcher in Residence at No.10 Downing Street. Twitter: @MLClem
[1] A Horne, 'Macmillan 1957-1986: volume 2 of the official biography' (London: Macmillan, 1989), page 4
[2] Horne (1989), page 168
[3] E Heath, 'The course of my life: my autobiography' (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998), page 317
[4] RJ Minney, 'No.10 Downing Street, a house in history' (London: Cassell, 1963), page 421
[5] A Seldon, '10 Downing Street: the illustrated history' (London: HarperCollinsIllustrated, 1999), page 145
[6] B Pimlott, 'The Queen: Elizabeth II and the monarchy' (London: HarperPress, 2012), page 397
[7] B Pimlott, 'The Queen: Elizabeth II and the monarchy' (London: HarperPress, 2012), page 397
[8] B Pimlott, 'Harold Wilson' (London: William Collins, 2016), page 7
[9] Seldon (1999), page 194
[10] Seldon (1999), page 195
[11] Address to Her Majesty (Silver Jubilee), 3 May 1977
[12] Address to Her Majesty (Silver Jubilee), 3 May 1977, quoting John Colville, 'The New Elizabethans' (London: Collins, 1977), page 10
[13] J Callaghan, 'Time and chance' (London: Collins, 1987), page 462
[14] Callaghan (1987), page 481
[15] J Brown, No.10: 'The geography of power at Downing Street' (London: Haus Publishing, 2019), page 93
[16] Seldon (1999), page 90-91
[17] T Blair, 'A journey' (London: Hutchinson, 2010), page 14
[18] A Campbell, 'The Alastair Campbell diaries volume 4, the burden of power: countdown to Iraq' (London: Arrow, 2013), page 219
[19] V Low and M Savage, 'Queen to attend Cabinet to mark Jubilee', The Times, 18 December 2012
[20] P Hennessy, 'The hidden wiring: unearthing the British constitution' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1995), page 69
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We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.
“This thing” as British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin put it, was the Atomic Bomb. Bevin was quoted thus by Sir Michael Perrin, formerly deputy to Lord Portal who was Controller of Production, Atomic Energy, in a BBC Timewatch programme on 29 September 1982.[1] This blog recalls the international and domestic factors that Clement Attlee's government had to weigh in the balance when coming to this historic decision.
Seventy-Five years ago a small group of government ministers agreed that research and development on atomic weapons should be undertaken in the UK, under conditions of special secrecy. It was a decision both momentous and essential. Momentous because it was taken against the wishes of Britain’s closest ally the United States, and because it committed huge government resources that Britain could not afford. It was essential because although no atomic weapon would be ready for 5 years, to ensure a future national capability for deterrence or retaliation the decision could not wait. The same has been true of all subsequent decisions to replace or renew atomic weapons systems. Such decisions are always controversial and difficult, but they are also impossible not to take.[2]
The decision in January 1947 formalised what many had assumed ever since the use of the first atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945. When Churchill, now Leader of the Opposition, said in Parliament in November 1945 ‘This I take it is already agreed, we should make atomic bombs’, no one challenged him. As Peter Hennessy puts it, there was an ‘atomic bias’ in all the deliberations of GEN 75, the ministerial committee set up in August 1945 to deal with atomic matters.[3] Yet it was not until 8 January 1947 that the decision was taken, not by GEN 75 but by a specially convened ministerial committee GEN 163 at its sole meeting; and the context was complex.
We ought not to give the Americans the impression that we cannot get on without them; for we can . . . and, if necessary, will do so.[4]
Although Ernest Bevin’s comment about the Union Jack on Britain's own bomb catches the eye, Prime Minister Clement Attlee was the prime mover on nuclear issues in the postwar Labour government. Convinced that the atomic bomb changed the whole calculus of future warfare, he had been pressing President Truman since August 1945 for cooperation and international control. He received soothing responses but little more. The bomb had been developed through wartime cooperation between British, Canadian and US scientists. But hopes of postwar collaboration were dashed by US determination to control access to the ‘atomic secret’. The McMahon Act passed by Congress in August 1946 prohibited sharing nuclear information, even with close allies. The Truman administration also hoped to use the nuclear monopoly as leverage with the Soviet Union.
The Americans argued that a nuclear plant in the UK would be ‘insecure’ and incompatible with proposals for international control under discussion in the UN Atomic Energy Commission. Attlee rejected these arguments, but the US context was not simple either. There was much political in-fighting, with some Republicans determined to discredit the late President Roosevelt and any ‘secret’ wartime agreements. The military wanted exclusive control of any weapons, and many Americans remembered the Canadian spy scandal exposed in 1946, when a British atomic scientist was revealed as a Soviet agent. But the Americans also knew that Britain would be able to draw on the expert knowledge of scientists (including Klaus Fuchs)[5] who were now returning to the UK after working on the Manhattan Project. This made the British the next most likely country to be able to develop an atomic weapon. Helping Britain to do so was not considered to be in US interests.
Attlee did not give up on Anglo-American collaboration. But he, like Bevin, was determined Britain should have its own bomb and insisted the decision to site a nuclear plant in the UK was for the British, not the US government to take. It was not just a question of prestige or in hope of securing American cooperation. Ministers took their decision knowing that Britain’s financial situation was desperate and the government could not afford the major financial commitment involved. It was no coincidence that spending ministers were not present at the meeting. Many factors were straining British resources, whether to fund domestic reform or meet global military and financial commitments. These factors also made it seem vital that Britain should embark on nuclear research and development that would both protect the nation and fuel industrial recovery.
At home, there were concerns about communism. Two days before the nuclear decision, another ministerial committee set up a Cabinet Committee on Subversive Activities.[6] Overseas, although East-West tension had not yet solidified into open enmity, the international scene looked menacing enough. Bevin was engaged in a series of adversarial negotiations on peace terms, regional influence and access to resources, recognising Soviet resentment at what it saw as exclusion from the spoils of war even as he despaired of Russian intransigence. Ministers were well aware of Soviet interest in the atomic bomb, even if they did not realise how much information had already reached Moscow through agents like Fuchs and Maclean. That made a British bomb even more necessary.
The decision of 8 January 1947 was taken in the context of vulnerability, an aspiration to independence and a determination to secure Britain’s future. This context trumped all, including the fact that a commitment to an expensive nuclear future could not be justified economically. Mutual defence arrangements under NATO were more than 2 years in the future. For now, "if Britain wanted to be sure of being covered by an atomic deterrent, she had no option to make it herself."[7]
[1] The formal minutes of the meeting on 8 January 1947 are printed in Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO), Series I, Vol. XI, No. 36, and record Bevin’s views in a more measured way. See also Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst 1945-2010 (Penguin revised edn, 2010).
[2] See Matthew Jones, The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Vol. I, From the V Bomber Era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945-1964 (London: Routledge, 2017).
[3] Hennessy, Secret State, p. 49. On GEN 75 see DBPO, Series I, Vol. II.
[4] Message from Attlee to Bevin (who was in New York), 27 November 1946: DBPO, Series I, Vol. VII, No. 97.
[5] Fuchs was exposed as a long-term Soviet agent in 1950: see https://history.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/02/whats-the-context-sentencing-of-atomic-spy-klaus-fuchs-1-march-1950
[6] Minutes of GEN 164/1, 6 January 1947, printed in DBPO, Series I, Vol. XI, No. 35.
[7] Margaret Gowing, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic energy, 1945-1952, Vol. I, Policy Making (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 185.
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The most that we can say is that we have made the best of a bad bargain, not that we have got a fair deal (Prime Minister Edward Heath, 1 September 1971)
Fifty years ago, Ambassadors representing the 4 Occupying Powers in Germany—France, the UK, US and USSR—signed an agreement on Berlin. This included documents concerning access, communications, and the respective positions of the FRG (West Germany) and GDR (East Germany) in relation to Berlin. Though neither West nor East achieved all they wanted from the negotiations, the fact the agreement was signed at all was surprising to many involved.
The divided city of Berlin had been, since 1945, the fault line of the Cold War. The erection of the Wall in 1961 gave concrete form to ideological, political and military competition between East and West. Berlin problems were a useful stick with which to beat the other side, and until the late 1960s any constructive deal seemed remote. The West resisted recognition of the GDR (East Germany), while the Soviet Union complained about FRG (West German) activities. Meanwhile, Berliners and occupying authorities alike faced daily problems in communications, access by road or air, local government, movement of goods. The agreements reached in September 1971 were intended to address some of these difficulties.
While Cold War politics made agreement difficult, they also paved the way for the Quadripartite Agreement. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 produced a severe East-West chill, but as always after a shock a resetting of relations was necessary on both sides, for economic and geopolitical reasons. From the Soviet perspective, better access to Western (particularly West German) markets and technology was important for economic progress. From a Western viewpoint, constructive Soviet engagement in global issues such as arms control, the Arab/Israeli conflict and the increasing power of Communist China was desirable if it could be achieved without conceding too much ground.
In July 1969 a speech by Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko indicated a new openness to negotiations on Berlin, and on European security as a whole, with proposals for a security conference. This was Soviet Westpolitik. Meanwhile Chancellor Willy Brandt of the FRG pursued a policy of Ostpolitik, seeing advantage in changing the destructive dynamic of existing inner-German and Soviet-German relations. In August 1970, the USSR and FRG initialled a treaty agreeing not to use force in any matters affecting European security, and to respect the integrity of European states within their current frontiers. The FRG, however, said it would only ratify the Treaty if Four-Power talks on Berlin reached a successful conclusion.
The US and UK governments appeared uncertain how to respond to these developments. In the Foreign Office a good deal of time was spent analysing possible reasons for Soviet willingness to negotiate, revealing considerable disagreement between London and the Embassy in Moscow. Quadripartite talks on Berlin continued, the Russians proving typically tough interlocutors.
In the early months of 1971 briefing for Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home insisted Soviet proposals on Berlin were a ‘deliberate attempt to erode the Western position’ and that Allied authority must be maintained. By June, Western insistence that the idea of a European security conference was a non-starter without an acceptable Berlin agreement appeared to produce stalemate.
By August 1971, however, both East and West had clearly decided, for a complex set of reasons, that agreement was desirable. The context was the broader interest of improving Western security, Mutual and Balanced Force Requirements (MBFR) talks, Middle Eastern negotiations and Sino-American relations. In the Berlin talks, US and Soviet Ambassadors forced the pace, and a draft text was agreed by 18 August. The Foreign Office felt the agreement met the essential requirements of the Western allies, although enhancing the status of the GDR and recognising tacitly that the Berlin Wall was here to stay. Douglas-Home called it ‘a fair bargain’; the Prime Minister disagreed, though accepting its signature ‘may well be right on the basis that we are prepared to recognise realities’. It might also improve the political atmosphere, paving the way for what would in 1973 become the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).
The conclusion of the Quadripartite Berlin Agreement cleared the way for decisive action against Soviet espionage in the UK: Operation FOOT. Protests against ‘unacceptable activities’ had been ignored or rejected by the Soviet authorities since 1969. Plans for a bold British response were laid in 1971, but the Foreign Secretary waited until the Berlin Agreement was signed before recommending action to the Prime Minister. There was, Douglas-Home said, no satisfactory alternative, and ‘there were strong political grounds for putting an end to this obstacle to a fundamental improvement in British/Soviet relations’. On 24 September 1971, the Soviet Chargé in London was given the names of 105 Soviet officials who were to be expelled, or who if out of the country would not be allowed to return. Here was another Cold War shock: but again, it would not be long before normal business was resumed.
In the early hours of Sunday 13 August 1961, Brigadier L.F. Richards of the British military police in Berlin, was woken from his sleep by a patrol who reported unusual activity along the border. Driving to the Brandenburg Gate, he saw the border between East and West Berlin "being blocked off with concrete and barbed wire, and columns of vehicles unloading police, soldiers and engineering stores "as far as the eye could see".
Crossing into East Berlin, he found a scene of intense activity. "I could feel considerable tension’, he recalled. ‘There were uniformed men everywhere, all heavily armed. Almost every open space of ground had military vehicles of one sort or another on it." The main roads "were jammed; packed with military vehicles including armoured vehicles and a lot of transport vehicles carrying barbed wire and other materials". The few civilians he saw in East Berlin seemed "bewildered and apprehensive".
He was witnessing the erection of the Berlin Wall, dividing the Soviet sector in the east from the British, French and American sectors in the west. It became the most visible symbol of the Cold War and the division of Europe until it was breached dramatically on the night of 9 November 1989.
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