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This book is based mainly on government sources, namely material from the White House, State Department, Foreign Office (FO), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Prime Minister's Office (PREM) and Cabinet (CAB). Private papers consulted include those of Harold Wilson, Foreign Secretary George Brown and Undersecretary of State George Ball. The book explores a period of the Wilson-Johnson relationship. It considers the seven weeks from Wilson's election until he went to see Lyndon B. Johnson on 7-9 December, a formative period in which Britain cultivated American financial support and which saw pre-summit diplomacy over the NATO Multilateral Force (MLF). The book covers the summit in detail, examining the diplomatic exchanges over the Vietnam War, the British commitment East of Suez and the MLF, as well as the interplay of personality between Wilson and Johnson. By exploring the relationship of the two leaders in the years 1964-1968, it seeks to examine their respective attitudes to the Anglo-American relationship. The book then assesses the significance of an alleged Anglo-American strategic-economic 'deal', Wilson's 'Commonwealth Peace Mission' to Vietnam, and another Wilson visit to Washington. It also considers why the personal relationship between Johnson and Wilson suffered such strain when the Labour government 'dissociated' the UK from the latest American measures in Vietnam. Next, the book addresses the period from August 1966-September 1967, during which Wilson launched an intense but abortive effort to initiate peace negotiations over Vietnam, and London announced plans to withdraw from military bases East of Suez.
politically useful national identities and war stories. Their constructions of those identities and narratives helped to shape the collective emotional, patriotic, and gendered experiences of the Second World War among their nations’ people, as well as their nations’ foreign policies. Succeeding generations of national leaders drew upon the stories and gendered national identities that these wartime leaders defined and symbolized as they reconfigured and reaffirmed state-to-state “special relationships” – Anglo-Irish relationships
implications for the Johnson–Wilson relationship, as it saw the devaluation of sterling and the demise of the remaining British commitment East of Suez. As 1968 ended, the White House was more inclined to regard Britain simply as one ally among many, rather than a state with whom there was some kind of ‘special’ relationship. The Anglo-American relationship, 1964–68 There has been the suggestion that the Anglo
cut his political teeth; the affinity between Mussolini and his home region of Emilia-Romagna; the semi-clientelistic special relationship that was sought and to some extent obtained by Bari; and, finally, the visit the Duce undertook to Sardinia in 1942, at a time when mass support was rapidly ebbing. The Duce and place All the biographies of Mussolini published under the regime stressed his humble roots in the Romagna region. The author of the most official text, Giorgio Pini, stated that he ‘hailed from one of the most proletarian provinces in Italy, where the
crucially important to a locality that had traditionally defined itself in terms of its special relationship with royal authority. Its status as the seat of national government was under threat, and it is therefore hardly surprising that local inhabitants anxiously sought to reassure parliament of their loyalty when MPs returned to Westminster in January 1642.2 In 1653 Westminster’s inhabitants would be equally apprehensive when this same parliament was finally dissolved, anxiously seeking assurance from the Council of State that its successor would also meet in
used to describe it. ‘Confessions of a drunkard’ not only depicted the experience of addiction from the perspective of the addict, but it turned 76 chap6.indd 76 22/06/2009 10:53:55 Ungovernable passions that experience into a literary event. Dionysus reborn Of course, intoxication has always had a special relationship with art. Classical concepts of Dionysian inspiration fed into early modern poetry: symposiastic poetry, which praised alcohol for both its conviviality and its ability to inspire, was popular from the Renaissance onwards, despite being rejected as
. 24 Nonetheless, the meeting produced a document, the Atlantic Charter, that articulated common Anglo-American values and shared political goals to be pursued in the postwar world, as well as additional consequential results. It established the fraternal friendship between Roosevelt and Churchill 25 and cemented the wartime Anglo-American “special relationship” through the creation of national myths of brotherhood and shared warrior values – major achievements for the two leaders’ first encounter, to be sure. The
In 1858 the first Maori King was installed. Although Europeans commonly depicted the Kingitanga (the Maori King movement) as a challenge to British sovereignty over New Zealand, supporters saw nothing incompatible between allegiance to their own indigenous monarch and ongoing adherence to the person of Queen Victoria (colonial governments were another matter). For Maori the relationship was a deeply personal bond, cemented through the Treaty of Waitangi that had established Victoria as a great chief of New Zealand. Long after the British government had ceased to have any meaningful role in the governance of New Zealand, Kingitanga supporters continued to look to the monarch to honour the undertakings entered into on Queen Victoria’s behalf at Waitangi in 1840. This belief in a special relationship with the British royal family survived war and land confiscations in the 1860s and endures today, giving rise to Queen Elizabeth II’s unprecedented involvement in a 1995 apology to the Kingitanga for past Crown actions.
In 1969 Pakistan was experiencing two separate insurgencies: in East Pakistan a democratic uprising was in full swing; and in Baluchistan separatists were engaged in a violent war against the Pakistani army. The government regularly implemented media blackouts to keep the nation in the dark about the country’s troubles. That year, Pakistan’s popular ‘Lollywood’ film industry released Zarqa, a feature film about the Palestinian cause that tells the story of the violent and unjust Israeli occupation of Palestine and rise of the Palestinian liberation movement.
Zarqa became a mega-hit and became the first film in the country showing in cinemas for over one hundred weeks straight. Across the country, Pakistanis were singing the Urdu language revolutionary Palestinian anthems composed for the film. During this period the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) held a special relationship with Pakistan, the PLO’s leader Yasser Arafat visited often, and student solidarity groups were active on campuses. Throughout the 1970s, thousands of Pakistani civilians volunteered as fida’iyeen fighters with the PLO, ready to die for Palestine. This chapter uses original testimonies from former Pakistani fida’iyeen and those who knew them. Despite representing different ethnicities, geographies, education and social classes all expressed they were motivated by a popular ethical imperative. This chapter explores the narrative and political imaginary of the film in terms of how it created the context for widespread solidarity and Palestine as a popular movement in Pakistan, and strategically redirected the national gaze away from domestic politics and towards Palestine as the central moral conflict.
‘thought his friendship with Johnson was harmony itself’. 4 John Dickie maintains that ‘Even the most ardent Atlanticists were surprised at the sudden cooling of the Special Relationship so soon after the end of the Kennedy– Macmillan era’. In particular, Wilson’s prime ministership ‘set the scene for a decline which continued for fifteen years until Margaret Thatcher rekindled the special warmth of the partnership with Ronald