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In the midst of the Suez Crisis, cartoonist Pol Ferjac created a series of cartoons for the French humour weekly Le Canard enchaîné with the caption ‘Nil novi’, or ‘Nothing new under the sun’. The message was clear: to western observers, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal was another instance of aggressive expansionism that conjured up memories of Hitler in the 1930s. This slogan would have resonated with Egyptian observers as well, for a very different reason: they saw the western response to the
This chapter shows the inexorable deterioration of Soviet-Israel relations. The first Soviet veto demonstrated that whatever Israel did to improve relations, the Kremlin image of Israel was fixed as part of the western bloc. The height of the worsening relations was the Czech-Egyptian deal, which tipped the military balance in the Arabs' favour. The Israeli government. Headed by Moshe Sharett, realized its ominous strategic implications. Sharett himself failed to realize to convince western statesmen to compensate Israel. Egypt's Nasser gained crucial Soviet military and economic aid, while Israel suffered a serious strategic and diplomatic defeat. The only option for Israel was to join the Anglo-French 'collusion' against Egypt. The lack of American support, and joining Britauin and France in attacking Egypt, left Israel with the danger of Soviet offensive. Khrushchev's threat to bomb Israel was taken seriously by Israel, particularly in view of Soviet support for the Arabs in their conflict with Israel.
This is the second book in a two-volume study tracing the evolution of the Labour Party's foreign policy throughout the twentieth century to the present date. It is a comprehensive study of the history of the Labour Party's worldview and foreign policy. The study argues that Labour's foreign policy perspective should be seen not as the development of a socialist foreign policy, but as an application of the ideas of liberal internationalism. Volume Two provides a critical analysis of Labour's foreign policy since 1951. It examines Labour's attempts to rethink foreign policy, focusing on intra-party debates, the problems that Labour faced when in power, and the conflicting pressures from party demands and external pressures. The book examines attitudes to rearmament in the 1950s, the party's response to the Suez crisis and the Vietnam War, the bitter divisions over nuclear disarmament and the radicalisation of foreign and defence policy in the 1980s. It also examines Labour's desire to provide moral leadership to the rest of the world. The last two chapters focus on the Blair and Brown years, with Blair's response to the Kosovo crisis and to 9/11, and his role in the ‘war on terror’. Whereas Blair's approach to foreign affairs was to place emphasis on the efficacy of the use of military force, Brown's instead placed faith in the use of economic measures.
The relationship between Scotland and the British Empire in the twentieth century was wide-ranging. This book represents ground-breaking research in the field of Scotland's complex and often-changing relationship with the British Empire in the period. The contours of Scottish intercontinental migration were significantly redrawn during the twentieth century as a consequence of two world wars. The book reveals the apparent means used to assess the complexities of linking places of birth to migration and to various modern attempts to appeal to ethnic diasporas. The strange case of jute brings out some paradoxical dimensions to Scotland's relationship with England and the empire in the twentieth century. The book argues that the Scottish immigrants' perceptions of class, race and gender were equally important for interpreting the range of their experiences in the British Columbia. The mainstay of organised anti-colonialist critique and mobilisation, in Scotland lay in socialist and social democratic groups. The book examines how the Scottish infantry regiments, and their popular and political constituencies, responded to rapidly reducing circumstances in the era of decolonisation. Newspapers such as The Scotsman, The Glasgow Herald, and the Daily Record brought Africa to the Scottish public with their coverage of Mau Mau insurgency and the Suez Crisis. The book looks into the Scottish cultural and political revival by examining the contributions of David Livingstone. It also discusses the period of the Hamilton by-election of 1967 and the three referenda of 1979, 1997 and 2014 on devolution and independence.
The rapprochement between Germany and Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust is one of the most striking political developments of the twentieth century. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently referred to it as a ‘miracle’. But how did this ‘miracle’ come about? Drawing upon sources from both sides of the Iron Curtain and of the Arab–Israeli conflict, Lorena De Vita traces the contradictions and dilemmas that shaped the making of German–Israeli relations at the outset of the global Cold War. Israelpolitik offers new insights not only into the history of German–Israeli relations, but also into the Cold War competition between the two German states, as each attempted to strengthen its position in the Middle East and the international arena while struggling with the legacy of the Nazi past.
internet, where news stories are just a Google search away, to the masses. In the early to mid-1950s, however, newspapers remained the ready source of information on world events for the Scottish populace. This chapter focuses on Scottish newspaper coverage of the outbreak of the Mau Mau insurgency in late 1952 and Britain’s reaction towards the Suez Crisis after Colonel
time of international crisis. 11 The urgency for doing so was augmented by West German intelligence reports regarding the Soviets’ intention to use the Suez Crisis to put pressure on the West; communicating that the GDR was eager to send personnel to Egypt to aid the local authorities in guaranteeing the continued flow of goods via the Canal and train its military forces; and that, by doing so, East Berlin might gain recognition from Egypt in return. Meanwhile, the BND reiterated the view shared by the majority of Bonn’s diplomats stationed in the Middle East
-improvised performance, with music and masks, performed under club conditions, responding to reports of the atrocities committed by British troops against Mau Mau detainees in Kenya. Willis Hall’s The Long and the Short and the Tall (Royal Court, January 1959) concentrated on a bickering and mutinous group of British soldiers in the Malayan jungle at the end of the Second World War. The Suez crisis in 1956 also
. However, during the aftermath of the Suez crisis, it was also about keeping Britain’s options open regarding Cyprus’s future strategic role in the Mediterranean. The French transported their policing model lock, stock and barrel to their colonies. The British allegedly created a brand new model. 3 Yet, in both instances, policing relied more heavily on coercion than on
(Williams, 1979: 249–58). For example, Joan Mitchell later described it as a ‘tour de force in analysis and exposition’ which ‘stood out from those before’, and when replying on behalf of the opposition Winston Churchill praised Gaitskell for his ‘lucidity’ and ‘evident lack of hatred and malice’ (HC Debs, 12 April 1951, cols. 879–92; Mitchell, 1963: 100). One of the greatest parliamentary challenges that Gaitskell would experience would be the Suez Crisis. By this stage Gaitskell had become Leader of the Opposition. Here he was to gain both critical acclaim (initially