Effie G. H. Pedaliu

Human Rights and Foreign Policy: Wilson and the Greek Dictators, 1967–1970

The military coup of 21 April 1967 brought to power a repressive dictatorship in Greece. It proceeded to deprive Greeks of their human rights and civil liberties, outraged international public opinion and strained transatlantic relations during the Cold War. The “Greek case” culminated in the withdrawal of Greece from the Council of Europe and calls for its expulsion from NATO. This article will analyse the foreign policy considerations that determined British policy towards the Greek junta during 1967—such as Cold War realities, alliance dynamics, economic and commercial imperatives, regional instability in the Mediterranean and domestic pressures. It will look at how these factors coalesced into shaping British policy towards the Greek junta into one in which human rights had little bearing. The article will also consider the impact of the “Greek case” on the image and credibility of the Labour government of 1966–1970 and explain why vociferous anti-junta activities in London were to create such policy difficulties for the British government.

Britain and the ‘Hand-Over’ of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945–48

This article focuses on British policy towards the treatment of alleged Italian war criminals at the end of the second world war and, in particular, those requested by Yugoslavia for extradition. It reveals that far from conspiring to shield Italians registered as war criminals by the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), Britain endeavoured to ensure that they were brought to justice. It also assesses the pressures that affected the implementation of British ‘hand-over’ policy and examines the developments that led to the decision by the British government to pass on to the Italians the responsibility of implementing ‘hand-overs’ and punishing Italian war criminals.

The Foreign Office, the Board of Trade and Anglo-Italian Relations in the Aftermath of the Second World War

The efforts of Britain and Italy to normalize their political and economic relations after the Second World War, especially during the years of Clement Attlee’s Labour Government, offer an opportunity to examine reconciliation and reconstruction against the backdrop of austerity, a new economic post-war order and the onset of the Cold War.

Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), x + 293 pp.

examination of radio and the effects of foreign radio, there is a perplexing lack of detail about the content of Soviet broadcasts and why foreign radio was so attractive – with no reference to the differences in the framing of stories, the reporting or non-reporting of certain stories, or the ideological content of non-news material. As someone who monitored both Soviet radio and broadcasting from the BBCWorld Service during the Cold War, I found the radio section disappointing and unenlightening. One of the contradictory aspects of the book is the non-academic and racy language. Sometimes this is a way of lightening the presentation of a heavy subject, but at times it is just irritating and vague. I am still trying to work out – as it is not elaborated upon or illustrated with examples – what is meant by saying that the ‘audio invasion’ by foreign radio ‘confirmed their worldview . . . while helping explain some obvious flabby spots on the domestic ideological body’ (p. 133). Similarly with this: ‘the Soviet cultural model was grounded in a bedrock exceptionalism whose vagueness only contributed to its power’ (p. 4). But how does one characterise that exceptionalism and in what ways was this exceptionalism vague – a clear, in-depth analysis of the cultural model and its ideological content is much needed here. There is no analysis of how Soviet foreign radio, Radio Moscow, actively aped the style of the BBC World Service while obviously offering ideological content and a worldview that was substantially different. Overall, this book will be of use to researchers who can mine lots of information about the working of the system, but it is not for those looking for ideological analysis or for an examination of the role of the Soviet media in the propagation of communist values.

Britain and the Prosecution of Italian War Criminals

The signing of the Italian Armistice and the establishment of the Regno del Sud (the Southern Kingdom) in the areas liberated by the Allies ushered in a new period in Italian history. Under the tutelage of the Allied Control Commission and the Allied Control Council, the structures set up by the Allies to administer liberated Italy, the country had to forsake its Fascist past and emerge from the ruin Fascism had wrought on its society, economy, political system and international reputation. One of the issues that had to be resolved was the punishment of those Italians who had committed war crimes against the citizens of countries occupied by Fascist Italy or which had fought against it during WWII. The myth of the mandolin-playing, fun-loving and reluctant soldier during WWII may reflect the behaviour of some Italian troops but also disguises the darker side of Mussolini’s soldiers. During the interwar years and during the course of WWII some of them perpetrated heinous war crimes, a fact well known to the countries that had been occupied by Fascist Italy or had to fight against it during WWII and which were amply documented by the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). The countries with complaints against Italian war-criminality were the UK, the US, Albania, France, Greece, Yugoslavia and Ethiopia. All sought justice.

The ‘British Way to Socialism’: British Intervention in the Italian Election of April 1948 and its Aftermath

The Italian election of April 1948 was an event of epic proportions. It was much more than an electoral contest between the anti-Communist parties and the Italian Communists. It represented nothing less than a clash without compromise of liberal democracy against Western European Communism. All the efforts that the British and the Americans had made since 1943 to rebuild Italy as a liberal democracy and to ensure its pro-Western orientation were put to the test in April 1948. Italy found itself at a self-defining crossroad and the choice the Italian voter was faced with was either a straightforward endorsement or an outright rejection of Communism. An electoral victory for the combined PCl/PSI ticket would indicate to the world that the Western liberal democratic ideal had been tried and discarded not through the use of force and the might of the Red Army, but through the democratic process itself. Such a defeat for the non-Communist forces, the West feared, would not only harm its prestige, but would also bring under the microscope the Western model of governing and reconstruction; it would bring into question the effectiveness of the policy of containment; but, more threateningly, it would embolden the Communist parties in Western Europe. After all, Italy was not the only Western European country with strong and popular Communist party.

Britain, Italy and European Cooperation in the 1940s

In the mid-1940s Britain was still a great power. In order to serve its global interests, it had to adopt a multi-faceted foreign policy. Atlanticism and Britain’s quest for a peacetime pact with America was a strand but not the only strand of British foreign policy. The preservation of Britain’s imperial position and the maintenance of its global power were equally important considerations and the achievement of these rested on the successful creation of a British-led bloc of powers which could maintain equidistance from the superpowers.1 Such a scheme necessitated the cooption of Europe and the underpinning of the British imperial position in the Mediterranean by frustrating any Soviet encroachment. Italy’s geo-political position as simultaneously a Western European and Mediterranean nation, which was also in constant need of underpinning of its pro-western orientation because of the threat posed to it by a massive Communist Party, made it an obvious candidate for inclusion into Britain’s European schemes. In fact, relations between Britain and Italy in the late 1940s both mirrored and manifested the former’s attempts in pushing for European cooperation and the course of this relationship yields interesting insights into the development and failure of the Western Union idea and Britain’s subsequent retreat from Europe.

The Reconstruction of the Postwar Italian Armed Forces

For the British government, an active involvement in the reorganisation of the Italian armed forces and the cultivation of close ties with the Italian military were important components of its foreign policy towards Italy in the immediate postwar period. British reconstruction plans for the Italian Army had several goals. These were, to build an armed force that would be properly equipped and adequately trained to preserve law and order in Italy and to defend its frontiers from a localised Yugoslav attack once Allied forces were withdrawn after the signing of the Italian Peace Treaty. At the same time, a fine balance had to be struck between Italy’s legitimate defence needs and the necessity to curb any menace it could pose to its neighbours.1 In addition to these obvious aspirations there were others. The British saw involvement in Italian military and police matters and the fostering of close links with these circles as a means for preserving their influence in post-treaty Italian affairs, bolstering Britain’s position vis-a-vis the ascendancy of American power in the region and Soviet encroachment, whilst, at the same time, checking the influence of the PCI in the new Italian forces establishment.2

The North Atlantic Alliance: Britain and the Issue of Italian Membership

By the beginning of 1948, Britain was faced with the acute question of how best to approach security issues in an increasingly polarised and hostile environment. The strike wave of autumn 1947 in Italy and France, the ongoing saga of the Greek Civil war, now into its third phase, difficulties over Germany and the irretrievable breakdown of the London CFM in December 1947, all coalesced into intensifying the Western perception that the Soviet Union was becoming increasingly more menacing. In view of this climate, the British government concluded that it had to do everything in its power to convince the US to underwrite formally, through treaty, the security of Western Europe as soon as possible.1 For Britain, the creation of an Atlantic alliance formed a major strand in its postwar foreign policy which aimed at creating a worldwide system of alliances.2 The creation of such an Atlantic pact would secure two important aims. First, it would mean a long-term commitment by the United States to defend Western Europe, which would restore and boost the confidence of the beleaguered Western European governments, something that the mere presence of American occupation troops in Western Germany could not achieve.