Gillian Staerck

The Ultimate Windsor Ceremonials: Coronations and Investitures

Coronations and investitures are revisited to reflect on how, politically and in terms of representation in the public life of the nation, the Windsors negotiated with political figures and the media to achieve a relevance and support for their continuing role. There was a will to make monarchy more accessible through such occasions, and questions are asked about how far this succeeded, and how important the monarchical role was perceived to be by the political elites of the day as well as by the media industry. The willingness of the Windsors to utilise advances in media technology in relation to such events, as part of their modernisation, is also considered. This chapter will ask how far public celebratory ceremonials were changed in ways that has made them particularly ‘Windsor’, and the extent to which it was the royal family that drove change.

'At the top table': British elites’ perceptions of the UK’s international position, 1950-91

Since the end of the Second World War, Britain’s global status has been a subject of intense debate. When the former US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, famously stated in 1962 that ‘Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role’,1 he was suggesting the country should scale back its expectations of a world position, not rely upon a relationship with the US to project power and, importantly, reconcile itself to being just another major European state. Echoes of such views can be found in the pronouncements of French President Charles de Gaulle when he vetoed UK entry to the European Economic Community, in 1963 and again in 1967. The General believed that Britain was too close to Washington, not sufficiently European in outlook and too interested in maintaining a global presence. Over the decades such views have been repeated by others right down to the present day and, in all likelihood, will continue for some time to come. But, what did the British elite — politicians, policy-makers, civil servants and diplomats — think of this debate? This chapter will examine the question by utilising group oral testimonies, called ‘witness seminars’, of those who were at the heart of the UK policy-making elite as collected by the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH). The chapter will focus on three distinct but closely interrelated themes which consistently and identifiably run through the testimonies in these seminars: the internal debates about the UK’s global position; Anglo-American relations; and relations with Europe.

Commonwealth International Financial Arrangements and Britain’s First Application to Join the EEC

If the United Kingdom had joined the European Economic Community following its first application in 1961 it was highly probable that many Commonwealth countries would have experienced, in the short term at least, a disruption in their international financial arrangements: in the way they paid for their trade with other countries, and particularly in the way they accessed capital on the world markets. However, this issue was wilfully ignored by the British government, which chose to concentrate on issues relating to Commonwealth preferences and tariffs. It is not surprising, therefore, that this issue has scarcely been discussed in the academic literature on the British application to join the EEC.1