before the outbreak of the Korean War, French and German diplomats, backed by the Truman administration, proposed the Schuman plan, a European coal and steel consortium that was to lay the foundations of the Common Market. The prospect of being, as they perceived it, merely part of a European federations, was a bit much for British politicians and economic experts to swallow. American diplomat Julius Holmes described their dismay:
[The British] resent a common American attitude that they are just another European power. They see Britain as the hub of a vast and complicated political, military and economic mechanism, occupying a position in the world and a relationship with us which is quite different from the other European powers. There is a constant wonder here [in London] that we should think it in American interest for them to completely to integrate with Europe (Hennessy, 1993, p. 393).
Britain's wholehearted response to the Korean War's call to arms well represented its people's courage and determination to contain Communism. Of several celebrated engagements, the best known is the struggle at Hill 235, above the Imjin north of Seoul, where in the spring of 1951 the Gloucestershire Regiment held back a vastly superior force for several days (Hennesy, 1993, p. 405). Besides its altruism, the high level of British participation in this war underlined Britain's continuing aspirations as a world leader beyond her current reduced economic and political circumstances.
The glow of recognition, unfortunately, was not accompanied by positive economic rewards. After the extreme austerity of the immediate postwar period, the British economy by 1950 was beginning to take advantage of its position as a comparatively intact economy that had not suffered the depradations of occupation. Worries about replacement of aging manufacturing plants lay mostly in the future. Imposition of a steeply rising defense budget-- รบ4,700 m. over the...