The Marshall Offensive

Abstract

It is generally argued that by the autumn of 1947 Britain faced an imminent economic collapse that was only averted by timely American assistance offered in the form of Marshall aid. The view that Britain, and more generally Western Europe, faced an ‘impending economic catastrophe’ in late 1947 was expressed by Clayton in May 1947, who concluded: ‘without further prompt and substantial aid from the United States, economic, social and political disintegration will overwhelm Europe’.² Similarly, Oliver Franks, chairman of the Committee of European Economic Co-operation, set up on the 15 July 1947, took the view that ‘in the spring of 1947 the economic and social state of Western Europe was far graver than in the thirties’,³ whilst Dean Acheson defended foreign aid in terms of ‘our duty and our privilege as human beings’ facing ‘the facts of international life … [which] … mean that the United States is going to have to undertake further emergency financing of foreign purchases if foreign countries are to continue to buy in 1948 and 1949 the commodities which they need to sustain life and at the same time rebuild their economies’.⁴ Subsequent interpretations have portrayed this ‘annus horrendus’,⁵ the ‘crisis year of unrelieved disaster’⁶ as a turning point forcing the Labour government to yet further levels of subordination and capitulation to American interests.