Crisis Defused: Anglo-American Cooperation and Divergence in Atlantic-European Affairs, June to December 1966

Abstract

One thing that Lyndon Johnson and Harold Wilson shared in June and July 1966 was a lack of sleep. In Washington, the president sought sanctuary at night in the White House Situation Room in the hope that ‘people, light, and talk’ would distract his mind from the nightmares he suffered as he gave the order for the bombing of areas surrounding Hanoi and Haiphong in the knowledge that this could trigger a general war with China.¹ In London, the prime minister endured exceptional fatigue as another sterling crisis drained the country’s economic lifeblood and threatened the unity of his Cabinet. In other circumstances the two leaders might have traded woes, but Wilson’s public distancing of the UK from the escalation in the US air war against North Vietnam had earned him ‘the frozen mitt’ from LBJ.² This was hardly an encouraging prelude to the prime minister’s scheduled visit to Washington at the end of July. Moreover, as his trip neared, the pressure on Wilson only mounted; on 20 July, he had to contend with threats of resignation from George Brown in protest at the government’s handling of the sterling crisis just as he was preparing to go before parliament to unveil a range of stringent measures designed to save the pound.³ Arguably Wilson’s only escape from the political turmoil engulfing him in the week before he left for Washington was ‘an hour or two off … to open the rebuilt Cavern Club’ of Beatles fame.⁴ The prime minister’s interest in The Beatles was almost certainly a public relations exercise, though as he returned to London to face what was always going to be a bruising Commons debate on the economy he could be forgiven for humming the tune to ‘A hard day’s night’ or, more appropriately still, ‘Help!’. On 28 July a ‘desperately tired’ Wilson headed to Washington with little expectation that LBJ would act as a ministering angel. Yet, to his unalloyed pleasure, he quickly discovered that Johnson’s ‘frozen mitt’ had thawed.