Conclusion

Abstract

The balance in Anglo-French relations shifted markedly between the end of the Second World War and the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979, between Duff Cooper’s return to war- torn Paris and Nicholas Henderson’s stark warning to London that it was being consistently outperformed by its continental neighbour. There was an unequal relationship that favoured London through most of the Fourth Republic. During these years, Britain felt itself the ‘third power’ in world affairs, while France was troubled by colonial wars abroad and chronic political instability. After 1958, however, with the advent of the Fifth Republic, the balance of power favoured Paris, especially when Britain became a supplicant for entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). There was perhaps a rough equality of status around the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956, and hopes of a close partnership, too, when Heath took Britain into the EEC in 1973. On both occasions, however, relations subsequently cooled. There was a persistent tendency for the British, even under Heath as his premiership came to its untidy end, to seek a friendly relationship with the US, which helped draw Paris and London apart. However, one great problem that the British faced was how best to respond to pressures for deeper European integration, a process that France led from 1950 and which proved a long-term success as a basis for French power, but which the British could neither match nor ever fully embrace.