"Cyrenaica is paramount" : Britain's position as a great power in deciding the fate of the former Italian colony of Libya from the Labour Cabinet's perspective, 1945-1949

Abstract

Britain had emerged from the Second World War victorious and willing to take its place in the post-war world alongside other great powers, the US and the USSR. However, the war had taken its toll on the British Empire, and its resources along with its international prestige were wearing thin. The newly elected Labour Government was not about to allow Britain's status as a great power to fade. Instead it attempted to secure the country's rank in the international community by directing its imperial aspirations towards strengthening Britain's position in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. In the Potsdam Conference of 1945 a Council of Foreign Ministers was established to prepare the necessary post-war peace treaties. Britain along with the US, the USSR and France were responsible for the Italian peace treaty which included settling the fate of the former Italian colony of Libya. Libya consisted of three separate regions: Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan. From early on, Britain had its eyes set on acquiring a UN trusteeship of Cyrenaica where it had been the occupying power since 1943. The trusteeship would make Britain the formal administrative power there, and thus support its great-power ambitions in the Middle East. The Labour Cabinet decided to pursue this trusteeship but was met with more obstacles than it had expected. In the end, Britain was unable to obtain the trusteeship. This research study focuses on analysing what the Labour Cabinet's pursuit for a British trusteeship of Cyrenaica reveals about Britain's status as a great power during the immediate post-war years from 1945 to 1949. The issue is explored through three main themes: Cyrenaica's strategic meaning for Britain, Britain's relations with the US and the USSR, and Britain's imperialistic nature. The final assessment of Britain's great-power position is based on the four requirements for a great power set in this research study, and on evaluating what the failure to acquire the trusteeship meant for Britain's status. The aim of this research study is to offer a new perspective on Britain's post-war great-power position by examining it through this particular case of Britain trying to obtain the trusteeship of Cyrenaica, and to demonstrate that Cyrenaica deserves more attention in the research of British history. The main primary sources for this research study are selected Cabinet conclusions, Cabinet memoranda and the Cabinet Secretary's notes from July 1945 when Labour took Office, to November 1949 when the UN decided that Libya would become an independent state. The Cabinet papers were screened by using a wide keyword search on the online database of the National Archives. The keyword search was essential for finding the relevant documents for this research study from the vast amount of material. The focus in studying the material was on Libya, the Council of Foreign Ministers and its parties, British Middle Eastern policy especially in Egypt, British imperialism, and the most significant Cabinet members in this case: Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. The two represented opposing views on whether a trusteeship of Cyrenaica would be beneficial for Britain. Attlee remained unenthusiastic but Bevin was determined to obtain the trusteeship. The Cabinet papers provide an overall picture of the main events, discussions and decisions, spiced with occasional intriguing details found in the Secretary's notes. The problem with the Cabinet papers as source material is that even if differing opinions are expressed in the memoranda, the conclusions are designed to portray unity, and can therefore be very vague. To be able to make good use of the Cabinet papers requires extensive knowledge of their historical context, as well as support from such research that has been able to access more detailed departmental documents, such as papers from the Foreign Office and the Chiefs of Staff. The findings of this research study support the generally accepted view that Britain was no longer a considerable great power after the Second World War. In the case of trying to acquire a British trusteeship of Cyrenaica, Britain fails to meet three out of the four set requirements for a great power: its military resources were underwhelming, it was not equal to the undeniable great powers - the US and the USSR - in either military capacity or prestige, and it was not acknowledged as a great power by the international community. The one requirement that Britain does meet is that it kept on acting as if it still was a great power, and conducted its policies accordingly. The stubborn belief expressed especially by Bevin that Britain could and would obtain the trusteeship it so greatly desired by relying on its old imperial great-power strategies is evidence of this. This research study continues to argue, that not only does the case of the Cyrenaican trusteeship reveal Britain's lost great-power status, it does it better than the major imperial events of that time which are usually at the forefront of studies regarding this topic. The situation in both India and Palestine was such that it would have been impossible for any great power to keep them under control. Withdrawing help from Greece and Turkey for the US to take over, can be seen as a strategic move to cut overseas expenditure while making sure that the US was tied up in world affairs and thus unable to pull back into isolationism, which would have left Britain to face the USSR alone in Europe. Cyrenaica, on the other hand, was an underdeveloped area that mostly consisted of inhospitable desert. Its only value was its location by the Mediterranean and on the western border of Egypt - and it had paramount strategic value only to Britain. This issue has been deemed so insignificant that it is tragically underrepresented in research of history and barely mentioned in the history books - and no wonder since much bigger events were taking place at the same time as the Cold War realities began to set in. However, by failing to acquire the trusteeship of this small and next to unknown territory where it was already the occupying power, Britain truly fell flat on its face. It had been a dominant power in the Middle East for a long time and was one of the victorious Three Powers in Potsdam - this rather humble objective was something it should have easily accomplished. Yet it did not. Failing in small world affairs rather than in the major ones speaks volumes of a country's great-power status - or the lack of it.