Professor Gaynor Johnson
Introduction
I have been a professional historian for over thirty years and semi-retired in 2023 after ten years as Professor of International History at the University of Kent, UK. Most of my research has focused on British foreign policy in the twentieth century and, more recently, the history of the Foreign Office. I am also known more for my work on British foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century, rather than the latter. Therefore, you might be wondering what observations and insights I can offer as to how we understand the establishment of Wilton Park after the Second World War. The answer, I hope will be, quite a bit. My discussion focusses on two dimensions: ideology and structure.
Ideology
I would suggest that Wilton Park represents a unique hybrid of the Old and New Diplomacy at work. The old diplomacy, sometimes known as secret diplomacy, formed the human underpinning of the international order in Europe primarily from the end of the Napoleonic era in 1815 for almost a century, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It was structured via an elaborate web of primarily personal connections through the different ruling houses of Europe and through diplomatic networks. Often viewed as elitist and inward looking, it eschewed any attempt to democratise it or make its operation more accountable. An analysis of the reasons why this system became so fragile and ultimately collapsed forms the core of much of the scholarly literature relating to the origins and consequences of the First World War.
The First World War was followed, famously, by a controversial sequence of peace treaties, the most famous of which, the Treaty of Versailles, was signed between the Allied and Associated Powers and the German Empire on 30 June 1919 in the Palace of Versailles. The peace conference of which this treaty was part also sought to establish a new, much more transparent and accountable form of international diplomacy. Its emphasis was on collective security on internationalism and not nationalism. It rejected war and became a projection of the liberal democratic values of the victorious powers. Most scholars would accept that the League of Nations, the forerunner to the United Nations, most clearly represented the new diplomacy at work. However, there is also a very broad consensus that that experiment did not work through a mixture of political culture, the collapse of confidence in capitalism and democracy that followed the Wall Street Crash in 1929, and the continued dominance of nationalist agendas, especially in the former Central Powers.
How does this context help us understand the origins and significance of Wilton Park? First, the peacemakers at the end of the Second World War did not create a rigid or punitive peace treaty that the Axis powers were required to sign. The emphasis instead was on understanding German political culture rather than condemning it. Moving away from couching all interactions with German politicians, diplomats and ordinary German citizens in terms of the Sonderweg (special path). This was a view that also broke through into the academic literature in the late 1950s/early 1960s, that Germany as a diplomatic actor had an aggressive, militaristic bellicose culture hardwired into its psyche that it was unable and, importantly, unwilling, to forsake altogether. While Hitler’s regime had been defeated in May 1945, it was only a matter of time before another emerged from the shadows to replace it. The programmes in the early years of Wilton Park took the view that more needed to be done that simply preventing the means by which Germany could attack its neighbours again through disarmament, occupation and moral and diplomatic ostracism.
Like the prewar New Diplomacy, the emphasis instead was on targeting the grass roots of German society, the ordinary citizen, the junior or middle ranking government official, rather than the ruling elites. Through a form of social and intellectual capillary action, liberal democratic values would spread upwards until they formed a natural and homogenous core majority from which the national government could emerge. There are direct and important parallels here with the pre-war League of Nations Union, a body led by one of the founders of the League itself, Lord Robert Cecil, in 1919, to give ordinary citizens a voice in debates about the weighty issues of importance in current international affairs. The thinking was that the ordinary man in the street, the man on the Clapham omnibus, represented the voice of sanity and reason, who existed in sufficient numbers so as to make their voices heard in the corridors of power and thus were able to influence government policy.
Having made the case for Wilton Park as a focus of the New Diplomacy, there are also some other parallels with the wider trends in the history of British foreign policy in the early twentieth century, especially towards Germany, that suggests continuity with past practices and thinking, rather than change. When one mentions the word appeasement in this context, it conjures up the image in most people’s mind of Neville Chamberlain and his efforts to secure peace in Europe, especially through the Munich conferences. That form of appeasement involved the granting of territorial concessions to the Third Reich as a means of maintaining peace in Europe, and was then and is still now considered to be controversial for reasons that are very well known. However, what is often forgotten is that during the 1920s, a decade earlier, and throughout most of the late nineteenth century, the British policy of appeasement had a very different meaning. Casting itself in the role of the ‘honest broker’ in European diplomacy, the British government sought more to arbitrate between warring parties than to confront, and to take sides. The emphasis was on understanding and finding diplomatic modus vivendi; of promoting reconciliation with former enemies rather that recrimination. I would suggest therefore, that the approach taken by British officials at Wilton Park towards the defeated Germany had much in common with that ethos. But in order for it to work, both sides have to wish it to do so; that was not the case during the 1930s, but was much more the case after 1945.
That said, the rationale for British policy as expounded at Wilton Park was clear and definite: Britain and the Allies and Associated Powers had won the war. But it was not expressed as smug triumphalism; more in terms of a victory for the political ideologies that had underpinned much of the wartime alliance; a belief in capitalist liberal democracy. It was axiomatic that that form of government offered the best basis for creating a lasting peace in Europe; a view that was later reinforced by the exponents of European integration. The work conducted by Wilton Park in the late 1940s demonstrated that the British government had learned important lessons about peace and reconciliation after conflict. This aspect of Britain’s post Second World War diplomacy towards Germany also provides a good example of proactive rather than reactive foreign policy. That is one of the principal differences with British policy before 1939; appeasement may have been a staple element of modern British foreign policy, but it was almost always reactive, ie responsive to the agenda determined by another country.
Structure
Historians of interwar British foreign policy who study policy towards France and Germany through the lens of the Foreign Office have often commented on the pro-French professional culture and bias that existed. It is hardly new to claim that Britain’s principal ally in the world at that time was France and had been officially for more than two decades, and unofficially for a lot longer than that. Within the Foreign Office, after 1919, relations with France were channelled through the Western Department; those with Germany through the Central Department. During the interwar period there was little cross over of staff between the two departments and most clerks remained in posts for relatively longer periods, over five years. This encouraged an entrenched, inward-looking culture in both departments and the emergence of an informal set of biases that looked like but actually fell someway short of actual enmity. In short, Western Department clerks were often styled as being hostile to Germany; and those in the Central Department hostile to France. This polarity fundamentally weakened Britain’s relations with both countries before 1939. However, the creation of Wilton Park in 1946 did much to bury the remnants of that culture and prevent its resurgence, although it was largely replaced by the debate about whether or not Britain should join what is now the European Union. If anything, the late 1940s saw a shift in favour of improved relations with Germany than further accommodating the French.
The administrative origins of Wilton Park lay elsewhere in the Foreign Office, in the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD), as well as the Political Intelligence Department and the British governments departments dealing with psychological warfare, the German Department did not emerge until 1945, and even then, most diplomatic business was transacted by the departments dealing with post-war reconstruction and later discussions relating to European integration. The post-war administrative structure was also fluid, with little evidence of departmental territorial behaviour; a recognition of the immense complexity of the post war diplomatic landscape.
This concept of fluidity was reflected in how Wilton Park was administered and the range of its activities. Its raison d’être was partly to reflect and respond to the diplomatic needs and issues that dominated the postwar world and to facilitate discussions between the relevant parties. This was often a mixture of reactive and proactive diplomacy and formed the essence of the New Diplomacy, which placed dialogue and debate at the heart of diplomatic problem solving. In this Wilton Park can and should be seen as offering a model for the operation and culture of the remainder of the Foreign Office. In recent years, Lord Ricketts, the former Permanent Under Secretary at the FCO and ambassador to Paris, has urged the British foreign policy making elites to examine critically the British role in international diplomacy and to make what he terms, hard choices, about the future. They primarily revolve around two key issues: accepting that Britain’s role on the international stage has, at best, changed in the last hundred years and at worst, diminished. The second accepting that Britain is no longer among the top tier of Great Powers broadly defined. The failure to come to terms with these realities, Ricketts and others have argued, stems from the continuation of the insular, elitist, old boys club culture within the Foreign Office even today, and that continues to be dominated by a public school/Oxbridge circle of officials.
Conclusion
When I mentioned Wilton Park to colleagues, all of them said the same thing. They knew that it is branch of the FCDO, but were not entirely sure what it does or what it is. Nevertheless, we wondered why we have not paid more attention to both the place and its work as diplomatic historians. To answer this question, it is important to bear in mind that Wilton Park is a facilitator rather than a diplomatic actor in its own right. Policy does not emerge from there fully formed but the ideas that underpin those policies most certainly do. Second, its archival footprint is small and often obscure., making the task difficult. Third, it is the creator of mood, of ambience, the softest elements of soft diplomacy and also the most difficult to pin down. Ironically, it would probably take its closure for scholars to realise its importance more fully!
About the author
Gaynor Johnson is Professor Emerita in International History at the University of Kent, UK. Prior to that, she held posts at the University of Greater Manchester and Salford University. She is an expert of twentieth British foreign policy, especially relations with France, Germany and the United States particularly during the period between the two world wars. Her other interests relate to this and include the statecraft of diplomacy, especially the history of the UK Foreign Office, and also the use of prosopography, or ‘collective biography’ by international historians. She has published widely in these areas, including eight edited collections, her most recent monograph is Lord Rpbert Cecil: Politician and Internationalist (2013). She is a member of the Peer Review College of the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and is the editor of both Diplomacy and Statecraft and International History Review. She is also the current Chair of the British International History Group. Her most recent work is a book on the history of the Foreign Office, 1782-1968.
