Lend-Lease nightmare ends for UK

[James Deuce]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6215847.stm

"Treasury Minister, Ed Balls"

(Nothing like a bit of schoolboy tittering to lighten the mood)

[Jeremy]

The question is, what do they pay the debt off with?

[Nitzer]

The question is, what do they pay the debt off with?

Speeding fines

[El Dopa]

The question is, what do they pay the debt off with?

The taste of shit on our tongues.

Or rather, Blair has the taste of Bushes simian arse on his lips.

[Karma]

They should have taken the money from Germany back then to pay the bills... to the winner go the spoils.

[James Deuce]

Without the Marshal Plan Weasel the UK would have been a Soviet Bloc country or a glowing crater.

Some people learned the lessons of WW1 and applied them. Joking about not learning from past mistakes in this context is tantamount to letting paedophiles open a creche.

[Fatjim]

You're not paedophilophobic are you Jim. You need to be more tolerant of other peoples lifestyles.

[Timber020]

They should have taken the money from Germany back then to pay the bills... to the winner go the spoils.

Thats part of how world war 2 kicked off in the first place, sometimes even the victors dont make the same mistake twice

[James Deuce]

You're not paedophilophobic are you Jim. You need to be more tolerant of other peoples lifestyles.

How many times have I told you? SHUT THAT DAMN CRECHE!

[Skyryder]

The crux of the Lend Lease Agreement I've highlighted the relevant section. Bear in mind that prior to the commencement of hostilities due to the attack on Pearl Harbour America’s foreign policy was isolationist. In this respect America had few trading partners. England on the other hand with its empire connections monopolised the international trade regimes.

ARTICLE VII

In the final determination of the benefits to be provided to the United States of America by the Government of the United Kingdom in return for aid furnished under the Act of Congress of March 11, 1941, the terms and conditions thereof shall be such as not to burden commerce between the two countries, but to promote mutually advantageous economic relations between them and the betterment of world-wide economic relations. To that end, they shall include provision for agreed action by the United States of America and the United Kingdom, open to participation by all other countries of like mind, directed to the expansion, by appropriate international and domestic measures, of production, employment, and the exchange and consumption of goods, which are the material foundations of the liberty and welfare of all peoples; to the elimination of all forms of discriminatory treatment in international commerce, and to the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers; and, in general, to the attainment of all the economic objectives set forth in the Joint Declaration made on August 14, 1941, by the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

At an early convenient date, conversations shall be begun between the two Governments with a view to determining, in the light of governing economic conditions, the best means of attaining the above stated objectives by their own agreed action and of seeking the agreed action of other like-minded Governments.
**

This clause has been the dominate driving force in American foreign policy up to Nixon's China Accord.

England was fighting for it's very survival and the yanks held a gun to their head. So much for their much vaunted freedom and democracy bullshit.


Skyryder

[James Deuce]

You know what the Americans did to us Skyryder? Check out the 1944 Canberra Pact. They tried to make us and Aus hand over Commonwealth territory at the cessation of hostilities in the Pacific as part of the Lend/Lease agreement. NZ just said, "no way", and the US billed us immediately for all our lend/lease equipment (Liberty Ships, F4U Corsairs, P51 Mustangs) effectively clearing out our treasury reserve. I think we had approximately 2 million pounds in gold reserves which we had to hand over.

As soon as Australia saw what happened they went, "Yeah, no worries mate."

The more dastardly part of their actions was withdrawing logistics support in the Pacific including medical aid, fuel, and spares. NZers died of dysentery and typhus in in the Solomons as a direct result.

That is why we had such tight controls on NZ money going overseas to pay for imports up until the late 80s. We had no cash.

We're still better off than the UK. That lend/lease agreement effectively accelerated the demise of the British Empire and before you all say "Bloody Good Thing", it is arguable that Africa may have been in much better shape today if the colonial withdrawals hadn't been so precipitous.

[SPman]

.

So much for their much vaunted freedom and democracy bullshit.


Skyryder

What!

People still believe that shit?

Those with the most money or goods have always dealt with their own best interests at heart.
The Yanks have played it for all it was worth the last 100 years.
Now the Chinese are starting to flex thir rapidly increasing muscles...
etc
etc
etc

[Skyryder]

What!

People still believe that shit?


Only the Americans. Some actually believe that they elect their President.

Skyryder

[jrandom]

Sorry, I'm missing something here.

According to Churchill's 'The Second World War', which I have on the desk beside me, the Lend-Lease business started when the UK found themselves without cash to pay for the materiel necessary to prosecute their war against Germany. The Americans were the only willing suppliers with appropriate industrial capacity that they had recourse to.

When the situation became obvious, Roosevelt's Administration agreed to send equipment and supplies to the UK on the basis that prosecution of the war benefited the USA's interests, without billing for it. This was a full year or more before the USA's entry into the war.

According to Churchill, under Lend-Lease, "There was no provision for repayment. There was not even to be a formal account kept..."

I'm no fan of the Murkns, but let's keep things accurate.

Churchill credits Lend-Lease, which he calls "a wonderful decision" and "the most unsordid act in the history of any nation", with being a primary reason for the avoidance of the potential stalemate that could have left most of Europe in Hitler's control, with the UK forced to abandon hostilities and accept the situation.

After the war, there was Lend-Lease equipment left in the UK that hadn't been consumed in the fight. If the USA and Canada were happy to let the UK hang onto it and then pay for it over 60 years at 2% interest, how on earth does that constitute the Americans "holding a gun to the UK's head"?

[Lou Girardin]

The Poms were so grateful that they kicked all the Chagos Islanders out of their home so that they could get a discount on a Polaris sub in return for the Merkins building a base on Diego Garcia. Ya gotta love Real Politik.

[Skyryder]

Sorry, I'm missing something here.


This is from the Atlantic Charter.

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;


Roosevelt was keen on America entering the war but there was strong opposition to this from Congress and the American public in general, who saw Nazi Germany and Hitler as the only opposition to Communism in Europe. Operation Barbaross had commenced in June 1941. Bearing in mind that German forces were on the outskirts of Lennigrad in December of '41 (at the time of sighning of the charter) Roosevelt was hardly in a position to openly supply arms to the British at this time when it looked as if Britain may lose the war.

Without the fourth clause and the reduction of trade barriers supplies would have never been supplied. Britain had no choice but to accede to the demands of the Americans. Now if that is not holding a gun to their heads I don't know what is.

Skyryder

[jrandom]

This is from the Atlantic Charter... Now if that is not holding a gun to their heads I don't know what is.

As far as I can tell, you're quite wrong.

The American Lend-Lease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-lease) Act was passed on 11 March 1941.

The Atlantic Charter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_charter) was 'issued as a joint declaration' on 14 August 1941. It expressed the results of a conference between Roosevelt and Churchill during Churchill's visit to the USA which commenced on 9 August 1941.

From what source do you derive your apparent assertion that a point in the Atlantic Charter had been previously agreed to as a prerequisite to Lend-Lease?

Quite apart from that, I fail to see how the very broad and generic free-trade ideal expressed (amongst other things) in the Charter constituted a material disadvantage to the Commonwealth.

It seems that your cynicism has left you with an inaccurate historical picture.

[James Deuce]

Fish, Churchill had a political obligation to present the Lend-Lease Act in a positive historical light. At the time it enabled the UK to concentrate on developing a military answer to Hitler.

Irrespective of how the Act was intended on both sides of the Atlantic, the punitive repayment schedule left Britain unable to maintain it's position in World affairs post-WWII or its Colonial obligations. The time of Empire may have passed but when you have no cash to run it, the process tends to accelerate.

This has been acknowledged as a probable definite act on the part of the US as they realised that they now had the capacity dominate World trade. This can be demonstrated economically in the shift from Pounds Sterling as the International trade standard to the greenback.

As Skyryder has noted, the corporate movers and shakers in the US had definite strong Fascist leanings to the point of almost entering into a coup process. The majority of the Republican party had pro-Hitler, isolationism as a core value, though Wendell Wilkie did successfully undermine the political sway of this group throuhg 1940-41.

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/53-index.html

The British Labour Government that took power in July 1945 did themselves no favours by insisting that bilateral bulk goods deals were out and insisted on trading in money only. The trade economists lost out to the banking economists at a time when World economic power was shifting away from the UK. With Europe in ruins there was no European trade to provide a bulwark against the shift.

From a more personal perspective, this meant that long serving professional military people like my grandfather were looking at receiving Government funded housing sometime in the mid-late 1950s. A great deal of people migration to other parts of the Commonwealth and the US left Britain without key expertise in many, many areas, purely because they couldn't cope with living with their families in a B&B situation for years on end.

There's little nuggets in this transcript

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/coppockj.htm

that show that the US made it an economic priority to establish high loan repayments for Great Britain. Remember that these are on top of WW1 loans that GB is STILL paying and because of the high interest rate is likely to never ever repay fully. This is despite the fact that GB was utterly without cash reserves at the end of WWII and this fact was known to the US and at no time was a deferred payment plan offered.

Instead top priority was given to the Marshal Plan and the reconstruction of Western Europe. Which was a damn fine Humanitarian and Economic idea, but it left "Allies" utterly in the lurch. Unlike WWI where the theatre of war was mostly Western Europe and the Colonial interests and therefore trade interests were largely untouched, WWII devastated the UK's main trade sphere in the Far East. Again this was not unknown to the US and was used to help establish the US as the main component of the Capitalist World, as it had been immediately post-WW1.

[jrandom]

little nuggets in this transcript...

Interesting stuff.

It seems that the combination of Truman being a cunt and the post-war British government being a bunch of stiff-necked trade-union-riddled pinkos resulted in a number of dealings that were very much against the spirit of what Roosevelt and Churchill came up with.

I guess it's a sad truth that good intentions are often perverted by selfish and evil men, and that the ultimate outcome of the Allies' economic efforts during the war was a New World Order of heavy-handed American unilateralism.


Churchill had a political obligation to present the Lend-Lease Act in a positive historical light...

Which I believe was correct of him. Viewed in context, it was positive. His written history ceased with the day of Japan's surrender, and his late-'50s epilogue was concerned almost entirely with the ascendence of the USSR and the outbreak of the Cold War.

[Skyryder]

As far as I can tell, you're quite wrong.

The American Lend-Lease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-lease) Act was passed on 11 March 1941.

The Atlantic Charter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_charter) was 'issued as a joint declaration' on 14 August 1941. It expressed the results of a conference between Roosevelt and Churchill during Churchill's visit to the USA which commenced on 9 August 1941.

From what source do you derive your apparent assertion that a point in the Atlantic Charter had been previously agreed to as a prerequisite to Lend-Lease?

Quite apart from that, I fail to see how the very broad and generic free-trade ideal expressed (amongst other things) in the Charter constituted a material disadvantage to the Commonwealth.

It seems that your cynicism has left you with an inaccurate historical picture.

You are right in that the Lend lease Act was approved by Congress prior to the Atlantic Charter. However the context that I was referring to can be found in the Destroyers for Bases agreement of 1940. This agreement must be seen as a forward to the Atlantic Charter. If that is not the case then why would America seek bases in British held territories? My cynacism is based on an accurate understanding of a 'historical' military involvment on overseas expansion. Throughout history, navel deployment and their operational procedures have been based on trade. The Falklands war would be one of the few exceptions to this.

There was more going on in Whitehouse than mere documents show.

Skyryder





However it was not untill October

[avgas]

There was more going on in Whitehouse than mere documents show.
Unlike now, our good friend bush looks like he has his own theme song going on in that little head of his