Soviet policy was one of unlimited opportunism within a wide range of possible contingencies, for very many of which quite detailed military plans were constantly kept up to date. It drew strength from two main sources. On the one hand was the dogma of the dialectic, that capitalism was bound to disintegrate under the stresses of its own internal contradictions — to which was added the somewhat puzzling injunction that though this was inevitable it was still the duty of all socialists to try to bring it about. On the other hand was the endemic thrust of Russian imperialist expansionism, owing nothing to the dialectic, constant under any form of rule.
The threat from the Soviet Union to the parliamentary democracies of the West had, in the preceding thirty years, engaged the serious attention of their governments. The Atlantic Alliance, with the supporting military structure of NATO, resulted. Public opinion in the member countries of the Alliance, however, had long showed some reluctance to support the military measures required to meet the threat. In this respect the last years of the seventies had seen something of a change, as a result of which the military defences of the Alliance began to move out of the highly dangerous conditions of weakness into which, by 1977, they had been allowed to sink.
The position of the United Kingdom, a country of critical importance to the Alliance, if only because of its geographical location, was in some ways typical of the position among the European allies in general and on both counts deserves particular consideration.
Britain had its own special problems. Withdrawal from empire had been unsettling. Swift though this had been in the twenty-five years since the Second World War, insufficient time had elapsed by 1975 to allow of complete recovery of national balance in the new role of a second-class power with negligible overseas possessions. An extraordinary obsession in the people of Britain with the redistribution of wealth, rather than its creation, had done much in the same period to cripple national enterprise. This had gone hand in hand with the encouragement of general reliance upon state-provided welfare in place of the reliance upon themselves which had previously been characteristic of the British, while there had also been an ugly and unscrupulous exploitation of the politics of envy. It began to be increasingly clear, however, even to those politicians whose hearts were stronger than their heads, that national welfare depended on national wealth, and that the state produced nothing to distribute.
At the same time the massive burden of British trade unionism began to prove unwelcome to the working people who had to bear it. Of the desirability of combination to promote and protect the interests of workers, once the Industrial Revolution had opened the door to the predatory instincts and the restless, innovatory genius of an island race of adventurers, there can be little doubt. The importance of the protection afforded to the workers by the unions, and the benefit this brought them in earlier days, can hardly be exaggerated. It was when the blind benevolence of politicians had allowed the unions to move outside the law, when a proper watchfulness on the union side had given way to unimaginative Luddism, when reaction and restrictive practices were putting a savage brake on enterprise, when activities originally intended to improve living standards were now seen to be doing just the opposite, that the majority of the nation, who did not belong to trade unions, began to be increasingly resentful of their subjection to the minority who did.
Although, as events in Britain in the mid-seventies showed, politicians in a parliamentary democracy can go on governing for some time in a manner unpopular with the people as a whole, they cannot go on doing this indefinitely. Attempts at confrontation with the power of the trade unions, made by both the main political parties, when each in its turn was in power, had been total failures. Up to the mid-seventies public opinion in Britain was not yet sufficiently aware of the menace from union power to face the discomforts of standing up to it, and the attempts of both parties to diminish it were dropped.
After a few years more, however, the British public had had enough. When prudent men in politics and sensible men in trade unions, of which there were very many, saw that it was not going to be easy to push the public around much more, they gently and adroitly let some of the steam out of the situation. Trade unionism in Britain did not go out with a bang, as some had hoped, nor even with a whimper. It gradually subsided to a convenient shape and size and continued to play a very important part in its originally intended role.
What happened over the trade unions was evidence of the refreshing and welcome spirit of realism and common sense which gradually began to emerge on every side in British public opinion in the late seventies. A new political approach — which also demonstrated how politicians will inevitably in the end be guided by changes in public opinion — was before very long to become evident in the matter of defence.
These years saw slow but significant changes in Britain. A total addiction to redistributive economic and fiscal policies, which showed itself in hostility to profit-making and in penal taxation on industrial enterprise, was gradually being replaced by more sensible attitudes, which at last permitted an increase in national wealth. These changes, together with the movement of world trade out of recession and the revenue from North Sea oil, contributed to some recovery in the standard of living in Britain and, in no small measure, to a revival of national confidence.
As the United Kingdom at last began to find a new awareness of national identity in a post-imperial mode, less began to be heard of separatism in the parts. Devolution became less fashionable. Less was also heard of any suggestion that the world owed Britain special consideration, which may have at one time been justified, let alone a living, which never was. There was less and less support of what had previously been known as progressive education. There was acceptance of the necessity for children in school to learn, even when they did not greatly like it. Variety in educational provision almost ceased to be regarded as sinful, independent schools were once more allowed to flourish, as so many parents wished, and even the public schools, their old-fashioned discipline long derided by radicals who so often sent their sons to profit from it, came under less violent attack.
The instinct to voluntary service, an instinct rather disliked by the more extreme addicts of the welfare state, was also seen to have survived, and even once again began to flourish. Scouts, Guides, St John Ambulance and countless other voluntary organizations reported sharp rises in recruiting. So did the volunteer reserves of the armed forces. In universities it began to be quite fashionable once more to join the Officer Training Corps. There was even a movement towards a voluntary revival of civil defence, long neglected by government.
In this changing climate of public opinion some scrutiny of Britain’s security in the world was before long inevitable. More notice began to be taken of what threatened it. There was more questioning of the extent to which Britain was taking a proper share in her own defence. It was even suggested, possibly unfairly, that it might no longer be enough to rest on what some called abject reliance on the United States.
The British record in the sphere of common defence did not stand up under scrutiny any too well. At the close of the Korean war in 1952 the proportion of the gross national product devoted to defence was 11.2 per cent. This was possibly too much. In the financial year 1976-7 it was 4.9 per cent. This was certainly too little. Even further reductions were being sought by some. The National Executive Committee of the British Labour Party (from whose control the Labour government of the day was content to remain free) was in 1977 demanding a further reduction in defence spending by one-third.