‘What an awful body the UN have become!!' Anglo-American–UN relations during the Congo crisis, February–December 1961

Abstract

when Britain successfully appealed to the United States to intervene in order to stall UN actions in the Congo. The cooperation between President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to constrain UN Congo policy reflects the centrality of the organisation in Anglo-American relations at the time and also highlights an understudied aspect of the relationship between the London and Washington. It will be shown that the crisis put a strain on the Anglo-American relations, leading to efforts by the British to play on the Cold War fears of the Americans by urging them to limit the actions of the UN. It is argued that the changing nature of the organisation helped to foster tensions in the Anglo-American relationship, exposing inherent differences of opinion about how American Cold War objectives should be balanced against the British agenda for decolonisation. The two incidents highlighted here reflect how the crisis became a challenge for Anglo-American relations and ultimately reveal the waning influence of the United States and the UK within the UN at the time.Keywords: Anglo-American relations; United Nations; Congo crisis; Cold War; decolonisation When the crisis erupted in the Congo immediately following independence on 30 June 1960, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was initially insouciant. Despite his prophetic 'Winds of Change' speech delivered in Cape Town earlier that year, he did not immediately perceive the Congo crisis as a challenge to Anglo-American relations, nor a threat to his own government. He declared bombastically that 'MP's might froth over their club claret but they were not going to risk their seats and *Email: a.m.omalley@hum.leidenuniv.nl