Campaigns and Schisms, 1954–1964

Between 1954 and the election of the Labour Government in 1964, political decolonisation proceeded at an accelerated pace in Britain's remaining colonies, particularly during the ‘winds of change’ era of Macmillan and MacLeod. Immediately preceding this shift to what Churchill had stigmatised as the policy of ‘scuttle’, however, there was a last-ditch attempt militarily to assert Britain's imperial role in the Suez adventure. Reactions on the anticolonialist left were dominated by the Movement for Colonial Freedom, which saw its policies in large part adopted by the Labour Party. There were also clashes with the British Labour movement over the future of colonial trade unionism. Meanwhile, the Communist Party was undergoing a contentious reappraisal of its own attitudes to the colonial world. This chapter traces these developments, concluding with the anticolonialists' reactions to the Wilson Government in 1964.