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‘Only the Best British Brides’: Regulating the Relationship between US Servicemen and British Women in the Early Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

GIORA GOODMAN
GIORA GOODMAN*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Western Galilee College, POB 2125, Acre, 24121, Israel; [email protected].
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Abstract

The relationship between US soldiers and west European women has been a relatively well-studied aspect of European social history in the twentieth century, during two world wars and the early cold war. Here, a less known chapter of this general European experience is explored: the efforts of the British government in the 1950s to direct and regulate contact between some 45,000 US airmen based in Britain and British women. The negative public effects of the resulting relationships were deemed by the British government and the social elite as potentially disruptive to US and British commitment to the Atlantic alliance. This concern led to persistent official and voluntary activity designed to resolve, or at least ameliorate, various social and gender-related problems; and it even included officially sponsored meetings between US servicemen and carefully chosen ‘decent’ British girls.

‘seulement les meilleures fiancées britanniques’: la régulation des relations entre soldats américains et femmes britanniques au début de la guerre froide

Les relations entre soldats américains et femmes européennes est un domaine bien balisé de l'histoire sociale européenne du 20ème siècle, soit pendant les deux guerres mondiales et au début de la Guerre froide. Cet article en explore un chapitre moins connu: les efforts du Gouvernement britannique durant les années 1950 de diriger et réguler les contacts entre les 45,000 aviateurs américains basés en Grande-Bretagne et les femmes britanniques. Ces relations, en raison de la mauvaise presse qu'on leur imputait, étaient considérées par le Gouvernement britannique et l'élite sociale comme potentiellement nuisible aux engagements américain et britannique à l'alliance atlantique. Cette préoccupation se trouve à l'origine de diverses initiatives aussi bien officielles que bénévoles qui visaient à résoudre, ou au moins améliorer, différents problèmes d'ordre social ou liés au genre, parmi lesquelles on trouve un soutien officiel à des rencontres entre soldats américains et jeunes femmes britanniques ‘décentes’, soigneusement choisies.

‘nur die besten britischen bräute’: die regulierung der beziehungen zwischen amerikanischen soldaten und britischen frauen im frühen kalten krieg

Die Beziehungen zwischen amerikanischen Soldaten und westeuropäischen Frauen ist ein relativ gut erforschtes Thema der europäischen Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, insbesondere während der beiden Weltkriege und zu Beginn des Kalten Krieges. Der vorliegende Artikel erforscht ein weniger bekanntes Kapitel dieser europäischen Erfahrung: Die Bemühungen der britischen Regierung in den Fünfzigerjahren, die Kontakte zwischen ungefähr 45 000 in Grossbritannien stationierten amerikanischen Fliegersoldaten und britischen Frauen zu lenken und zu regulieren. Das negative Aufsehen, das die daraus folgenden Beziehungen mit sich brachten, wurde von der britischen Regierung und der sozialen Elite als eine Gefährdung der britischen und amerikanischen Engagements in der atlantischen Allianz angesehen. Diese Sorge führte zu einer anhaltenden offiziellen und freiwilligen Aktivität um die diversen sozialen oder geschlechtlichen Probleme zu lösen oder wenigstens zu verbessern. Diese Bemühungen führten sogar zu staatlich unterstützten Treffen zwischen amerikanischen Soldaten und vorsichtig gewählten ‘anständigen’ jungen britischen Frauen.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , November 2008 , pp. 483 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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15 Tribune, 20 Feb. 1953. The leader of the Labour left, Aneurin Bevan, came to believe that the ‘socially and politically. . .obnoxious’ bases gave Britain ‘the appearance of being an “occupied country”’, but declared that ‘it is wrong to put the blame on the American airmen themselves.’ See Tribune, 22 Feb. 1955.

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22 Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 60–75.

23 Report by Sir George Pirie, 24 March 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.

24 Minute by R. E. Barclay, 30 April 1952, TNA, FO371/97606, AU1195/18. The US embassy in London also saw the potential: in 1952 an objective of the United States Information Services in Britain was ‘to utilize the presence of thousands of American troops in the UK to promote better understanding between our two peoples’. See Embassy to State Department, ‘IIA: Semi-annual Evaluation Report – June 1 to November 30, 1952’, 18 Feb. 1953, United States National Archives, College Park, Maryland (USNA), RG 59, Decimal File 1950–54, Box 2354, 511.41/2–1853.

25 Minutes of Meeting held in Air Ministry on 6 July 1953, TNA, AIR2/10706. The floods killed over 300 people and left thousands homeless. Five US airmen and twelve dependents were killed in the floods. The USAF sheltered and fed more than 1,000 British flood victims for four days. See USNA, RG 342, Box 519/2, file 370.1.

26 New York Herald Tribune, 3 Nov. 1952, 9 Nov. 1952; New York Times, 29 Oct. 1952, 17 Nov. 1952.

27 Minute by R. Makins, 7 Nov. 1952, TNA, FO371/97607, AU1195/82; Daily Mirror, 27 Sept. 1952.

28 Law to Peake, 5 March 1943, TNA, Metropolitan Police Office Records, MEPO3/2138; Rose, ‘The “Sex Question”’, 887.

29 Weeks, Jeffrey, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1989), 240.Google Scholar

30 Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952; New York Times, 17 Nov. 1952. On prostitution in London's West End in the late 1940s see Rolph, C. H., ed., Women of the Streets: A Sociological Study of the Common Prostitute (London: Secker & Warburg, 1955), 45–52.Google Scholar

31 ‘Summary of Major Short's Recommendations of the Off-duty Welfare Needs of the United States Air Force in the United Kingdom’, enclosed with Darvall to Makins, 24 Nov. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/22. Major Short also urged dealing with ‘profiteers and profiteering rackets’.

32 Report by Sir George Pirie, 24 March 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705. The ‘haystack queens’ show striking similarities to camp-following prostitutes around British army camps in nineteenth-century Ireland. See Luddy, Maria, ‘An Outcast Community: The “Wrens” of the Curragh’, Women's History Review, 1, 3 (1992), 341–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention.

33 Report by Sir George Pirie, 24 March 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705. Under the Vagrancy Act of 1824 every ‘common prostitute’ wandering in the public streets, highways or places of public resort and behaving in ‘a riotous or indecent manner’ could be imprisoned for up to fourteen days or fined no more than £5. Rolph, Women of the Streets, 16.

34 Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952. For differences between British and US laws on prostitution during wartime see Reynolds, Rich Relations, 203–4.

35 Rolph, Women of the Streets, 15–16, 37, 41–3. Hardening public attitudes towards prostitution resulted in the Street Offences Act only at the end of the decade. See Smart, Carol, ‘Law and the Control of Women's Sexuality: The Case of the 1950s’, in Hutter, Bridget and Williams, Gillian, eds., Controlling Women: The Normal and the Deviant (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 51–3.Google Scholar

36 At least one contemporary observer thought that ‘professional prostitution’ was actually declining in Britain, largely because of increased ‘promiscuity’ among ‘so-called girls of respectability.’ See Hall, Lesley A., Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 160–1.Google Scholar

37 During the war the ‘general laxity of conduct among young girls’ attracted to the wealth and glamour of the Americans and not the ‘professional prostitute’ was viewed by the British authorities as the ‘major problem’. See ‘Promiscuity between US troops and British Girls and Women’ (undated – 1943), TNA, MEPO3/2138. In post-war West Germany, the objects of alarm, nicknamed ‘Veronikas’, were mostly more mature women, often war widows or refugees, some of middle-class origin, who set up house with American GIs. Conservative authorities in German rural communities saw them as a threat to their neighbourhoods and to the German nation and prosecuted (or threatened to prosecute) them for prostitution. Maria Höhn points out, however, that these prosecutions were unpopular and mostly ceased by the mid 1950s. Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 126–54, 185–92.

38 Terence Robertson, ‘The GIs and Our Girls’, Reynolds News, 24 Feb. 1952.

39 Picture Post, 28 June 1952; the secretary of the Manchester Labour Party was reported as saying that ‘we are disgusted with our girls’. See New York Times, 17 Nov. 1952.

40 Daily Worker, 28 April 1952.

41 Confidential report of Church of England Moral Welfare Council (undated), TNA, AIR2/10706. Since 1885, British law has sought to protect young girls by setting the age of consent to sexual relations at sixteen.

42 The Times, 29 Jan. 1954. However, a report by the Oxford City Moral Welfare Association claimed that Americans were responsible for nearly half of the city's illegitimate births, accused them of promoting ‘a general attitude of irresponsibility and excitement’ and alleged that ‘some families have given hospitality to Americans and have then found their daughters have been seduced by them’. The Times, 17 April 1954.

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46 Minute by D.G.P.(I), 28 Oct. 1950, TNA, AIR2/10705 (emphasis in original).

47 Rose, ‘Girls and GIs’, 151; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 195–6; 207.

48 ‘Memorandum to the Air Ministry on the Provision of Recreational Facilities for the American Forces in Britain’, enclosed with Lady Reading to Crawley, 6 Nov. 1950, TNA, AIR2/10705.

49 Minute by Director of Personal Services, 8 Nov. 1950, TNA, AIR2/10705.

50 McLean to Penfield, 7 May 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/6.

51 Minute by D.U.S., 4 Jan. 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.

52 The Times, 3 May 1952.

53 Pirie to Sanford, 22 Feb. 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.

54 During the war the US Red Cross performed this task. See Rose, ‘Girls and GIs’, 150–1.

55 Report by Sir George Pirie, 24 March 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.

56 Ibid; Rawdon Briggs to Hamilton Kerr, 29 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109142, AU11919/3.

57 Daily Worker, 22 April 1952, 28 April 1952.

58 David Lampe, ‘An American Airman's View’, Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952.

59 ‘Report on Temporary Assignment in England and Germany by the National Recreation Association at the Invitation of the United States Air Force, January 3–April 3, 1953’, 11–15, TNA, AIR2/10706.

60 Reynolds, Rich Relations, 420.

61 Ibid., 413–28; Virden, Jenel, Good-bye Piccadilly: British War Brides in America (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996).Google Scholar

62 3AD Regulation 30–1, 19 Oct. 1950. See copy in RG48/2003, General Registrar Office Records, TNA. In West Germany, among other, tougher restrictions, until 1954 the processing of an application could take up to eight months. Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 105.

63 AFR- No. 34–12, 11 Feb. 1949. See copy in TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/3.

64 One airman alleged to have deserted a British girl with child and then married another, was reported to have been court-martialled for marrying without permission, sent to detention and then dismissed. See Sunday Pictorial, 14 Feb. 1954.

65 Circular GRO, No. 1/1951, 6 March 1951, TNA, RG48/2003.

66 There were cases in which what seemed like forged approvals had to be checked with USAF headquarters. See Minute 102, 28 June 1954, RG48/2003.

67 Daily Mail, 6 April 1951; see cutting in TNA, RG48/2003.

68 Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952; Memorandum on ‘Problems Arising from the Presence of United States Forces in the United Kingdom’ (undated), TNA, FO371/126709, AU11919/15; The Times, 18 Nov. 1960.

69 Confidential report of Church of England Moral Welfare Council.

70 Ibid.; Barnard to Graham, 11 Aug. 1954, TNA, RG48/2003.

71 ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held in Air Ministry on 6th July, 1953 to Discuss the Progress of Anglo-American Hospitality’, TNA, AIR2/10706.

72 3AF Regulation 34–9, 4 Aug. 1953, TNA, RG48/2003.

73 For hostile British responses to the McCarran Act see Manchester Guardian, 24 Dec. 1952; Daily Mirror, 24 Dec. 1952; Daily Telegraph, 2 Jan. 1953.

74 Sunday Express, 28 Dec. 1952; Daily Worker, 30 Dec. 1952.

75 Driberg to Eden, 5 Jan. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/2; Driberg to Eden, 5 Feb. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/4.

76 Minute by C.G. Thornton, 16 Jan. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/2.

77 Minute by A.G. Maitland, 19 Feb. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/4. Since 1950 the RAF security services had interviewed for the Americans (without disclosing it) prospective British brides and thousands of British civilians hoping to find work on US bases. See Minute on ‘United States Vetting Enquiries’ by E.G. Andrews, 10 July 1957, TNA, FO371/126709, AU11919/16.

78 Air force regulations stated that if the chaplain thought ‘marriage in the light of pregnancy would not be for the best interest of both parties concerned, he will counsel against it’. 3AD Regulation no. 30–1, 19 Oct. 1950, 5–6, TNA, RG48/2003. A senior USAF chaplain also explained that the authorities cannot waive financial restrictions ‘when the girl is pregnant’ in order ‘not to appear to put a premium on misbehaviour’. See Confidential report of Church of England Moral Welfare Council.

79 Virden, Good-Bye Piccadilly, 94–101. On the contribution of American GIs to the rise of illegitimate births in Britain during the war see Reynolds, Rich Relations, 404–6.

80 The figures rose from about six to ten a year, for every thousand unmarried women aged 15–44. See Thane, Pat, ‘Family Life and “Normality” in Postwar British Culture’, in Bessel, Richard and Schumann, Dirk, eds., Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 2003), 199.Google Scholar

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82 Foreign Office Memorandum, ‘Annex A’, 18 Feb. 1954, TNA, FO371/109163, AU1831/10.

83 Minute by A.G. Maitland, 5 Nov. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/7.

84 Close to 100,000 illegitimate children were born in West Germany in the first post-war decade. In 1951 the British National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child reported that it had aided over 5,500 unmarried German and Austrian women with children fathered by British servicemen. It claimed that the US authorities in Britain were more helpful than the British concerning the same problem. See The Times, 12 Dec. 1951. On the limited possibilities of West German women seeking paternity payments from British soldiers, and Whitehall action so that even the little they could seek by law would remain confidential, see letter from the War Office to M.A. Wenner, 17 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109163, AU1831/19.

85 Note of a meeting held at the Home Office on 5 Nov. 1953 and minute by A.G. Maitland, 5 Nov. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/7.

86 The Times, 8 July 1953.

87 Daily Sketch, ‘GI Mothers Get a Shock’, 10 Feb. 1954; Daily Herald, ‘Mothers Left Holding the Baby’, 10 Feb. 1954; Sunday Pictorial, ‘70,000 Girls Left in the Lurch’, 14 Feb. 1954.

88 524 H.C. Deb. 5s, cols. 1332–1333 (4 March 1954); 525 H.C. Deb. 5s, col. 838 (19 March 1954). A mother with one child and living with her parents was entitled to £2 a week from the National Assistance Board, but the organisation did not want this announced publicly. Foreign Office Memorandum, ‘Annex A’, 18 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109163, AU1831/10.

89 525 H.C. Deb. 5s, cols. 845–848 (19 March 1954).

90 Minute by R.L. Speaight, 9 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109163, AU1831/19.

91 The Visiting Forces Act legalised an agreement to give NATO countries jurisdiction over their own forces, wherever stationed. It was clear that the act, harshly criticised by the Labour opposition, referred mainly to US troops. It replaced the temporary 1942 act which gave US soldiers something close to ‘extraterritorial’ rights and was grudgingly accepted at the time only because of wartime conditions. Under the new act the legal immunity of foreign troops was slightly limited, but US servicemen ‘on official duty’ were still removed from the jurisdiction of British courts. See Duke, US Defence Bases, 114–22, 196–7.

92 Note of a meeting held at the Home Office on 5 Nov. 1953 and minute by A.G. Maitland, 5 Nov. 1953, TNA, FO371/103569, AU1831/7. The British believed the Americans might spirit airmen out of Britain to avoid their being jailed. See Foreign Office Memorandum, ‘Annex A’, 18 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109163, AU1831/10.

93 Graham-Harrison to Colonel Cechmanek, 26 Feb. 1954, TNA, FO371/109163, AU1831/11.

94 Memorandum in March 1957 on ‘Problems Arising from the Presence of United States Forces in the United Kingdom’ (undated), TNA, FO371/126709, AU11919/15. Desertion after marriage was slightly less of a problem, because wives of low-ranking airmen still serving could approach the air force directly to get their marriage and children's allowances, whether the man was in Britain or not.

95 Washington Post, 29 Nov. 1955.

96 Rich, Paul B., Race and Empire in British Politics, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 120–44Google Scholar. Bland, Lucy, ‘White Women and Men of Colour: Miscegenation Fears in Britain after the Great War’, Gender and History, 17, 1 (2005), 29–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97 Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, 204–216.

98 Minute by J.N.O. Curle, 29 Oct. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/18.

99 Cecil to Burrows, 13 Nov. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/20.

100 Whittuck to Curle, 14 Nov. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/20.

101 Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 85–108, 192–222.

102 The regulations stated that applicants should be made to understand that ‘the laws of several States do not recognise as valid any marriages contracted between persons of certain different races, regardless of the fact that the marriage was valid in the place where contracted’. 3AF Regulation no. 34–9, 4 Aug. 1953, TNA, RG48/2003.

103 Note by Sir John Whitworth Jones (undated) on ‘The Colour Aspect of Anglo-American Relations in the United Kingdom’, TNA, AIR2/10707.

104 Daily Herald, 25 April 1955, 26 April 1955.

105 Webster, Wendy, Englishness and Empire, 1939–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 157.Google Scholar

106 Minutes of a Conference of Chairmen of Anglo-American Hospitality Committees in the United Kingdom, held at the Air Ministry on 22 Feb. 1956, TNA, AIR2/10707.

107 Minute by E.P. Kruse, 20 Jan. 1956, TNA, AIR2/10707. The problem of deserted ‘half-caste’ and illegitimate children would become even greater with the rapid growth in Britain in the 1950s of Commonwealth immigrant and student communities of African origin or descent. See The Times, 31 Dec. 1963.

108 ‘A Few Suggestions Offered by Sir George Pirie to the Chairmen of the Proposed Local Anglo-American Hospitality Committee as a Basis for the Preliminary Activities’ (undated), TNA, FO371/97607, AU1195/57. The Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk replied that ‘if I may be quite frank, I'm afraid any mention of a “Committee” would scare our own people as much as an invitation to a tea party would scare the average GI!’ See Earl of Stradbroke to Lord de L'Isle, 19 Aug. 1952, TNA, AIR2/10706. See report on the formation of the committees, The Times, 23 Aug. 1952.

109 ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held in Air Ministry on 6th July, 1953 to Discuss the Progress of Anglo-American Hospitality’, TNA, AIR2/10706.

110 ‘Talk to NATO in Paris – 28th October 1953’, TNA, FO371/103541, AU1194/2; The Times, 2 Nov. 1953.

111 As minister of defence, Lord Alexander told the air minister that it was possible ‘on our very doorstep, to improve the anti-Americanism in this country’ and hoped that full support would be given to the ‘hospitality’ plans. See Alexander to De L'Isle, 1 Feb. 1954, TNA, AIR2/10707.

112 Report by Sir John Whitworth Jones on ‘The Community Relations Officer Scheme’, 28 April 1955, TNA, AIR2/10707. The term ‘gold-digger’ emerged in the inter-war years in common parlance to describe women who received gifts for sex or who married out of their class for the sake of money. See Rose, Which People's War, 82.

113 Note by Sir John Whitworth Jones on ‘The Colour Aspect of Anglo-American Relations in the United Kingdom’ (undated), TNA, AIR2/10707.

114 The US ambassador, Winthrop Aldrich, also established in 1955 an annual award for the three US bases that did the most to promote ‘friendly’ relations with local communities. Report by Sir Richard Atcherley, 6 June 1961, TNA, AIR20/10832.

115 ‘British Anglo-American Hospitality Scheme Progress Report: Period: August 1954 to January 1956’, TNA, AIR2/10707.

116 Report by Sir Hugh Saunders on the ‘Anglo-American Hospitality Scheme Progress Report, October 1956 to April 1959’, TNA, AIR2/14552.

117 Minutes of a Conference of Chairmen of Anglo-American Community Relations Committees, 13 June 1961, TNA, AIR20/10832.

118 For an influential contemporary British observation on the ‘idiosyncratic’ practice of ‘dating’ by young Americans see Gorer, Geoffrey, The Americans (London: The Cresset Press, 1948), 81–90.Google Scholar

119 See TNA, AIR20/10832.

120 See TNA, RG48/2003.

121 Duke, US Defence Bases, 138–41.

122 During the US recession in 1960, the satirical weekly Punch showed a WVS van delivering soup at a USAF base, and a Daily Herald cartoon showed an old British lady tiptoeing to five American GIs and offering to send food parcels to help ‘your dear ones over the economic crisis’. See Time Magazine, 12 Dec. 1960, 21.