Lying in the Practice of British Diplomacy

Richard Davis

Authors

Richard Davis Univ. Bordeaux Montaigne https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9780-1351

Keywords:

British diplomacy, Diplomatic practices, International relations, Middle East, Suez, Tony Blair and the Iraq War, Spin

Abstract

The history of British diplomacy, in particular in relation to the Middle East, has long been marked by the presence of different forms of lying. This article takes four specific crises which highlight this tendency. Firstly, the record of British policy in the region over the course of the First World War. Secondly, the crisis provoked by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36 and the peace plan put forward by Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval. Thirdly, the Suez crisis of 1956 and finally the Iraq war of 2003. In a first part this article considers how lying, in various forms, was an integral part of the ways in which Britain conducted its diplomacy in this region. In particular, the contradictory and mutually incompatible promises made by Britain to its various allies in the conflict against the Ottoman empire—Arabs, Jews and French—inevitably led Britain to adopt a certain number of lies. The second part of the article deals with the lies that were part of the ways in which these policies were presented to public opinion at home and internationally. In the third and final part, it analyses the forms of lying in the various post-conflict accounts in which various British decision-makers sought to defend their past policies and to put as favourable a spin on their actions as possible.

Author Biography

Richard Davis, Univ. Bordeaux Montaigne

Richard DAVIS is Professor of British studies at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne. He was awarded a BSc(Econ) in international relations from the London School of Economics and the agrégation in English. His PhD from the University of Sheffield dealt with Anglo-French relations in the 1930s. He is a specialist of contemporary British history and particularly of Britain’s relations with the rest of Europe since 1945, Franco-British relations and the question of Europe in British politics. His publications in these areas of research include Britain and France Before the War: Appeasement and Crisis, 1934-1936 (London: Macmillan, 2001), The Liberal Party in Britain, 1906-1924 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2010), La Décolonisation britannique: perspectives sur la fin d’un empire – 1919-1984 (Paris : Editions du Fahrenheit, 2012), Britain in Crisis, 1970-1979 (Paris : CNED-Presses Universitaires de France, 2016) et “Euroscepticism and opposition to British entry into the EEC, 1955-75” in Le Référendum britannique sur l’Union européenne, edited by Karine Tournier-Sol, Revue française de civilisation britannique, Volume XXII, numéro 2, 2017: 1-15. (http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/1364).

richard.davis@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr