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

Contemporary European History

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 483-503

  Goodman, Giora ^a  

^a Western Galilee College   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 69849122631     PISSN: 09607773     EISSN: 14692171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0960777308004670     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. David Reynolds, Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain 1942-1945 (London: HarperCollins, 1995); Graham Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull: Black American Soldiers in World War II Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 1987); Sonya O. Rose, Which People's War: National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Sonya O. Rose, ‘Girls and GIs: Race, Sex and Diplomacy in Second World War Britain’, International History Review, 19, 1 (February 1997), 146-60; Sonya O. Rose, ‘The “Sex Question” in Anglo-American Relations in the Second World War’, International History Review, 20, 4 (December 1998), 884-903.
2. Maria Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950sWest Germany (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Petra Goedde, ‘Gender, Race, and Power: American Soldiers and the German Population’, in Detlef Junker, ed., The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 515-21; Perry Biddiscombe, ‘Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-fraternization Movement in the US Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945-1948’, Journal of Social History, 34, 3 (Spring 2001), 611-47; John Willoughby, ‘The Sexual Behavior of American GIs during the Early Years of the Occupation of Germany’, Journal of Military History, 62, 1 (January 1998), 155-74.
3. Simon Duke, US Defence Bases in the United Kingdom (London: Macmillan, 1987).
4. Ward to Wilson, 11 June 1954, FO371/109-142, AU11919/5, The National Archives (TNA), London.
5. New York Times, 3 Feb. 1951.
6. Hoyer-Millar to Rose, 29 May 1951, FO371/90979, AU11919/3.
7. For the social effects in the rural areas of the Rhineland-Palatinate see Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 52-84.
8. The Times, 22 Aug. 1952.
9. The head of the foreign office news department regarded the Daily Express as ‘incorrigible and there is little that can be done about them.’ Minute byW. Ridsdale, 4 Nov. 1952, FO371/97607, AU1195/60.
10. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, 478 House of Commons Debates, cols. 706-707 (27 July 1950); 482 H.C. Deb. 5s, cols. 1369-1370 (14 Dec. 1950).
11. Duke, US Defence Bases, 77-83; On the USAF's nuclear capability and Whitehall worries about the control over the bases see Ken Young, ‘US “Atomic Capability” and the British Forward Bases in the Early Cold War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42, 1 (2007), 117-36; Jonathan Colman, ‘The 1950 “Ambassador's Agreement” on USAF in the UK and British Fears of US Atomic Unilateralism’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30, 2 (April 2007), 285-307.
12. Cabinet conclusions 100 (52), 25 Nov. 1952, CAB128/25, Cabinet Office Records, The National Archives, London. Soon after the air minister wrote, explaining, among other things, why American contacts were made ‘too frequently with the less admirable elements of our people.’ Lord de L'Isle to Churchill, 5 December 1952, TNA, Air Ministry Records, AIR2/10706. See also Lord de L'Isle to Churchill, 5 March 1954, AIR2/10707.
13. Labour Party, Report of the 49th Annual Conference, Margate, 1950, 101.
14. New Statesman, 29 Nov. 1952, 627-8.
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.
16. The Socialist Road for Britain (London: Communist Party, December 1949), 22.
17. Derek Kartun, America-Go Home! (London: Communist Party, 1951).
18. Stephen Howe, ‘Labour Patriotism 1939-1983’, in Raphael Samuel, ed., Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, Vol. 1: History and Politics (London: Routledge, 1989), 133; David Childs, ‘The Cold War and the “British Road”, 1946-53’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23, 4 (October 1988), 564.
19. Philip Bolsover, America over Britain (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1953), 65.
20. The English-Speaking Union, A Decade of Progress, 1945-1955 (Twickenham: Riverside Press, 1955).
21. Winfrey to Darvall, 23 Nov. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/22.
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. Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1989), 240.
30. Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952; New York Times, 17 Nov. 1952. On prostitution in London's West End in the late 1940s see C. H. Rolph, ed., Women of the Streets: A Sociological Study of the Common Prostitute (London: Secker & Warburg, 1955), 45-52.
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 Maria Luddy, ‘An Outcast Community: The “Wrens” of the Curragh’, Women's History Review, 1, 3 (1992), 341-55. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention.
33. Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952. For differences between British and US laws on prostitution during wartime see Reynolds, Rich Relations, 203-4.
34. 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 Carol Smart, ‘Law and the Control of Women's Sexuality: The Case of the 1950s’, in Bridget Hutter and Gillian Williams, eds., Controlling Women: The Normal and the Deviant (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 51-3.
35. 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 Lesley A. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 160-1.
36. 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 andWomen’ (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.
37. Terence Robertson, ‘The GIs and Our Girls’, Reynolds News, 24 Feb. 1952.
38. 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.
39. Daily Worker, 28 April 1952.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. Stephen Brooke, ‘Gender and Working-Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s’, Journal of Social History, 34, 4 (2001), 782-3.
43. Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception, 1800-1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 282-8.
44. Time, 8 Feb. 1954, 29.
45. Minute by D.G.P.(I), 28 Oct. 1950, TNA, AIR2/10705 (emphasis in original).
46. Rose, ‘Girls and GIs’, 151; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 195-6; 207.
47. ‘Memorandum to the AirMinistry on the Provision of Recreational Facilities for the American Forces in Britain’, enclosed with Lady Reading to Crawley, 6 Nov. 1950, TNA, AIR2/10705.
48. Minute by Director of Personal Services, 8 Nov. 1950, TNA, AIR2/10705.
49. McLean to Penfield, 7 May 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/6.
50. Minute by D.U.S., 4 Jan. 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.
51. The Times, 3 May 1952.
52. Pirie to Sanford, 22 Feb. 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.
53. During the war the US Red Cross performed this task. See Rose, ‘Girls and GIs’, 150-1.
54. Report by Sir George Pirie, 24 March 1952, TNA, AIR2/10705.
55. Report by Sir George Pirie; Rawdon Briggs to Hamilton Kerr, 29 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109-142, AU11919/3.
56. Daily Worker, 22 April 1952, 28 April 1952.
57. David Lampe, ‘An American Airman's View’, Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952.
58. ‘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.
59. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 420.
60. Rich Relations., 413-28; Jenel Virden, Goodbye Piccadilly: British War Brides in America (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996).
61. AD Regulation 30-1, 19 Oct. 1950. See copy in RG48/2003, General Registrar Office Records, TNA. InWest Germany, among other, tougher restrictions, until 1954 the processing of an application could take up to eight months. Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 105.
62. AFR-No. 34-12, 11 Feb. 1949. See copy in TNA, FO371/103-569, AU1831/3.
63. 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.
64. Circular GRO, No. 1/1951, 6 March 1951, TNA, RG48/2003.
65. 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.
66. Daily Mail, 6 April 1951; see cutting in TNA, RG48/2003.
67. Manchester Guardian, 20 Sept. 1952; Memorandum on ‘Problems Arising from the Presence of United States Forces in the United Kingdom’ (undated), TNA, FO371/126-709, AU11919/15; The Times, 18 Nov. 1960.
68. Confidential report of Church of England Moral Welfare Council.
69. Confidential report of Church of England Moral Welfare Council.; Barnard to Graham, 11 Aug. 1954, TNA, RG48/2003.
70. ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held in Air Ministry on 6th July, 1953 to Discuss the Progress of Anglo-American Hospitality’, TNA, AIR2/10706.
71. AF Regulation 34-9, 4 Aug. 1953, TNA, RG48/2003.
72. For hostile British responses to the McCarran Act see Manchester Guardian, 24 Dec. 1952; Daily Mirror.
73. 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, FO371/103-569, AU1831/2; Driberg to Eden, 5 Feb. 1953, TNA, FO371/103-569, AU1831/4.
76. Minute by C.G. Thornton, 16 Jan. 1953, TNA, FO371/103-569, AU1831/2.
77. Minute by A.G. Maitland, 19 Feb. 1953, TNA, FO371/103-569, 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, FO371/126-709, 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 Pat Thane, ‘Family Life and “Normality” in Postwar British Culture’, in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann, 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.
81. Janet Fink, ‘Natural Mothers, Putative Fathers, and Innocent Children: The Definition andRegulation of Parental Relationships outside Marriage, in England, 1945-1959’, Journal of Family History, 25, 2 (2000), 182-3.
82. Foreign Office Memorandum, ‘Annex A’, 18 Feb. 1954, TNA, FO371/109-163, AU1831/10.
83. Minute by A.G. Maitland, 5 Nov. 1953, TNA, FO371/103-569, 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, FO371/109-163, 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, FO371/103-569, 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. H.C. Deb. 5s, cols. 845-848 (19 March 1954).
89. Minute by R.L. Speaight, 9 March 1954, TNA, FO371/109-163, AU1831/19.
90. 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.
91. Note of a meeting held at the Home Office on 5 Nov. 1953 and minute by A.G. Maitland, 5 Nov. 1953, TNA, FO371/103-569, 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, FO371/109-163, AU1831/10.
92. Graham-Harrison to Colonel Cechmanek, 26 Feb. 1954, TNA, FO371/109-163, AU1831/11.
93. Memorandum in March 1957 on ‘Problems Arising from the Presence of United States Forces in the United Kingdom’ (undated), TNA, FO371/126-709, 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.
94. Washington Post, 29 Nov. 1955.
95. Paul B. Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 120-44. Lucy Bland, ‘White Women and Men of Colour: Miscegenation Fears in Britain after the Great War’, Gender and History, 17, 1 (2005), 29-61.
96. Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull, 204-216.
97. Minute by J.N.O. Curle, 29 Oct. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/18.
98. Cecil to Burrows, 13 Nov. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/20.
99. Whittuck to Curle, 14 Nov. 1951, TNA, FO371/90966, AU1194/20.
100. Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 85-108, 192-222.
101. 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.
102. Note by Sir John Whitworth Jones (undated) on ‘The Colour Aspect of Anglo-American Relations in the United Kingdom’, TNA, AIR2/10707.
103. Daily Herald, 25 April 1955, 26 April 1955.
104. Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire, 1939-1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 157.
105. 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.
106. 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.
107. ‘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.
108. ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held in Air Ministry on 6th July, 1953 to Discuss the Progress of Anglo-American Hospitality’, TNA, AIR2/10706.
109. ‘Talk to NATO in Paris-28th October 1953’, TNA, FO371/103-541, AU1194/2; The Times, 2 Nov. 1953.
110. 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.
111. 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.
112. Note by Sir John Whitworth Jones on ‘The Colour Aspect of Anglo-American Relations in the United Kingdom’ (undated), TNA, AIR2/10707.
113. 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.
114. ‘British Anglo-American Hospitality Scheme Progress Report: Period: August 1954 to January 1956’, TNA, AIR2/10707.
115. Report by Sir Hugh Saunders on the ‘Anglo-American Hospitality Scheme ProgressReport, October 1956 to April 1959’, TNA, AIR2/14552.
116. Minutes of a Conference of Chairmen of Anglo-American Community Relations Committees, 13 June 1961, TNA, AIR20/10832.
117. For an influential contemporary British observation on the ‘idiosyncratic’ practice of ‘dating’ by young Americans see Geoffrey Gorer, The Americans (London: The Cresset Press, 1948), 81-90.
118. Duke, US Defence Bases, 138-41.
119. 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.